For nearly three months after the first piece on my post-graduate course was published, I have been absolutely lost to the world. Reasons are various, foremost being I was busy "fire-fighting" (struggling to avert crises, read assignment deadlines). For a couple of weeks I have been trying to put some order into my life, based on Stephen Covey's upadesas. This process is still on.

Meanwhile, friends and well-wishers have been bursting fire at my silence. My sincerest apologies to all of you. This article is in lieu of detailed emails to everybody; which follows a sound software engineering practice of factoring out common code. There is also a very altruistic reason -- I do not wish to clog the lines...

Where am I

My first article did not give too many details of the course. This is a MSIT course specialising in Software Engineering at the SSN School of Advanced Software Engineering (SSNSASE). Located near Madras, this institution was established by Shiv Nadar, Chairman, HCL, and has an association with Carnegie Mellon (a university I used to worship... I still do). I study the first year of the course here at SSNSASE and the rest (which would be one more year if I get an RA, else six months) in the US. I must hasten to add that by CMU I do not mean the familiar one at Pittsburgh, but a newly set up campus in Silicon Valley.

Academics

Till last week, we had four subjects (I am just listing them, do not wish to get too technical right now):

• Managing Software Development
• Personal Software Process
•  Software Architecture
• Mathematics Refresher

These took up four of the six working days of the week. The remaining two days for project. Actually, the motto of this course is "Learn by doing," which means that the concepts we learn have to be applied practically, in parallel.

We also have access to video-taped lectures usually supplied to the distance education students of CMU.

Life-style

My ideal day begins at half-past five and ends at half-past eleven. Breakfast at eight, lunch at one in the afternoon, snacks at five, and dinner at eight in the night. Classes begin at ten in the morning, and, resuming after lunch, go on till half-past four in the afternoon.

Our lab is open all day, all night and we spend most of our time there. It is a kind of a hang-out spot.  The lab has a 24-hour connection to the Internet. If there is an assignment due, we usually live there. Twice I slept in the lab awaiting the deadline and once I was awake the whole night trying to conquer a particularly recalcitrant problem.

Most students follow a nocturnal lifestyle, lab-ing by night and sleeping by day.

Leisure

There is a wonderful indoor stadium in the campus, built to international standards, and a decent gym. Quite a few of us can be found here in the evenings. I was once visiting the gym quite regularly, for expending some energy and working very light weights. But, with assignments mounting, my visits are these days few and far between.

When we are not playing or exercising, we check mails and chat. Since I have a conscience, I leave myself out of the "we" here...