Women's Day - Like Never B4

This March 8th will be remembered for long time to come. Few weeks back, we received a mail about 'Microsoft placement on March 8th exclusively for women who are currently in their final semester of either CSE/IT discipline'. We would be having our written test on 8th and if short listed we get to face 3 to 4 technical rounds in the consecutive weeks. Now this Microsoft is a biggie and no techie buff would leave this opportunity off hand. That's true, but where the hell do I fall under that 'techie ones'(pursued Engg after finishing my 12th coz there was this stupid assumption of only 2 options available ahead 1. Medicine and 2. Engg. Medicine required huge cutoff and so the obvious choice. All the other courses don't promise you a bright future...is that so?Doesn't this country need more artists, good politicians, entrepreneurs and the like. For that before you finish your school, you should be well aware of your ambition, your dream. Parents and teachers drive the children making them believe that there are only 2 elite jobs, either become a doctor or an engineer and there is this tiring job of digesting Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Maths text books. Who digests them better will top. From this year on, there is no 'Entrance Exam' too, making my before statement much more strong.) K, let me get back to Microsoft. Along with my friends I too registered( now don't ask me why..) Now comes preparation, is this one week enough to learn all those stuff that I didn't give a damn the last 4 yrs. This is how one of my friends consoled me when I told him 'I am a stupid naa, I am saying NO without giving it a try'. The test was scheduled at Adyar in St. Michaels Academy. The landmark that came to my mind in Adyar was one of India's greatest Cancer Institute which is well known for the free treatment it provides to the poor people across the country. And yaa ofcourse the lady behind, Padma Shri Dr. V.Shantha, chairperson of the institute. She was honoured with the The Ramon Magsaysay Award(also known as Asia's Nobel Prize) in the year 2005. Fifty years of remarkable service, there was this quote of her's that I remember noting down, " The journey has been long. I don't see an end to it, simply because our work is never ending. What we have done is very little. There is much more to do. The journey has been arduous, with bricks and stones and occasional flowers strewn in between, but we continue…" I remembered Sony Mammu(social activist, my friend's uncle and one of the person I can always look up to). He once told me 'Service is an attitude, even a smile can be a service' . Had some unneeded money in my account, thought of paying a visit to the Institute. Called up to the Insti to get permission for visiting. There was this visiting hours and unfortunately I wouldn't be able to make it within the visiting time coz our MS test was slated for about 4 hrs including the registration and ppt. Microsoft had resolved to conduct a recruitment every Women's day. For many it was a dream come true, coz MS doesn't go for 'on campus' placement to many affiliated colleges other than a mighty few. But little did I know that this wasn't a lucky dip. There came 2 delegates from MS to showcase a Ppt about the giant company and today's selection test( My friend was quite intimidated seeing the guys in Denim blue shirt(guess MS uniform), to me the Ppt was a clean chit out of the game esp when one of them replied that ' We had of late selected only some 5 odd, out of 100 students from IIT ' to the question 'How many students are you looking forward to select'. And yaa he also made it clear that the training will be only related to MS products coz they select you only after making sure that you are good at C, C++, Java. Alas, at the end of the Ppt ,I was asking myself 'WHY AM I HERE?'. Before I could think about that, I was sitting in the exam hall. Now fortunately or unfortunately it was objective questions(yaa that 1,2,3 u go free or call it Inky Pinky Ponky type) The test was for 1hr 50 mins. For people who are interested in knowing the details of the test, here it is:

1. Analytical reasoning - 30 mins(students good at probability can get through)
2. Data Structures - 10 mins ( even given the options, it was hard to recollect Stacks and Queues which in my 2nd sem I had learnt (did I...?)
3. C and C++ - 40 mins( snippets given, guess the o/p. This was cruel, as most of the ques were pointers(*,**,&...oops)
4. Operating Systems - 15 mins(my 4th sem paper, I scored around 90 in that paper, but how the hell did I forget it all(thrashing, demand paging, page faults) just in a matter of 2 yrs.
5.RDBMS - 15mins(Queries(select, create, I still had only one query in mind, WHY AM I HERE?) and yaa the Normal Forms(1NF, 2NF, 3NF...oh plzz b4 I become ab'Normal', take the ans sheet from me:(

Finally the 110 mins got over. Thankfully there was no negative marks. The results will be mailed in a weeks time. Now the question is ' What to do if by chance I get through this 1st round?' My technical knowledge will be put to test then. Gotta wait n watch. I was happy for some girls in my class who really deserved this offer. Wish they get through. Lesson learnt 'Be happy with your food, if you want delicacies every day then better learn to prepare them first' :) and yaa this quote ' Don't limit God's ability to do by your capacity to receive'. Goodbye MS for now!!!