My Days as a Trainee

Life gets pretty routinue when you start the workforce. It's pretty weird not having to think about when school starts up again, but I guess I experienced the same feeling with the Infosys joining date which was August 6. Training started a week and a half ago each day is very similar in terms of structure. Here's an example of a day for me:

8:00 AM: Wake up and brush my teeth. I have two options after that: Go to the floating restaurant for the breakfast buffet (75 Rs.) or staying at home and eating some dry Corn Flakes (90 Rs. for one week). Lately I've been going with the second option because 1.) the training center is closer to my room than the restaurant is and 2.) I don't end up eating too much.

9:00 AM: Report to the training center in the JP Morgan classroom. All the rooms are named after famous people. The fast track is in the John P. Morgan room and the slow track is in the Steve Jobs room. From 9:00 to about 10-10:30, the professor begins with the day's material ususally in Powerpoint format.

10:15 AM: Coffee/Tea Break #1 for 15 mins

10:30 AM: The professor continues lecturing. This part can get boring if the teacher isn't that exciting.

12:00 PM: Lunch Break. We usually head off to either Food Court 1 or 2 because they are the closest. Food Court 2 has meat selections, but the food at Food Court 1 is better overall such as the Fried Rice and Vegetable Noodles as well as the bakery. The bakery is probably the best part about Food court 1 because of the doughnuts they offer. Usually after I finish lunch I return to my hostel.

2:00 PM: Report to the training center for the afternoon session. If the current module is theoretical, we go on with more lectures. Otherwise, there is a lab where we complete programming assignments. The slow track (it's actually known as "Long Cycle") averages about 6 assignments per day and the fast track gets about 12 because we have experience. The first assignments consisted of copying code to learn the Infosys coding standards, but later assignments were more about debugging and writing your own functions. It's all in preparation for the end of the module which is the gorup project and the module test, both of which I will explain some other time.

5:00 PM: If we finish our assignments, we are free to go starting at 4:30. Some people stay later to finish up because C isn't their first programming language. I usually return to my room to change out of my work clothes.

5:30-6 PM: Frisbee or something else sports related? I could also be doing laundry at this time because the lines is short on weekdays. Basically, this is a period of free time that I have.

7:30 - 9:30 PM: Dinner - Indians start serving dinner at 7:30 because they usually eat later. I guess I know why Anand eats at 8 PM now... After dinner, I usually just hang out with my friends somewhere.

10:00 PM - 12:30 PM: Return to my room to shower, check up on the stock market (opens at 7:00PM closes at 1:30 AM) and usually that ends the day for me.

Weekends are a different story usually...

Have a nice Labor Day. I'll be at work wishing I was observing the U.S. Holiday.