When I was asked to write something for the juniors, I wasn’t sure about the topic. But whenever I look back at my journey, the first thing I remember is a date: 5 August 2014. That night, I was browsing the internet randomly using my mobile. At around 2 AM, I logged into my mail account. Surprisingly, I found an email that started with the word “Congratulations...”. It was an acceptance letter to the HPC for Undergraduates program of the Supercomputing Conference (SC14). I was awarded with an international travel grant by IEEE-Computer Society to attend the conference at New Orleans, LA, USA. That event was a jump-start of my career since that was the day I started believing in myself. Now there comes a question, Why would I doubt on myself?
To find the answer, let’s go a little more back in time, the year 2010.That year, in May I started my journey as a BUET student. At the beginning, my poor fresher mind started dreaming of a smooth student life and a good CGPA. However, shortly after the first CT, I started to realize that this journey will be a game of thorns (not thrones ;) ). And after level 1-term 2, I was sure that I have to “survive” somehow where the grades can be a byproduct. I can still remember how frightened I used to be in the C lab and how horrible I felt after getting humiliated for failing to do something that I was just learning for the first time. That single lab destroyed my faith on my capabilities and I started believing that I am good for nothing.
Such feelings, such experiences are very common among all the students. And to console them, there is another common thing. A dialog that says, “CGPA does not matter”. I have heard this sentence many many times during my “game of thorns”. Though I still consider myself as a newbie in the field of Computer Science, I decided to express my opinion on this through this write-up.
Before that, let’s get back to 2014, when I boarded my first flight to the United States to attend SC14. I was in 4-1 at that time and was still struggling to set up a decent career plan. The time was precisely the beginning of PL of 4-1. I was travelling alone and it was a red-eye flight. Though I had a window seat, I could not utilize it since it was all dark outside (poor Sinthia). So, I had plenty of time to talk to myself. Guess what was the topic? -
Hey Sinthia, 4-1 is over, only one term left. What are you going to do after that?Before boarding the plane on 22nd November, I finished my internship at Samsung R&D Institute on 15th November. And honestly, I just hated the experience. I was clear that industry is not my place. And here comes the CGPA thing, more accurately, the greatest obstacle at that time. “Dear Sinthia, you do not like industry jobs and you do not have an excellent CGPA to join academia. How are you going to manage?”
The only answer was: Do something to cover it up and for now, focus on the dinner being served by the crew members ( Ever hungry BUETian mind ;) ).
It was the end of 4-1 and time machine is not yet invented, so I had to do something to cover up my moderate CGPA and move ahead. Fortunately, I had a plethora of awesome mentors both from the faculties and from alumni who guided me in this “cover up process”. I had to really fight to make a package where I can claim that “Okay, my CGPA is not outstanding, but I have other skills”. A few of those were, “writing a 2 pages poster proposal from a 9 pages random write up in just two nights, doing ns-2 simulations on eid day (I still hate ns-2) and so so so many things”.
I do not regret my workaholic days of 3-2, 4-1 or 4-2 since they brought so many successes for me.As a whole, I was able to prepare a decent profile at the end of my undergraduate life and it wasn’t a game of thorns anymore. It can rather be called a small bouquet right now (though a very small one). And I was able to become a faculty at a random university with the total profile. However, I must mention that many of the universities did not even call me for the interview due to my CGPA.
At this point, many of you might think, after getting a job, why am I still saying that “CGPA does not matter” is a wrong idea? To explain that further, I would like to share another story (Yes, I am talkative and I love telling stories).
Shortly after I joined my faculty job, I received a mail. The subject was “Greetings from Google!”. At the first glance, I thought that since I am going to attend Grace Hopper’s Conference in 2016, it might be another promotional mail to visit their booth during the conference. However, to my utter surprise, that was not the case. That guy was a recruiter from Google and according to him, he was doing some research on BUET students and found my information. He wanted to invite me for an interview of Summer Internship Program of Google. I was not active in contests (and I used to hide my eyes in Kaykobad Sir’s class when he asked about UVA problems). I still don’t know how that guy’s research redirected him to me. Anyways, when I talked to him over skype about the interview, the first thing he mentioned was - Its really great to see that you did so many cool things and yet managed to maintain a decent GPA!!! Congratulations for that.
As I said, even after hearing that famous line “CGPA doesn’t matter”, I continued to struggle for a decent result. For this reason, my profile could manage to claim that I did other things as well as managed a decent GPA. If I had just the cool things, and a poor Grade in academic exams, was it possible to claim that I am different (let alone saying better) than others?
CGPA alone might not reflect your actual capabilities, but a decent one of that can imply your ability to make a proper balance between everything. In fact, as far I can remember, the campus recruitment questions include a field for your CGPA. Then how can someone say, it does not matter?
Let’s think it in a different way. Let’s say, you don’t have a plan to go for grad school right now. And that makes you think that all you need for your career is practical skills and not academic profile. What if, after a few years of your job life, your plan changes or your experiences redirect you towards grad school? Will you have enough time or opportunities to cover things up? Isn’t it wise to keep both paths open?
I am not sure if I was able to express my points and facts clearly or not, but I would like to make a request everyone going through this write-up. All of us love to console our struggling juniors and make them smile. Let's do this in a slightly different way. Let’s change the quote a little bit and say “CGPA is not everything, but it matters. If you cannot have an outstanding one, it’s okay! Try to maintain at least a decent one, and then improve your other skills to balance your profile”.
At the end, I am always happy to believe in the following line -As an engineer, you always make back up plan to keep your designed system fault tolerant, then why not your career?