It's All Part of a Learning Experience!!

Hello everyone,

It’s nearly the end of the semester and I‘m sure everyone must be working away on the report so good luck to all J

I’m sure everyone has come across days during their placement which were so challenging they didn’t know how everything would work out in the end. Or moments when you were unsure of what to do, but also weren’t sure if you should ask too many questions. I came across many challenges during my placement and would like to share with all of you once such incident and what I learnt from it.

I was asked to write up an interview background for the President and CEO of Prime Focus Technologies, Ramki S, which included a background on him and a detailed outline of the topic he was to present at INXPO (a broadcast trade show in Las Vegas). My supervisor briefed me over the phone as he had not come to the office that day, and I started off with what I understood. I tried to get my head around the concept but kept getting lost. As I mentioned in my first blog I had to understand everything behind something called ‘Cloud computing’. Well, that is exactly what Ramki was going to talk about in this speech. I wrote my first draft and showed it to my supervisor (I was very scared while doing so). He very nicely told me that basically everything I had written was well… wrong. He helped me through and explained to me what was actually needed and I went ahead and wrote my second draft. Once again I showed him and he once again told me it’s not quite right (in terms of content). I was quite scared to be honest. I thought he would think I’m useless and don’t know what to do. Instead he told me to just relax and not worry about it as it happens. He asked me to work on something else after that, so I thought he didn’t want me to do it anymore. He later came to me after he finished his work and went through the whole write-up step-by-step. In the end we ended up writing most of it together and the rest he left for me to do once he knew I had got the hang of the topic. Not once did he put me down, but instead guided me through and helped me learn.

Though the toughest day, it was also the best day for me. He kept asking me for my input and I asked him questions throughout when I didn’t understand anything. I did find the link to the interview online which made me very happy so I'm posting it here!!

I believe it is so important to ask questions as it will only help you learn. You rather ask questions, than not knowing what you are doing and it will definitely not make you look like you don’t know anything rather that you’re willing to learn.

It would be great to hear about any such experiences anyone else has had.

Until then,

Srinali Kinariwala

14292794