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Navigating an Ivy League as a mom

Ever dreamt on air, passing through the clouds? Every time that I fly, only a thousand things flash through my mind. This time around, as I’m flying, my mind wanders around a whole lot of life that I had at Brown University, during my masters. So I thought why not just capture the flashback 😊 On August 25 th 2016, we had an initial orientation that lasted for 2-3 days. It was a proud moment, one I have been dreaming for from my childhood, to get into an Ivy school. The whole environment at Sayles Hall at Brown was very welcoming and booming with lots of new faces, on which you could sense a bit apprehensiveness and enthusiasm about what is to come forth. I met with a bunch of diverse students from different parts of the world, who are about to start their journey at Brown. We had an initial ice breaker session, post which, a slight brunch and we were instructed to follow to Salomon’s Hall.  One of the student representative played us an awesome song, nicknamed as Brown f...
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My road to Ivy League University - Nothing comes easy in life!

Sorry, this is a huge blog. If you really want to find some inspiration in your life, read through this blog completely. I'm sure you won't regret it. After completing my undergrad from Coimbatore Institute of Technology, in 2009, I had applied to a bunch of US universities.  Hell yeah, while I got the admits from majority of them, my dad became suddenly ill and bed-ridden. He had to undergo a heart surgery. I was torn between my responsibilities as a daughter, and my career ambitions. Alas, I gave up all the dream admits, and started working as Software Engineer. The only reason was to support my mom and sister personally. After 2 years, as I have gained some work experience in telecom domain, I applied to 4 universities in US and UK all for MS in Telecommunications. All the struggle and the travel I made to and fro to my college, to get those "Letter of recommendations" signed and sealed by profs and universities. Yes those days, most universities needed LOR in ...

How I designed my website in 2days

Here is my first portfolio. www.aarthianbalagan.com I had already purchased a domain for a month ago and was aiming to design and create my website on my own for a month during the winter break, whereas it never worked out.  After the break was over, and when the career fair was about to begin, I started my marathon work of collecting all the images and all the pictures of images, which I had to put in portfolio. I organized them into group. Started with <html> </html>. Learnt about bootstrap, and font awesome and decided to use it. All it took was 2days of continuous effort, to complete it.  At the end, it was about hosting. Hosting was so expensive, with I'm being a student, compared various vendors for safe, cheap and reliable hosting. I found bigrock, dewlance, ipage to be the lowest, but they had numerous people complain about them with customer care. Hence, I hosted it with the help of namecheap. After configuring the DNS setting, ther...

A refreshingly cool journey from Bangalore to Coorg!!!

Everyone would have heard of the maxim, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”. Yeah, it’s cent percent true. After so much of non-sensible work at office, we had planned for a trip to Coorg, quite a few times which went futile. After so many hiccups, finally one of our plans came true; we started for a trekking trip to the highly refreshing and energizing natural coffee estates of Coorg Valley. Here we go! Here we go! :):) The clock struck 3am, on Dec 3rd, 2010.Cock-a-doodle-do!! :) There we started enthusiastically, imagining the nerve-chilling coffee plantations of Coorg. We started proceeding through the Mysore road, sneaking our heads out of the cab, every now and then, to get a feel of the early morning freshness. Finally, it was time for a short break, breakfast time:):) We had stopped by a highway restaurant and had our breakfast along with some Buddhist saints loitering in that restaurant... Click!! Click!! The camera shutters, blossomed open for the first time, and rem...

My First Stint as Software Engineer

After bidding adieu to our cherish able memories of college days, one fine day, I got my call letter to join as a "Software Engineer" in a firm, in which I, like everyone else was looking up to, with much expectations, vying to carve a niche for myself. After all, the transition from college to corporate, was such weird, I should say. Much hyped society to mingle with, thank goodness, the so-called college mates, all of a sudden, seem such intimate guys to hang around with. The intimacy grew by leaps and bounds, day by day, as we spend time, squatting hours together in front of a "man-made machine", brainchild of the homo sapiens , so called computer, so idiotic to be with, ( remember the wrath, we get of sitting at labs in college days) yet mandating our companionship, more than a mere friend. Finally, we have become a Software Engineer - welcome to the world of machine life, where people hardly have time to love others, than to love an idiotic box, the awe of...