Will I regret it?
Career choice, Warm Sun, Pinch of Courage
It is the last semester of my 3rd year of Mechanical Engineering and this is the time when the college asks you to pick what you want to do next. Placements? Deferred Placements? Higher education? In India or abroad? Or you wanna prepare for any exam?
This has been taking quite some space in my mind, how do I decide now what I wanna do in the next one year or two? After all my experiences so far, I have realized that life is very fluid, it can turn anywhere, anytime. And that’s why I am delaying that decision as long as I can because I am sure that I don’t want to rush but make a well informed decision.
Why? Because I want to minimize regret. Almost 3 yrs ago, I had to pick if I wanted to study Mechanical or CSE. If I would have taken CSE, I would prolly be regretting it, thinking “What if I had taken Mech?”. I was clearly not passionate about CSE, I knew a little about code from high school and that made me realize that it is not something I want to give my next 4 yrs to but let me tell you, taking Mech was not an easy decision to make.
How? Because every other person around me was taking CSE. It would grantee a job, a good paying job. Software jobs always give the highest package. Back then, everyone was making decision by asking “Will I be successful in this?” and the answer is yes, compared to other majors, your chances of earning more, settling well will be higher. In middle of all this, asking myself “Will I regret this?” was hard but now I am glad I did that.
On Thursday, I got on call with Riten, founder of Fuler.io. He has been through the exact same situation and it is always good to talk to someone like him. It gave a me a very contrasting view with respect to what I got from the placement cell. He told me what all can happen once I explore my path and that a lot can happen in one year. I am not sure what the next few years will bring in my life, where I will be, what I’ll be doing but I know that I have no regrets about what I did or decisions I made. In fact, I am glad that I persisted.
Thus, I decide to give myself a shot and deferred the placements. It feels exciting and scary at the same time but if your dreams don’t scare and excite you then maybe they aren’t big enough. With some courage in my heart and lots of deep breaths, I hope to have a very fulfilled journey ahead.
What am I up to these days?
Everyone is on holiday and I am going to college everyday. I sit in library, go eat in class while charging my electronics, then sit in the park in warm sun and code. I end my day by hanging out with fun people from anchoring club. It is whole new vibe and I am loving it!
New Learning:
I learned about Lagrange point and I think it’s cool!
(P.S: There is much more, this time I’ll note them down properly :P )
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Right now i was in same situation just like you to choose internship or dissertation for next semester. I want to do dissertation in campus but I need a job at the end. As a mechanical engineer it is hard to get job without work experience. If I opt internship I will get industry exposure thereby I can get job but I will miss the research experience in campus. Whatever option I chose it makes me regret finally. I am not sure what I am going to achieve in future but I take it as granted.
I hope to you have a great journey for your decision!!!