Amazon Texhibit - 2nd Prize

First check this out - Amazon Texhibit Results

This has by far been my best kept academic secret. I didn't tell anyone about this although the contest began in November and ended just yesterday. Hardly 3-4 people knew about it. I didn't even tell my best friends. Why? Don't know exactly... it was just that I had a hunch I'd do well in it and sort of wanted to surprise people. Now that I did win something, I'm glad. In final year, the entire focus was on Placements and clearing 1st Sem. But I wanted some good achievement to add to my resume, and thank God, I got something.

I still remember writing a 250 word abstract in 30 mins, just a day before a CC test [I was majorly screwed in CC at one time, so my primary aim was to prepare for that]. And a couple of weeks later, I had almost forgotten about the paper, when suddenly I got a call from Amazon saying that I was shortlisted in the final 8. Well, 3 prizes, just 8 people. I backed my chances.

Then came the freaking End Sem exams. Bang in the middle of the exams I make a 43 slide presentation. It took me 2 nights and a cumulative sleep period of 5 hours to study for end sem, do my usual mid-exam-time-pass and develop a technical paper from scratch. I had fun. At that time the only guy I showed the paper to was Shantanu. He approved and I sent it.

Then on 26th December Amazon calls and says, "You're in the last 5, now a couple of telephonic interviews", I was like "Ok, cool". Now, I had never, till then had telephonic interviews [unless you count the one where a chic was asking me questions about my relationship status on the phone ;) ].

It certainly was my first technical telephonic interview. The first one was like a thunderbolt. What freaking questions!!! Stuff I hadn't ever thought about, but I did fine. Then on 31st Dec I had my 2nd interview. That was kick ass. Another killer set of questions but I was prepared this time. Weirdest part was coding on the phone. I won't ever forget that. The Amazon guys taking the interviews were damn cool.

Then came the long wait for the results, I got busy with my project, birthday and stuff and the results have been a nice belated birthday gift - A digi cam and an Amazon shirt [which I will use as often as I can to show off :P ], that's awesome!

I may describe my telephonic interviews in detail later on, but for now, that's all. I had fun doing this entire thing on my own, kinda secretly, dropping subtle hints to a few close friends who kept asking me what I was upto. But then, I did win something and more importantly developed a paper from scratch on my own and learnt a lot during the telephonic interviews. Glad to add this one to my resume!

And thanks to the few who knew and wished me luck!