Chapter 4, Musings of an internship applicant, Where to apply?

Chapter 4,  Musings of an internship applicant, Where to apply?

Enough of guidelines to prepare yourself before you click on the “send” button of your mailbox. So… you have completed with all your routine works or rather your homework to boost up your eligibility and capability as a potential applicant. But whom would you send your application to? Here comes the tragedy of the multimillion search results. As you go through the search results, you will find most of the internships as they call sometimes, as “summer-schools”, and you have to pay a whole lot of money to attend them which are basically worthless as per your intentions are concerned. Another kind of thing which you can find, that they are recruiting people for a long period, say for 1 year or so, which again will not serve your purpose. Thus you have to keep on filtering the search results and refine your search again and again. The process is extremely cumbersome is requires a lot of patience and searching skills. My job here is make your task as easier as I can, so I will suggest you some technical methods following which you can tame your search domain reasonably well and have full control over the search results.

Maintain a hierarchical database of your search results in separate folders. What I am trying to say can be better explained by the following figure: 

Each of the blocks represents a separate folder with, parent folders and subfolders as shown. This is a schematic diagram and you can incorporate more places to apply as you wish. This is an example to show you how you can organize properly, so that your time spent in searching are not wasted. In each of the target folder (leaf nodes), keep a file containing names of the persons of whom to apply, his mail id, webpage, research interests etc. Whenever you compose the mail intended for that person, you can once again see his research interests, browse through his cv and so on. This organization will save you a lot of time, as your search becomes much more localized.

Plan your search before beginning. For example, when you look for an opportunity at IIT Kharagpur, directly go to the respective departments homepage, check out those people whose research matches with your line of work. For companies, sometimes there are separate pages for internships, search for it. Also check whether they conduct any official summer internship program (for example, IIT Kanpur conducts SURGE, Summer Undergraduate Research Grant in Engineering) or student exchange program (MICTS, DAAD etc.).

Use Social networking sites, (Orkut / Facebook): These are indeed great tools which can help you to gather a lot of information, particularly from communities. You can also contact some of your seniors or fellow friends who have already done some sort of interns, to discuss and get ideas. If your senior is in some industry where you wish to apply for, you must talk to him before applying there. What more!! Best of luck and happy applying [ : D].

Saving a drop of oil

I have been driving for the last three years, and based on my experiences, I come out with 8 points, which I think can help you to save the precious car fuel.

1) Pump up your tyre regularly -

Keeping your tyre inflated is one of the easiest and most important things one can do to improve fuel economy. Saving petrol means saving money. If a range is recommended by the manufacturer, the higher pressure should be used to maximize fuel efficiency. Deflated tyres run hot and jeopardize safety. It will also cause the tyres to wear out prematurely, affect the vehicles adversely, and hurt the fuel economy by increasing the rolling resistance.

2) Drive at moderate speed -

Avoiding high speeds on open roads results in safer driving and better fuel economy. In highway driving, over 50% of the power produced by the engine is used to overcome aerodynamic drag. Drag and thus fuel consumption increases rapidly at speeds above 90km/h. On the average, a car uses about 15% more fuel at 100km/h, and 25% more fuel at 110km/h compared to when it is doing only 90km/h. However, this should not lead one to conclude that the lower the speed, the better the fuel economy – because it is not. The fuel consumption of an average car increases sharply at speeds below 50km/h.

3) Start up the car properly -

With today’s cars, it is not necessary to prime the engine first by pumping the accelerator pedal repeatedly.Do not crank the engine excessively. This only wastes fuel. When starting the engine, idle it no more than 30 seconds to warm it up. An engine will warm up faster on the road. However, avoid sudden acceleration before the engine has warmed up sufficiently.

4) Drive in high gear (overdrive)

The engine runs most efficiently between around 1,500 and 2,500 rpm. To maintain these low revs you should change up through the gears as soon as practical and before the revs reach 2500 rpm. For automatic transmission cars, you should always switch on your overdrive to help saving fuel. Overdrive will allow your engine to change gears at lower revs. It also puts your transmission into an “economy” mode and lets it engage the final “overdrive” gear when cruising to keep the rpms extra low, thereby increasing fuel economy.

5) Anticipate traffic ahead -

A driver can reduce fuel consumption by up to 10% by anticipating traffic conditions ahead and adjusting the speed accordingly, and avoiding tailgating and thus unnecessary braking and acceleration. Accelerations and decelerations waste fuel. Braking and abrupt stops can be minimized by not following too closely and slowing down gradually when approaching a red light. It takes up to six times as much fuel to move a car from a dead stop than it does for one moving at just a few km/h.

6) Avoid strong acceleration -

The fuel consumption remains at a minimum during steady driving at a moderate speed of about 90km/h. Keep in mind that every time the accelerator is hard pressed, the engine goes into a “fuel-enrichment” mode of operation that wastes fuel. The vehicle should always be gradually and smoothly accelerated. Using cruise control on highways can help maintain a constant speed and reduce fuel consumption.

7) Don’t let your engine idle -

Minimize fuel wasted in idling by stopping the engine whenever your car is stopped or held up for an extended period of time. Idling more than a minute consumes much more fuel than restarting the engine . By having the engine switched off, you will save more fuel than is lost from the burst of fuel involved in restarting the engine. The net increased wear and tear from this practice is negligible.

8) Use the air-conditioner sparingly -

Air conditioners can use about 10 per cent extra fuel when operating. However, at speeds of over 80 km/h, use of air conditioning is better for fuel economy than an open window.