Rahul Kanna

I have completed my first semester in Virginia Tech! Time is moving so fast, it seems just like yesterday I came here. By Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, I can say I have enjoyed my time here . Lot of things happened and I had a great experience. With new country, new culture, new people; my views have widened and I know now how the other side of the world is.

With respect to courses, I just took 2 courses this sem and I happy with the outcome. But in these courses I must say I dint learn much and that disappointed me a bit. But that’s ok; it was not bad it was just normal. I dint find any drastic change from the way courses are taught in India but to some extent here they seem to emphasize on assignments and projects rather than the final exams, which is good.

Btw, now I can say with confidence that doing Masters after some industry experience is better. Once in industry, you know how they work and you will have the exposure. It will make learning interesting. I am fortunate to have worked in Infosys in best and toughest projects. Those tough projects have taught me a lot and now I am able to use it, in fact I got a RA because of that.

Apart from studies, I went to many places like Washington DC, adventure trips camping, trekking and canoeing and also went to Virginia Tech football game. It was very new experience and fun. I also enrolled in International  Friendship Program organized by Cranwell Intl’ Center in Virginia Tech.I got really good friends, Bob and Karen Warnes there, they made a home away from home. Spent time with their family on Thanksgiving, Christmas and many other times and learnt about American and African Culture and had great American home food.

All said, not everything happened as I expected, there were few disappointments as well. I guess that’s how life is and I learnt from them. If everything is as expected, life will become boring and there will no learning. Isn’t it?:D

I am thankful to all those who have helped me, without them it would have been very difficult. Overall, it has been a great semester and I am looking forward to the next one. In the next one though, I am planning to take more courses and I think it will be busy semester. Let’s see how it goes.

But for now, its holiday time. On the way to San Diego, CA, on board the flight.

Last Sunday (Dec 21), I went to Wind Rock, a mountain peak and a trail for hiking with couple of friends. It was a short trip in a freezing temperature probably -10 C. I don’t know why but I enjoyed the hike very much and it made me very happy . It was such a blissful feeling to see a place like the ranges of the Appalachian Mountains in a temperature I have never been. We were accompanied by 2 very cute dogs, Cinnamon and Lucy, they made the day for us. Before this, I have never been with dogs and in this trip I truly enjoyed their company. Though the trip was short, doing it in such a low temperature was different. I could hardly take my hand out and once I was trying to click the camera but my hand got frozen and I was not able to move my finger to click the pic.

There was also scariest 2 minutes I have ever experienced. The two dogs were left loose by Brian and I was worried about it from starting, since it was a peak and one wrong move can slide you down to miles. The two dogs were just running around and enjoying themselves in the wild. Suddenly when we were about to leave we could not find Lucy and I got really scared on what could have happened to Lucy. But Brian was cool and he was pretty confident about his dog. We called out its name from every corner of the peak and after 2 mins it came from a steep just like that. I got lot relived and it showed how much confidence Brian had on his dogs.

We also took lots of photos with dogs and the peak. This was the first time I used my new Canon SD880 camera and pictures came out quite good as well.

Overall it was a very different trip with lots of things I had not experienced before. Thanks to Brian for organizing it and thanks to Cinnamon, Lucy, Ramanujam and Sagar for accompanying. It was a short trip but for me it was one of those days which you will enjoy without knowing what for.

Full set of photos

Created this fully functional Snake game in 2nd year of under graduate in C++. This is single player game where the objective is to maneuver the snake to collect food and points. The game is customizable with various options like level of diffculty, mazes etc. Cheat codes and top scorer list are available to make the game interesting.

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