I'm Stuck !

Hello all,

Kindly bear with me, I'll take some time to write this down completely. I'll try to keep it as short as possible.

So, I'm average in studying but have been very enthusiastic about electronics from a young age. I started with Arduino in 6th grade and built my first drone in 11th grade. I was clear from the start that I wanted to take ECE in my bachelor's. However, I never invested much time in studying, though when I did study sincerely, I got good results. But the practical part always interested me more than the theoretical part.

I gave my JEE and got a pathetic rank, not even getting into tier 3 colleges (79 percentile). I didn't want to leave Delhi (biggest mistake of my life) and ended up taking college in NCR. When everyone was choosing CSE, I was busy filling out college forms with ECE as my priority. I got into two colleges: BVP in GGSIPU and JIIT Noida 62 (BOTH ECE). Quora told me to take JIIT because it had better placements due to its location in the IT hub, so I dropped BVP and joined JIIT Noida 62 for ECE. My family was not in favour of me taking JIIT over IPU.

Then 2020 came, Covid hit, and there were no offline classes until 2022. Whole 2 years of B.Tech, which are crucial for building the base, were just wasted. Yes, I could have studied, but I was always spoon-fed and never really bothered. Online exams, telegram, MCQs, and you know it—got marks but never understood anything.

In 2022, the first offline exam hit, Analogue Electronics, and I was lost. I wanted to take VLSI as my elective, but the foundational years needed for VLSI were lost, so I took Communication as my discipline. I started studying, and slowly began to like it. Marks improved, and I even topped in a few subjects like Wireless Communication and Antenna Designing. The 3rd year went quite productive, and I got A+ in all minor and major projects, all based on robotics and IoT. I even made an emergency response system using UAV, which has gone for a patent, thanks to the college department.

Then came the placements. I did a 5-week summer internship at a software solutions company, gaining exposure to embedded C, ESP, IoT, and some front-end UI/UX design. When companies started coming in October, I was excited. Sat in 2-3 companies but got rejected in the last round due to a lack of coding skills. Never really wanted to do coding ever in my life. Then sat in a company for a Research Associate position, got selected, but it turned out to be a night shift call center. I couldn’t leave the job or I would be debarred from college. So, I left after a month.

I decided to apply somewhere else. Fast forward to 25th March, got a call from a company (off-campus) in the STEM and robotics domain, got selected, and started on 28th March. The job profile involves going to different schools to teach students about robotics and make their projects. The package is 3 LPA, which I get from my company, with no reimbursements for travel. I do like this job, but maybe because my previous experience was so bad, this feels better.

Now, my chacha ji, who is well-respected in the family for his education and is a Joint Secretary in CBSE, has tie-ups with many universities. He forced me to write GATE, but I knew I could never clear the cutoff, so I didn’t. After getting into a 3 LPA job, my family pressured me to write exams for VIT, Amrita, and IPU in the Non-Gate category. Guess what? I got selected in all three as I feel I chose Communication Engineering while filling my displine choices, thinking no one takes admission in those branches. Now they are forcing me to join either one of them.

If I want to do GATE, I want to do it from at least an NIT or BITS. I don't want to waste 7 lakhs on a degree that might not fetch me anything. I’ve seen people in my office with M.Techs from IPU earning only 10k more than me, with less skill. When I try to counter my family, they say, "We did as you said for your bachelors, what did it fetch you? A 3 LPA job? Now it's your time to do as we say."

I'm stuck, guys. Someone please guide me. Sorry for the long post.