This is a fallacy that almost everyone accepts. Talk to anyone who has worked for 3 or more years after an undergraduate degree and ask him about the merits of doing a discontinuing work to pursue a Masters in the same field. He will almost certainly scoff at you and talk you down. Typical responses will include, 'What can Masters teach you now that work hasn't already taught you?' or 'You never end up using anything you studied at work anyway, so whats the point' or 'There is no monetary benefit of discontinuing work at this stage. In fact, it will probably be detrimental to your career at this point.' Although I often tell myself that I make my decisions and cannot be swayed by other people's opinions, I must admit that I myself was mostly of the above mentioned myself and somewhat skeptical of voluntarily giving up a comfortable paying job after 3 years to enter unchartered territory for my Masters at University of Wisconsin-Madison. Most of all was the discomfort involved in temporarily dislodging myself from the comfortable groove that I was settled in back home. However, having made up my mind at the time of graduating from NITK in 2007 to pursue a Masters in 3 years time, I decided that this decision still carried weight and change was a good thing if only to get a new perspective of work and my career.
I am now approaching nearly one year in my Master's program and coming to the close of an internship at Qualcomm Headquarters at San Diego. Looking back, I am happy that I made the decision that I did in-spite of popular opinion. What made me arrive at this conclusion? Its related to the title of this piece. One can never under-estimate the importance of knowing one's fundamentals right. While work will throw many challenges at you, you are often wasting time grappling for solutions to issues that already have known solutions. The saying, Ignorance is Bliss couldn't be more wrong in this context. One thing that my Masters so far has helped me learn is that you need to recognize the problem at hand correctly. Once you have done that, you most likely have a solution at hand that can be arrived at simply by applying fundamental principles. Perhaps this is more true in my field of Computer Architecture where design and decisions are driven primarily by logical reasoning more than anything else.
The key enlightment of this issue came to me in a flash concerning an incident at my company where I am currently interning. There was a billion dollar question on how to best use the excess chip area to arrive at the best solution performance wise. They had 8 different configurations considering the area available. However, analysing the data showed there was a possible 9th configuration that was not even been thought of. A quick analysis showed that this 9th configuration was indeed a elegant solution in terms of return on engineering effort and produced the performance gains needed. As an intern at a company, I arrived at this solution after two months of spending time to understand their design while the solution was not even in their initial 8 configurations. I arrived at this idea by applying the principles of Amdahl's law which is really computer architecture 101. I am not saying that my solution was out of the world, I am simply saying that managers with 10+ years of experience could not come up with this idea though it was staring them in the face. In fact, the proposal gained little traction with the chip's project manager until a model's results proved my hypothesis.
This example only seeks to highlight the fact that people spend a lot of time trying to rethink solutions to problems for which the cure is known if only you knew your fundamentals well and applying it to the situation at hand.
Even though it may be true that the short term monetary gains from doing a post graduate program may be in fact contradictory, the long term learnings are definitely worth the while and will stand you well in good stead. Never say no to an experience or opportunity that can teach you something new. I read only a couple of days back on Yelp that a student who learned how to free herself from an overturned kayak taught her life skills of working patiently and calmly and that she can now apply to every sphere in her life.
Coming to the US, I have learned ice skating, surfing, communicating to people from diverse nationalities, that patience, perseverance and thoroughness pays off, and made new friends apart from just becoming a better architect in just one short year. Change in perspective and direction is good and it has made me a better person overall. I continue to embrace change, and accept any lessons that life throws at me and grow from them as I tread this wonderful journey that is life.
I am now approaching nearly one year in my Master's program and coming to the close of an internship at Qualcomm Headquarters at San Diego. Looking back, I am happy that I made the decision that I did in-spite of popular opinion. What made me arrive at this conclusion? Its related to the title of this piece. One can never under-estimate the importance of knowing one's fundamentals right. While work will throw many challenges at you, you are often wasting time grappling for solutions to issues that already have known solutions. The saying, Ignorance is Bliss couldn't be more wrong in this context. One thing that my Masters so far has helped me learn is that you need to recognize the problem at hand correctly. Once you have done that, you most likely have a solution at hand that can be arrived at simply by applying fundamental principles. Perhaps this is more true in my field of Computer Architecture where design and decisions are driven primarily by logical reasoning more than anything else.
The key enlightment of this issue came to me in a flash concerning an incident at my company where I am currently interning. There was a billion dollar question on how to best use the excess chip area to arrive at the best solution performance wise. They had 8 different configurations considering the area available. However, analysing the data showed there was a possible 9th configuration that was not even been thought of. A quick analysis showed that this 9th configuration was indeed a elegant solution in terms of return on engineering effort and produced the performance gains needed. As an intern at a company, I arrived at this solution after two months of spending time to understand their design while the solution was not even in their initial 8 configurations. I arrived at this idea by applying the principles of Amdahl's law which is really computer architecture 101. I am not saying that my solution was out of the world, I am simply saying that managers with 10+ years of experience could not come up with this idea though it was staring them in the face. In fact, the proposal gained little traction with the chip's project manager until a model's results proved my hypothesis.
This example only seeks to highlight the fact that people spend a lot of time trying to rethink solutions to problems for which the cure is known if only you knew your fundamentals well and applying it to the situation at hand.
Even though it may be true that the short term monetary gains from doing a post graduate program may be in fact contradictory, the long term learnings are definitely worth the while and will stand you well in good stead. Never say no to an experience or opportunity that can teach you something new. I read only a couple of days back on Yelp that a student who learned how to free herself from an overturned kayak taught her life skills of working patiently and calmly and that she can now apply to every sphere in her life.
Coming to the US, I have learned ice skating, surfing, communicating to people from diverse nationalities, that patience, perseverance and thoroughness pays off, and made new friends apart from just becoming a better architect in just one short year. Change in perspective and direction is good and it has made me a better person overall. I continue to embrace change, and accept any lessons that life throws at me and grow from them as I tread this wonderful journey that is life.
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