BEFORE THE BEAUTIFUL SUMMER…
I didn’t applied for internships although I could use some money, specially during the pandemic. It still is really hard to prove myself that I took the best possible decision I could take in my situation. The situation is weird, I can call myself a programmer but I haven’t coded in a year. I have been learning modeling, texturing, sculpting, rigging and animation past 2 semesters but my basics are not clear since I did not spent much time in learning the fundamentals (there could be million reasons for it but this stays the fact) which is very important for me. Keeping this in mind, I purposefully didn’t applied for any internships actively. This is one of the hardest things I did after quitting my software engineering job. And I believe in myself that this decision will change my life forever, little things matter.
Since my childhood, I always dreamt of a school, a time, a place where there is no time limit to do anything, no restrictions, the ultimate freedom. Pandemic turned out to me like that time I dreamt of. Infact, I felt like I need it. With this, I crossed out one of my childhood dream; to learn things of my own will with total freedom. I planned the things I wanted to learn, from where to learn, why I will learn those things, how it will help me in future, and many more questions.
I didn’t realized it would be this difficult. Its true- “You can experience the same feeling only when you have a similar experience”. I had to select top three things I wanted to learn in the 3 months of summer and keep everything aside, not completely though. Out of the many things, I selected Rigging in Maya, Substance Designer and Houdini. I was happy that I got everything figured out what I wanted to do in the summer but this was just the beginning.
Keeping those three things in my sticky notes, I started searching from where I can learn these things. Again, I found this part to be very difficult, to search your teacher or mentor and make your own curriculum. I took help from alumni, faculty, people who are expert in these fields with the help of Linkedin, Twitter and Twitch. Finally, with the help of everyone, I selected few courses online in Pluralsight, Youtube, Linkedin Learning and some books. Saw some part of the videos to make sure that it is what I need. Once I had the list of sources I was sure about, I categorized into fundamentals, intermediate and advanced (these words are relative to my experience). So, 3 months, 3 fields of study and 3 levels, it looked like a well planned game in easy mode to me which, of course, proved to be wrong. After discussing with mentor and faculty, I was convinced that it is good to focus on 1 field only, but there was no restriction to learn any other thing. I said to myself- “This will be a piece of cake and I’ll be amazing in these 3 fields at the end of summer”. I know, I am so naive but that is how we learn, I guess.
SUMMER STARTING FROM HERE…
With the spring semester just finished, I was excited to take a break and think about starting the summer. But after the semester, everyday looked like Saturday to me. With no one to meet, no submissions or assignments or classes or meetings, it felt like I should just start my summer right away. And that is what I did. Along with that, as a recreation (since it was recommended not to go outside or anyways), I started playing Overwatch, at least 2 hours every evening. In the first week, I realized I needed some kind of support so I asked my mentor to schedule a weekly meeting where I will share my progress with him and get feedback on my work.
This meeting with mentor was the best thing that helped me focus on my studies. I had all my freedom and there were days when I misused it by playing game for 4-6 hours. It had an impact on my health as I used to eat less and sometimes skipped my dinner. It made me stop thinking about anything else at all. I was totally blank for days and I had no words when I talked to my loved ones. So, I was forced to do what I knew I should be doing, I uninstalled it. Guess what, it didn’t help for a couple days and I was still blank but this time, with a craving of playing that game. It took a few days to stop that craving, not completely but at least I think about other things now and out of nowhere, I am getting 4-6 extra hours daily. That surely is a magic. Honestly, I still think of downloading the game again but I have more things to do and less time, magic again.
I realized that I am not productive on all 7 days but I’m happy that I’m productive on atleast 4 days a week and I believe that is no bad at all, for starters. This doesn’t means that I sit from 10am to 6pm, I sometimes spend some time in the morning and remaining at evening and spend my afternoon watching animated movies/anime (Netflix-party with my loved ones along with time-zone difference, i.e., their night). I am loving this, studying on my own, a self directed path, a weekly motivation, good self-cooked Indian cuisine. I realized it is better to focus on 1 thing at a time but I’m not restricting myself to it, I’m also learning Python and creating tools for artists, I’m working on a personal project where I’m modeling a Tiny house in Autodesk Maya, along with texturing in Substance Painter.
Thanks to everyone who have been helping me with this process. And it is just the beginning as I still have 2 months with me. Happy summer!