he most mysterious thing about education is that you never realise how it will help you.

When I was in school, my friends and I would say, how will trigonometry help me in life? What difference does it make if I don't know the capital of Brazil [Images]?

While it does not have a direct impact on your career if you don't know all this, the most important thing that education teaches you is how to learn.

• What's YOUR career story? Share it with us!

My father is a very, very intelligent man. Which had its pros and cons when I was in school. The good thing was, I got good genes. The bad thing was, my parents had very high expectations, education-wise, from me.

But I hated school. Thanks to good genes, passing the examinations was easy for me. That is all I managed till Class X.

At junior college, I don't know what happened. I started taking examinations seriously and worked hard. I got only 85% at my HSC exams -- good enough to get me into a descent engineering college in Pune, but far below my expectations.

I was back to my old self, just wanting to pass my exams somehow.

After my engineering, I didn't know what to do. I didn't want to work in the electrical engineering field. I did not know anything else.

I sat at home doing nothing for about a year. My sister, who was in the US, asked me to apply there for further studies. I did that, along with getting into an MBA programme in Pune. I got into an M S Electrical Engineering programme at a pathetic school in a small town near Chicago. And I was off to the States.

The flight to Chicago was long and boring, but it got me thinking about my future, finally!

I knew what I had to do:

1. Get an assistantship.
2. Change my major
3.Change my school.

I applied for assistantship in several departments except my own as I wanted to change my major. I got it in the Physics department because of my electrical engineering background.

I then changed my major and got myself enrolled at a business school with a specialisation in Information Systems.

I also changed to Loyola University, Chicago, with an assistantship. One of my professors at Loyola, liked me and introduced me to a lady who owned a small software consultancy firm.

Her name was Tania Neild, one of the most intelligent, smart, ambitious and hardworking women I have ever met.

I found it hard to cope with school work, assistantship and a part-time web site development work. But I did realise this was a great opportunity, and I worked really hard.

So, of course, when I graduated, I already had a high paying job lined up for me with a financial company where Tania had joined as CTO.

I slogged there for two years.

And I decided I have to look for opportunities in India. I always wanted to come back home.

I convinced my boss about working from India -- it was not difficult, since she believed in working remotely.

I came to India three years ago as a consultant working from home.

I used my experience and contacts to slowly build a small firm called WebDev, Inc. with four employees doing software development for financial companies in the US.

I making money in dollars, but spend in rupees. The grass definitely looks much greener on my side!

This is Girish's story. What's your career story? Share it with us!

HAVE YOU READ?

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