u/Concern-Excellent

I am trying to collect other people's experience and thought process reflecting far back in time. One thing I did was to see older posts to see the relevant things and experiences then. Personally for myself, I learnt a loooot. From how to design system prompts, personality to making lorebooks and exploring many many ai models.

I started using local models then R1 which I found humorous but bossy. V3 0324 awed me initially and was a game changer but now I personally can't even use it, it seems so bad after I have tested everything. Then I tried gemini 2.5 pro, mistral, R1 0528, R1T chimera yadda yadda yadda. By now the models are smart enough to follow rules, remember context, follow logic and simulate natural language. I remember having a story with a character which has a double personality and they are a spy. The earlier models kept making them two different people. Then the middle ones were improvement. Now I could finally run it and it ran well.

I would go a lot more in detail but I am more curious about others. What's your journey like? Are there anything you are still fond about or remember well? Looking back in the past how has your experience evolved? Did everything got better than you expect or some of the things got frustrating in between etc.

I gave GATE CSE exam on February 2025 in my third year and then forgot it mostly. Right now I am just about to graduate from a tier 3 university btech. I have no jobs or mtech offer in hand as of now. My parents have been insisting that I should use my GATE score and join some NIT or anything else I can get.

My main concern has been that I gave GATE exam just as a formality. I didn't prepare for even one day or before the examination and I missed the registration deadline during my fourth year but I was not focused on it at all. It doesn't sit right with me to join some university based on that score for which I just woke up, gave an exam and forgot about it.

I am thinking of taking a drop to prepare and see what I can get with that and to prepare to get a job along the sidelines based on making some projects. So it would be training and preparation for GATE and to solidify other concepts. My parents and others don't want me to take a drop though but I am thinking one year is worth the wait if I can get into top IIT or IISC, right? My friend said that if I use 5-6 months just to make a serious and good project, I can get employed and won't need higher education at all as well.

I am also thinking to switch branch from CSE due to job market saturation and take something like ECE or going deeper into AI/ML with research my interest. Any advices on what I should do and who is right (me or my parents). Besides I don't think joining anything is a good thing just to not take a gap and 525 won't give me anything worthwhile as a general candidate either.