Ajai Karthikeyan's Invictus

I have often been asked the question, “what do you consider success”. Personally, my preferred metric of success would be warranting my own wikipedia page. But keeping the jokes aside, when do I consider myself successful… I am going to focus on a small segment of my life here: my pet projects.

My pet projects are usually something I have started myself or have led a major change in and am a key player. I am a leader by nature and am usually found closer to the top of the pecking order of most organizations I am affiliated with. What can I say, I like being at the top.

Going for the punch line, I consider myself successful with my pet projects when I get them to a point where they do not require me anymore. Despite the simplicity of that statement, it is unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you see it) not as simple. It involves me building the organization to a somewhat stable point, getting other people to work with me and getting these people to the point where these “other” people have as much passion as me (if not more) for the project. As many startup people can probably vouch, not many people are as excited about your product as you are.

Despite these I have had a couple successes under my umbrella, the most notable of which would be the Firewall. Though the firewall was not initially my idea, what it evolved to before we launched was more of my brain child. I took one the role heading the organizational aspect of it and now the organization is thriving with both founder completely unaffiliated with the paper. Their last issue was much better than any issue that I put forth, and I proud of that fact.

I am writing this post tonight cause, I believe that I have reached this level of success with another organization. The Undergraduate Council was resurrected by me over the last year and is now a very strong group comprised of some of the best people I have had the chance to work with. Today, I announced the elections for 2 weeks from now and have spent the last couple hours thinking whether I want to run or not for my position again. No decision in sight for the near future. I’ll let you guys know how it goes in 2 weeks time.

Every time I start filling out a form, I come across that god awful line asking me for my country of permanent legal residence. And there I am. Stuck as to what I should write in that field. This has turned into my personal identity crisis ever since the November of my freshman year, when I had to call my mother to get a second opinion on what to fill out.

I have 3 possible options, and  none of them seem to be right. Should I put in India, the country I am a citizen off? Or should it be the United Arab Emirates, where I lived most of my life? Or is the United States the right one? All and none at the same time. Hence my crisis.

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Fact 1: I have a lot of crazy ideas

Fact 2: I am crazy enough to follow through with a bunch of them. Proof!

Fact 3: I do not have the time for more (seriously, my new years resolution is to not do anything new till May)

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I am the president of the Undergraduate Council within the college of computing at Georgia Tech and this has recently put me in a lot of situations where I have been able to understand the art of serving others. The UC is the representative board of the college and serves as the voice of the students. One of my responsibilities as the president is that of being the external spokesperson for the organization. Hence, indirectly, I could at times serve as the voice of the student body of the college. And trust me people, that is not power at all but more so, a lot of pressure.

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Today (or more like yesterday) was a great day in the history of computing. The iPad has finally been announced to the public. Having watched the keynote as well as having a lot of expectations for this product, here is what I feel about it.

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