From a small town chap to an IT professional - The journey

The article is about my life journey till now. Hope it might help someone to gain some insight into growing up in a middle-class household and the IT work environment especially in India.

Introduction:

Hello World,

I'm Abhisek Ashirbad Sethy. I'm from a very small town called Athagad in the Cuttack district of Odisha. I belong to a middle-class family. My father worked as an accountant in a rural bank. My mother is working as a primary school headmaster. I am the eldest of the 3 children (one younger brother and one younger sister). I studied till Matriculation in my native only. For higher studies, I moved to the capital city, Bhubaneswar (also called the City of Temples).

Graduation Days:

During my graduation days, I faced several challenges and converted them into my strengths. A few of them were as follows:

1. To deal with expenses: I remember getting up to INR 2500 once a while not regularly. Room rent, books & study materials, food charges, transportation to college, etc all had to be accommodated within the above-stated amount. Initially, I was finding it hard to maintain within such a stipulated budget. So many activities which seemed to fun was a luxury for me. I was writing projects and assignments for my collegemates in return for a daily round trip to my college. I was involved in making notes and preparing heavily cause I had to clear doubts for my collegemates. All these things, in the long run, helped me in managing my expenses, investing my time in productive things, and also helped me in becoming a stronger individual. Also, these additional preparations made me stronger in computer science subjects and also in communication.
2. Taking decisions: Decision-taking is often underrated. However, it's a key skill in life. "A simple and humble 'No' is better than a thousand excuses." Decision-taking is very hard in reality as it can have cascading implications. In those days, I was very reluctant to say 'No' to almost everything which had landed me into complicated situations several times. So, from there I learned the art of telling 'No' in situations that could jeopardize me.
3. Inferiority complex and coping with mental abuse: I've faced several criticisms about my body color (dark brown) and appearance (short height 5ft 6in) during my entire academic career especially from my relatively bright-skinned peers. It was having an impact on my psychology and I had developed the inferiority complex almost to a level that I was comfortable with these abuses. Linguistic slurs like kaalia, kaalu or banthu were common to me. It was then I looked into myself for self-analysis and started discovering my positives and reinforced my brain to appreciate my positives. Meditation, listening to music, and watching movies helped me a lot in improving my communication, vocabulary, broader perspective on life, and learning new languages.

Days of Face Paralysis (Bells Palsy):

Post my graduation, I suffered a severe stroke in my face (due to a firecracker bursting near my face) leaving the right side of my face paralyzed. Due to my strong will & determination, my parent's support, The Almighty's blessings, and the prayers of my well-wishers I recovered back within a short period of 9 months through Physiotherapy. Although it left me with a little squint in my right eye (under close observation), it had made me even stronger internally and psychologically.

Professional career and present:

Had a great start into IT industry with one of India's biggest IT company in the silicon valley of India, Bengaluru. Met a bunch of enthusiastic and similar geeks there. I had the privilege of working with some of the wonderful managers and great colleagues there. They contributed a lot in my polishing my skills and contributing immensely to my knowledge.

Despite my designation as a software developer, the role assigned to me was more of as operations engineer. That included long monitoring of different applications and business-critical emails and service tickets. It was a period where I was learning so much that almost enjoyed it every day. Although I admit few times I've done few mistakes which have resulted in my leads and managers facing the heat from the clients. But I made sure never to repeat the same and made it fully documented and cascaded it during my KT (knowledge transfer). KT is such vital stuff in the IT environment. I enjoyed a lot of team outings, potlucks, and weekend parties with my colleagues. These made me often consider my office an extension of my home only.

Even the client managers and developers were very friendly and taught me some insane cool technologies and stuff, which I cherish to this day and will continue to do so. However, in the long run, I found my work repetitive, hence I moved out in search of innovation and challenges.

After a brief search, finally, I can say I might be at the right place. My current work as an application developer involves a lot of innovation and out-of-the-box thinking. And there is a vast scope for learning and development. This is why I think I'm in a better place now.

**Did you know, I can speak 5 Indian languages (Odia(mother tongue), Telugu, Bengali, Hindi, and Kannada ) and 2 International languages (English & Spanish). Currently learning Tamil and Hebrew.

Still, there are many things to learn, discover and innovate. I'm really looking forward to future opportunities and I'm optimistic about this.

This is me and this is my story so far.

I've always wondered how a person becomes a 'Hero', but now looking at myself I feel myself nothing short of a Hero. And my super power is -"I never give up". I'm my Hero.

Rest of the important details about my work are in my resume. :)

Logging off until my next adventure.

Yours truly,

Abhisek Ashirbad Sethy (Abhi)

 (Image courtesy: Google, Shutterstock, and the respective creators)

https://abhisek-pdev.medium.com/from-a-small-town-chap-to-an-it-professional-the-journey-2c3b38a6103e