SANJIV GOSSAIN
Vice President, Europe,
Cognizant.
stayed at the same university - The University of Essex, in Colchester, England - for seven years. However, this was not something that I had planned. It just happened that I completed my Bachelor's degree in Electronic Systems at Essex, and decided to stay on there to complete my Masters. I also decided to pursue a Ph.D. Fortunately, I completed all three …and lived to tell the tale!
Staying at an university for that long was not a plan but evolved over time, since I became more focused and interested in the area of software. Eventually, I completed my Ph.D. on object-oriented development and reuse.
Truth be told, I was not sure what I wanted to do when I joined the university. I 'fell in' to Electronics as it was a popular subject at school and it seemed a natural choice at university. Over the course of my bachelor's degree, I realized that while I was quite good at “hard core” electronics-building electronic circuits, and so on-the part I enjoyed more was the software that was the 'brains' behind the circuits. I would look forward to the lectures and projects related to software and programming much more than the pure electronics classes. It wasn't an overnight “ah-ha” moment but more a slow realization. When it came to choosing my final year undergraduate project, I chose a software project rather than an electronic systems one. This was rare in my course but was accepted by my tutors. It was about writing systems for a programmable logic array (PLA). For those of you who don't know what that is, don't worry, as this was a number of years ago, and a lot has changed since then!
Over the course of my university life through my undergraduate degree and into my Master's program, I realized that software was my true passion and that was what I got excited and energized about. It was different from what I had envisioned when I joined, but that did not matter. The more I studied it, the more I realized that it was my true vocation. I was so entranced by software, and in particular, the notion of reusability that I decided to pursue a Ph.D. in the topic.
So, my message to you is to find what you have a passion and energy for, stick to it, and pursue that with vigor. Whether you know that already or whether you don't quite know and are yet to discover it (like me), once you do, simply stick to your beliefs and passion and do something you enjoy. If you enjoy what you do, then you have a much better chance of being great at it!
