Saturday, November 27, 2010

as an undergraduate at the University of Moratuwa.. (2)

This post is part of the Series: As an undergraduate at the University of Moratuwa.

Level 2
I entered the department of Computer Science and Engineering, which we prefer to call CSE, with the GPA of 3.78. And this is how the family of 06CSE was formed at 2007. Most of the time in level 2, Electronics (EN) and Electrical (EE) departments share the same modules with us (CS). That means, we had to learn EE and EN modules, in addition to CS modules. For the L2S1 too, a 5 credit module from the Electrical department spoilt my grade, and reduced it from 4.01 to 3.66 as a single module. This time the lessons were, 5 credit modules are damn powerful, and respect the other department modules too. :D Second semester went smooth, and ended with a GPA of 3.81. 

Mentoring
Mentoring was an interesting concept introduced to us in Level 2. We were divided into groups and each group is sent to a company for their mentoring session. We were assigned a mentor from the company. I got my mentoring from Virtusa along with 9 others from 06CSE. We also had a drama festival and 'CSE ourbounds' - a social outdoor event to welcome the juniors to the department. CSE Outbounds evolved with time, and junior batches had the same event with different names 'CSE Indifference' and 'CSE BeyondWavez' in the following years. I should also mention about the june terms, which carry very low work load than the semester, and come with 2 or 3 modules. In the meantime, we were able to contribute to the localization efforts named as 'Lakapps' which are made with the support of Lakapps and the department. It was an interesting learning experience for us.


Level 3
Level 3 has only one semester and it became the semester with the highest workload of all the 7 semesters of our undergraduate life. We no more had any modules from the other departments as compulsory modules. In level 3 and 4, we are given options. That means, not all the modules are compulsory. Level 3 had 10 modules. I always do a comparison of Level 3 with O/L and Level 4 with A/L due to this subject count and the workload. I always feel, I could have omitted the Embedded Systems module after receiving a C+ for that, making my Semester GPA 3.62. 

Internship
By end of the semester, we were given the option to apply for our preferred companies for the internship. I applied for WSO2, Virtusa, and Duo Software, and got selected for all the three companies. As WSO2 matched my personal interests more, I finally decided to join WSO2 as an intern. I consider choosing WSO2 for my internship was the cleverest decision I took as an undergraduate. Life at WSO2 as an intern made a strong impact in me, which also encouraged me more into open source technologies, that lead me into participating and getting selected to Google Summer of Code in 2009 with AbiWord and 2010 with OGSA-DAI of OMII-UK. At the end of our internship, 4 WSO2 interns formed a group and picked a project "Mashup Generator for XBaya" with the title "Mooshabaya", where another group of four WSO2 interns formed a group "Bissa".  After completing the final year, the team Mooshabaya joined WSO2 as software engineers.

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