The fresher syndrome - Part 1

Categories of freshers.

It has been 4 years since I graduated and over the years, I've had a good look at the freshers who've followed ever since. The kind of dreams they have when they step inside the doors for the first time, the kind of attention they get and then the kind of crap they thrown into later, I've had pure fun observing all of these. And if this isn't enough, it has been even more fun to notice the kind of antics the seniors come out with. Let me just enlighten you a little more.

I remember the days when I went through a rigorous training program back at the Kshema campus. This is where I had the maximum fun simply by categorizing the people around me. And since I'd already worked in an IT company for 3 months prior to joining my services at Mphasis, I was not really a fresher any more. So, I assumed I had enough privileges to split the kids around me into different groups.

Category One Freshers: How am I going to survive here?

Most of the lot would fall under this category. Just about anything seems way too tough for these individuals. You would find these individuals at the corners of the training room, feverishly staring at the monitors, scratching their heads and looking tensed. They envy people who belong to "Category Two: I know it all". These are probably the most boring people you'd come across during the training program. And once out of training, they have nothing else to talk about apart from work. "You know what happened to me in the meeting room yesterday?", "I haven't yet figured out how to get rid of this panic", "I have to go to office this weekend", "I don't know what my managers think of me", (To the category two individuals) - "Man, you're so smart in coding. Will you teach me?"

Category Two Freshers: I know it all.

Along the way, you will come across certain people who portray themselves as though their brains were forged by the almighty himself, every cell in them speaks a different programming language, ooh!, they're so smart. Category one people would die to become like one of these. These individuals nonchalantly talk about their past feats in programming; they brood on the appreciations of the category one individuals. Well, actually, they're not really smart. In fact, they're complete morons, the perfect kind you'd find and these are my favorite people. All that I do to have fun is to go by their own way, let them teach me stuff, and then I just wait for them to make a silly mistake. You've got to see the expression on their faces once they know they've made a mistake, especially after they've been corrected ever so carefully by category one individuals, they just come crashing down from cloud no: 9 to ground zero. Once this has happened, they no longer belong to category two, do they?

Category Three Freshers: Girls, don't worry, I'm here to help.

Absolute buffoons, these people are. They just want to be every girl's hero, a savior, when in trouble. They'd do just about anything to catch the attention of the women around. The real fun is when the girl happens to fall under category one, the kind of things they do to console her, pure joy for the rest watching these people in action. "Don't worry, things will be alright", "Do you need some help?", "Can I get you a glass of water? Would that make you feel better?"; The kind of things they do, unsolicited fun.

Category Four Freshers: The cool ones.

This is the best category of them all. People of this category are usually the smartest ones you'd find. Unlike category two individuals where empty vessels make more noise, these individuals tend to be genuinely smart. You're more likely to find them in groups of individuals of similar kind, having fun. They usually finish their work fast and easy and have fun watching the category two morons and category three clowns in action. You'd seldom find them fret about work outside office and it's usually fun to hang out with these people.