Placed, not yet!

“I wasn’t buried. I was planted. And I grew.”

I’m so relieved there’s just a month left until January 2026. I’ve been counting down since July. When this year began, I was scared. 2024 had been one of my favourite years, and I didn’t want it to end. And maybe because of that fear, 2025 started off in the worst way.

I even got a Phoenix tattoo this year—because surviving everything felt like rising from ashes.

But let me start from the beginning.

Back in November 2024, when my 2nd year was ending, I had absolutely no clue about placements. I used to brush off any talk about it, thinking, “We get offers only in 4th year anyway.” But suddenly companies started coming for summer internships with crazy stipends—at the end of 2nd year itself.

Everyone around me, who never said a word about studying, suddenly had offers. I didn’t even know what to study, forget actually preparing. I hadn’t applied to anything.

I began asking friends, watching YouTube, and slowly jumped into this rat race, but I still didn’t feel ready. College felt like a pressure cooker. Every week someone else got an internship. I was genuinely happy for them, but inside I felt horrible because I knew I wasn’t prepared.

By the end of 5th sem, I convinced myself these summer internships didn’t matter and that I should focus on the “real” placements that happen later. In reality, I was just trying to accept the situation I was in.

The Goa trip after 5th sem was one of the best trips of my life. But what happened after became a turning point. A week after the trip, while sitting in the lab, a few of us were stalking LeetCode profiles. When we saw my friend Rajesh’s streak, we were shocked. He was with us in Goa the entire four days—so how did he manage it?

We checked his submission times and realised he would wake up early every morning to solve problems, and even on the train he pretended to sleep early just to code quietly on the upper berth.

I didn’t talk to him for a week—not because I was angry at him, but because I was angry at myself. He already had a summer internship and was still giving his best, while I had just started and was moving so slowly.

When I finally spoke to him, all he said was, “Don’t worry, I’ll help you.” And he did. My mom too—she stayed up every night with me, making food, making coffee, supporting me silently while I studied.

In a month and a half, I cracked an internship with a full-time conversion and one of the highest packages. The test was hard, the interviews were harder, but I gave everything. I didn’t copy a single answer. I was proud.

The internship started after 3rd year and was for a full year. It didn’t even feel like an internship—they treated us exactly like full-time employees from day one. No training, no easing in, just deadlines and deliverables.

I couldn’t attend classes in 4th year. I studied for exams on my own, handled the final-year project, learnt the tech stack on the go, and kept pushing myself. I even let go of the gym, dance, and everything I enjoyed just to keep up.

Our college blocked us from campus placements because they believed the company would convert all interns—like they did the previous year. I trusted the process. Then January 2025 arrived, and everything fell apart.

The company told us they didn’t have enough full-time roles because they were going IPO. I wasn’t converted. Instead, they offered a contract role, which I didn’t want—especially in a company that constantly laid people off.

I still remember sitting in my favourite temple that day, crying for an hour, wondering where I went wrong. But I went back, got unblocked from placements, and started preparing again. By then almost all companies had finished hiring. I applied everywhere—inside and outside college. I even resigned from the internship, but they rejected it, saying the team needed me.

After 2 weeks of studying, I got shortlisted in two companies on the same day. I picked the service-based company I’d always dreamt of. I finally got my dream job!

I left the previous company in June, finished college, and waited to join in July. Finally everything was in place !

But then suddenly they postponed joining to this new company, to October. I thought, “Fine, I worked all year, I’ll take this as a break.”But at the end of July, they postponed it again—to January.

It broke me. I had responsibilities at home, I needed income, and suddenly I had none. I was already graduated, which made it harder to find internships. And because my previous stipend was high, companies didn’t want to match it. I studied again for the third time, applied everywhere, and got rejected everywhere.

I didn’t want another full-time role because I really liked the company I had the offer for. So I applied for business internships instead.

August was the toughest month of this entire journey. I felt lonely, anxious, and deeply depressed. I barely slept. I didn’t talk to anyone properly. My days were just studying, job applications, and the gym.

But eventually, at the end of August, I got an internship. And from there, things slowly started making sense again.

This internship gave me time and space to take another part-time job, teach an engineering student, restart my blog, discover running, and dive into content creation. Somewhere in all this chaos, I found myself again.

Now it’s December 2025, and I’ve survived one of the hardest phases of my life. This year was filled with self-doubt, comparison, fear, and constant setbacks.

But standing here today, I’m proud of myself. I realised that getting a good job wasn’t just about responsibilities at home—it was also about understanding my own worth.

A package or a company doesn’t define you. The hard work you put in does. Your resilience does.

Life will throw unfair situations at you, repeatedly, and what matters is how you rise each time.

That’s why I got the phoenix tattoo—because I rose, again and again.Looking back, I’m grateful for everything this year taught me.

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I cursed these moments when they happened, but now I see how they shaped me into someone stronger than I ever imagined.