Moments of a thesis
- 2 minsMore than two and half years, I was offered a job to do my master thesis in a company in a field where I literally have no idea of! I didn’t know till now what they saw in my resume and my skills to let them think I would be a fit for such job, but anyways, I was offered it.
It was really hard thinking about it! but at those moments I see only one thing: I am challenged out of my comfort zone!! what would the worst thing to happen? I won’t be killed anyways. So my decision was to get! If I did it well it will be something that really counts, new experience, big company, new country! hell lot of new challenges!
Months passed and it is my first day of job, my supervisor told me some introductory points, gave me some documents to read, showed me where are the files on the network and went to do his job. In this period he was really busy and most of the time was out of office. I started skimming through the documents, doing some software tutorials, reading some papers and it was fun and I enjoyed it, for only few days! After couple of weeks, the other students started to really get deep in their projects, doing complex stuff, getting results that maybe included in their master theses, and I was still doing tutorials. I was already worried so I talked with senior colleagues and did my own investigations to find out that was one of ways my supervisor used to deal with the interns, ‘LET THEM ON THEIR OWN’!
I was really scared, I have only 6 months, and already one has passed (16.67%)! This was one of the moments of enlightenment that told me: it is now my turn to do it on my own. I worked really harder to figure it out on my own (with the help of colleagues and of course the support of the supervisor) till I felt that I am on solid ground to really start doing my job.
Weeks passed and I did a good job. I learned a lot out of my field, developed a numerical optimization framework and applied it in a project where my work was implemented and realized, took part in a lot of meetings and presentations where my results drove the research and development decisions in the project. These were the moments that I meant before and what I really remember and re-live, not the moments of cursing and feeling confused and irritated.
It was only because of one thing that I had in front of my eyes: discipline and commitment to a long-term goal, which is totally out of my comfort zone.
Omar Kamel
Not only an engineer