Healing, transforming and sharing my mangoman stories along the way | Product @Microsoft | Ex - Samsung | Fitness Enthusiast
I appeared for the IIT exams and missed the mark the first time. My parents convinced me to take admission in a decent college through AIEEE. It was a good college, but I lost interest after 1st semester. The idea of cracking IIT got the better of me, and I dropped out of my first engineering college after six months. It was a bold move for a teenager me, especially since my family wasn't well-off, my father had invested a significant part of his savings in my fees and my siblings were next in line for college. And nothing heroic happened after that. Six months later, I missed IIT by a greater margin and got some 6k rank in AIEEE. But life didn't stop there. I messed up in counseling. I still remember the day I returned from counseling, thinking I was going to NIT Jaipur, until my father pointed out the error that I had opted for a private college in Jaipur instead. The memories of that day haunt me till date because I had even contemplated suicide. I'm a proud alum of my undergrad college today but back then, I saw my father struggle every semester to pay the hefty hostel and mess fees with his modest income, even after the educational loan. Fast forward to today, my failures haven't transformed me. I feel like an imposter only to be caught in a room full of smart people who can think faster and better than me. We are inclined to look for a silver lining in every sob story, but sometimes it isn't there. That said, over time I've become better at managing my insecurities and have learnt to embrace vulnerability instead of trying to prove my credibility. I've also learnt to: 1. Value progress over perfection 2. Be comfortable with growing slow vs growing fast at the cost of my mental health 3. Not cling to a job where I am not adding value, just to prove my self-worth #personalgrowth
NIT Jaipur ne bhi kutch khaas bhala kiya nahi hai logon ka 😂
I saw determination and courage in your story to make your college choice better, I am sure you still have it in a matured progressed way Reminds me of my similar experience, to take such big decisions without any guidance at that age we felt we know it but we were still new to the world or better say kids trying our best to make a smart decision and try for our goals, we tried our best and jo hota acha hi hota. It makes us wiser, mentally much stronger than we were, we did whatever we could in our hands.
Thank you for sharing your journey in a genuine way. Inspiring! I just read it to my daughter who is now in 11th and going through stress of engineering coaching. You have consistently shown growth mindset in life and you will continue to scale to newer heights. All the best.
Finally a real story among all those "My LinkedIn bio will tell you I work at Microsoft but won't tell you that..." then proceeding to be a sponsored post :)
Agreed Chetna Das I can remember below quote post reading the post. Everyone has a story to tell. Everyone has a difference to make. Everyone has a voice that can speak wisdom into the silence. If we are willing to listen.
good work , chetna. one needs to embrace their vulnerability.It's time that teaches us many things.
The entire LinkedIn community is about finding the silver lining in the most mundane of things😂 It's true, sometimes there ARE no silver linings, sometimes a screw up is a screw up, not everything has to be a life lesson 👍🏾
Chetna you are a rock star! You shine bright through all the imperfections which might be visible to you but trust me the world sees only the brightness. ❤️
Director of Product Management - Microsoft Work Management and Visual Collaboration
1moNo success is built without failure, only the ones who survive the journey live to tell the stories and make it to the history, others don’t even register. Persist, progress and prevail.. Glad you are doing so well now - remember our failures define us until our success begins to shine us.