Five years back in my mid 20's I was an extremely enthusiastic, pumped up,  ready-to-go, fresh IT post graduate from Mumbai university who was searching desperately for a job at a time when recession in our IT industry was just over. I had attended many job fair programs, campus placements, gave interviews for fresher position in 'n' number of companies but failed mostly due to my inexperience, low confidence. But I had not given up. I knew from my heart that I am going to be placed in some company some day. I was never a passionate "programmer" and was NOT a big fan of Java :D, but I had a soft corner for databases and made it my USP. So for almost 5 months I was applying for jobs but no luck. Then came the day when i met Anurag who was a senior developer in Merce technologies came to my college for placement :D.  We were supposed to give an aptitude test (I literally hated them :D ) which was luckily related to programming which I had "freshers" knowledge and answered all questions confidently. So when the results came up myself and my other two colleagues were successful in the process and were given the green signal for the final round of technical interview. The company was located in Ghansoli which took around 3 hours to reach from my home. I was enthusiastic as after many attempts at my job searching I finally found some hope! and was ready to at least attempt the technical interview (my first proper technical interview :D). I had prepared well for the interview luckily it was taken by Anurag ;).  .I distinctly remembered all the questions he asked like Tell me about yourself, what are joins, what are interfaces. After the interview was over we were asked to wait for the results and almost after an hour the HR of the company came and announced that myself and my other colleague had been selected. I was feeling on top of the world because after so many failed attempts I had finally made it to crack an interview :D . I had immediately accepted the offer and agreed to join as an intern at a quite average stipend. But all I needed was exposure and experience, money was never my concern. 

So finally made my big Debut at Merce technologies!! And guess what,  as interns we were asked to work on Java :(  of which i was not a big fan :D. We were asked to learn Struts technology with which I not not much impressed as I found it complicated. Then came the day when Anurag had a meeting with all the selected interns and announced that they had a new project coming up and it was going to be made in PHP. We all gave a thought and I don't know instinctively what had happened I immediately raised my hands without giving a thought and agreed to work on PHP (may be the fear of working in Java made me do it :D). From that point where was no looking back. So me and my college mate were the first PHP interns of the company. Anurag gave us some knowledge on PHP as he was well versed and experienced PHP developer. I still remember the moment whenever he asked us did we understand we would immediately respond "Yes SIR!!", to which he replied back "Please dont call me sir! address me by my name" . I was shocked to hear that we were not supposed to address any one as Sir or Madam. All our life we were always expected to address elders respectfully but now I got to know and learnt that in this industry everyone was equal :). It took a while for us to adjust to that kind of environment, but I had literally started to enjoy working on PHP as Anurag was quite helpful and encouraged us and defended our actions at all times. We learnt all the standards of coding and got the opportunity to make mistakes :D and learn from them. Yes, we must make mistakes during learning process, because that is called good experience. Six months passed by and we were quite experienced developers by then and was building good rapport with my TL, yes Anurag of course :D. We were also given the opportunity to interact with the client of the project which according to me was one of my best experiences because I was getting a feel from inside that "Yes, I am a professional now !!:D". I faced many ups and downs (more downs than ups :D ) in the company for 2 years but Anurag always had my back and encouraged me always and I am always and will always be grateful to him. 

Today I am quite successful, experienced and well versed with many modern techs. So the moral of the story is we must always have good guidance and must be willing and be enthusiastic to learn new techs in order to be successful and happy in this industry!

Cheers!