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For me, quitting medical school for software engineering has been like having a second shot at life to go do something else and live the way I wanted to live (going to medical school wasn't my true passion or calling in life). In medicine I was unhappy, stressed, full of nightmares, and constantly sleep-deprived. I am happy most days now, and I enjoy my career. I get to have my weekends and evenings to do whatever I want to do, and I get to spend my time the way I want to without guilt. I picked up new hobbies and things I wanted to do/learn for fun, and no longer does every hobby/activity have to be useful like when I was in medicine. I don't feel bad about going into medical school, and I don't feel bad about leaving.I walked out of medical school in my 3rd year, so in a lot of debt but not a crushingly impossible amount of debt. It is very scary to realize you want to actually, actually quit. Kinda the sick in the stomach unknown of a roller-coaster that falls into darkness and you don't know what is on the other side. I was in ~$75,000 USD of debt. It took 2.5 years from the date I left med school to pay it all off. I spent a lot of time doing side gigs like Google Ad ratings and minimizing money spent day to day (for side gig ideas, I wrote a blog on this, go here: Side Gigs while Transitioning Careers (or in general)), but a lot less than I sacrificed every day in med school and it has been absolutely worth it.. and by sacrifice I mean that after a year of scrimping on money, I could eat out, enjoy my own nice apartment in a good area, and by myself the video games I really wanted to get while paying it off.I was worried about "throwing away a good career", "not succeeding", "taking a huge risk", "throwing away years of work".. and so on. Then, I kept thinking more logically than emotionally about what I wanted out of life and how to get there. Then.. I didn't worry or care about "how much work I put into it" or "how much I invested" because that is the type of thinking that would have caused me regret. I do things and work hard at everything because I want to..so that investment is in myself and my skills, not necessarily in a certain path. I can have confidence in myself to change everything and be able to pick up again and work hard and do well as long as I choose to enjoy it.Another point— say you feel as if you “wasted” 6–10 years and can’t get that out of your head. If you feel they are wasted. Now imagine wasting a lifetime. Now, you tell me which one is a smaller portion of your life and insignificant when compared to many, many years of happiness (psst 6–10 years is much, much smaller than your entire life if you are unhappy!). I honestly have zero guilt about leaving.There is a huge adjustment period after you leave. It will suck, horribly for a little while. And you will have to work, extremely, extremely hard to get yourself into your new career of choice.1. A lot of debt.2. No relevant experience in new job. Getting and keeping a new job.3. Moving / not knowing people to where you move.4. Career environment shock. Corporate / business / anything else is VERY different from the medical community.I chose to leave medical school to be a software engineer, with no education or background in the field. I have a degree in Chemistry (not related). I chose software because I am a very strong logical/math/problem solver an a poor memorizer. I was very unhappy with the environment of medicine and the day to day life (it was very exciting for some but wasn't the right path for me and it was hard to look forward to much for me). I had a lot of friends for and against me leaving for their own reasons.I have the most amazing older brother who is in the field. He showed me a lot of things to introduce coding to me and so I could see if I enjoyed it. They seemed like puzzles and a weird language at first. The high level concepts of it made sense, but actually DOING something seemed very difficult. I didn't know what C# or a database was before starting. I did however know some front end web design. I did have an also amazing supportive family who helped me with living and with coping. They didn't press me one way or the other and let me make my own decisions.Challenge 1: Deciding to leave -- It took me a good number of weeks to decide if I was actually going to leave. I had toyed with the idea for years. I had almost swapped out of premed more times than I could count. It came to the point of where I would be in a detrimental amount of crushing debt if I didn't choose, and I was getting more and more unhappy every day. It didn't feel like that was the way to live. I figured if I was smart enough and worked hard enough I could get out with some bumps along the way and it wouldn't be an easy thing. I had to build a lot of self confidence, I had to work through a lot of failures, and I always looked forward and keep trying until something worked.Challenge 2: Getting a job-- Trying to convince someone that you have no experience but you are able to do a job is very difficult. For software I put up a personal blog with software tips, a GitHub account, LinkedIn, and I made a StackOverflow account. I uploaded code to the GitHub and posted to the blog religiously. I still try to, when I can. No matter how simple, it means you care about learning and want to do this and will work hard. I was enthusiastic and motivated. I did have a strong background of high grades in a difficult degree and I have stuck with previous (but, unrelated) jobs for a long time.Challenge 3: Surviving the first two weeks-- Being dropped in the middle of software, er wow. I got hit with jQuery, AJAX, MongoDB, SQL, SSAS, LINQ, C#, MVC.. all at once. Those are big topics each. They can take years and years to master one of them.. getting proficient at all of them without a background was rough. I was mixing topics left and right, new terms were confusing, and getting thinks working was a challenge. I had a very very caring mentoring boss who was patient with me and worked with me until I understood.Interesting environmental factors: In medicine.. you tend to do things traditionally and the long way sometimes because of process. In software you cut and paste and don't reinvent the wheel needlessly and that's encouraged. Weirdly, that was a rough one. You memorize everything in medicine. You can Google whatever you want, something simple you use all the time but forget and no shame. Also at home, I got used to working non-stop around the clock. I actually get antsy not working all the time or started to feel bad when I had time off to enjoy (thus not enjoying said free time). Being able to enjoy time has been an adjustment without feeling bad about not doing something productive every second. As far as the debt, I started to feel bad for not working every possible second and adjusting from having a couple side jobs to just one main job was also unsettling. Corporate/business world also is different from medicine. In medicine, regardless of rules and laws and policies you do the best for someone because you care about their mental and physical well being. In corporate/business it's not acceptable to act the same way and that has been difficult for me because in my foundation the person always feels like it should come first but business is different.Medical school schedule:6AM: wake up, review for test/exam or go to morning rounds8AM-6PM: lectures/clinicals (assuming no one asks you to stay after, which does happen a lot) where you have to be at 110% attention at all times, participate, and appear very very interested in every word said from everyone. Get criticized on paper later on for looking too sleepy or not very very interested or forgetting something off page 4564 figure 51-8.6-7PM: Take flashcards to grocery store to get food. Feel horrible about losing the hour to have to get food.7-7:30PM: Take flashcards to gym. Feel horrible about losing the half hour to have to stay in shape.7-30-12:30AM: Study A LOT. Powerpoints, books, you name it.12:30AM-1:30AM: Study Anki flashcards on phone app until phone drops on face.Current life schedule:830AM: Wake up, make breakfast, have coffee9AM-12PM: Go to work. Check list written from yesterday on what to do. Work on TFS bugs, add things to website. Listen to music at work and have snacks littered on desk.12-1PM: Go have lunch with friends, or eat at desk, or go for a walk, or go to the gym, or go to the mall..1PM-6PM: Continue morning work. Write self a list at end of day so self doesn't forget what self was working on the previous day..6PM-7PM: Lounge around, cook, surf internet..7PM-1:30PM: See friends, go to gym, work on project, learn a language, go learn something else for fun, do side work for $, code something, play games and lots of them..Challenge 4: Keeping the job-- I studied every single night and weekend for months actually, to not get fired. I didn't know much and it was a lot of new things. I also was very tired because I was working 1-2 side remote jobs on the side to pay off student loans. I am proud to say, I paid off over 60% of those loans within 1 year of leaving medical school by working hard with those side jobs. It took me about 2 months before there was a "click".. and things started falling together all of a sudden. It felt so amazing. It probably feels like flying would. The other slightly difficult thing: it takes 3-6ish months to feel more at home in a city or job..it does take some time to meet and interact with people. It took me 7 months, when I moved jobs, until I met good people and I found friends close to my age where I could play games / tennis / go to events with them. I honestly was so busy before trying to keep my life together, that though I noticed I was lonely, the bigger goal was to pay off debt and get my career together.Challenge 5: Moving up-- I studied very hard to gain new information to move up and to be able to interview and land a job at other companies. I would study a month ahead to learn as much as I could and I would make little side coding projects to get better. I felt so so terrible when I gave my notice to move to a larger financial company. It was very hard to move on and I learned so much from my first job. Unfortunately, a lot of debt acquires a lot of interest so it wasn't really a choice. If I had less debt I would have liked to stay longer but I was somewhat financially forced to pay off loans quickly to avoid keeping them for the next 20 years.My job history / current job: I started at a very small company with about 20 people (and 4 devs) working on employee benefits as my entry level job. I didn’t know anyone there, I didn’t get a recommendation, I found the job on Monster or some other job posting site. It was fun, lots of new technologies and agile little environment. After 8 months..I went to a financial firm (Raymond James, not the Stadium for you football fans) that does stock trading and whatnot, learned all about finance. It was a small internal department in a big company, I met great friends and learned more. But the technology was a little older (Web Forms) and I wanted to keep up newer tech.. so, another 7 or so months later I moved. I found the job posting just knowing the company was in the area.. and I just kinda threw an application in randomly one night and crazy enough they called me.I went to Bloomin’ Brands (best known for owning Outback, Carrabba’s, and Bonefish Grill). I worked on the main websites.. so Outback Steakhouse etc and some internal sites too. I found a job posting for this one on Glassdoor, then I went to their main site, and then just applied online cold call style again.Another year later, I worked as a Consultant a company doing a project for Deloitte (Big 4 auditing firm). I had a referral to this company.Microsoft as a Premier Consultant with a traveling job to help out clients with Microsoft products. Since my job is mainly travel, I am remote and can live anywhere in the US. I also had a referral here.Microsoft as a FastTrack engineer - remote non-travel job to assist customers moving solutions to Azure and work on C# development projects.To sum up.. my first 3 jobs I just said what the hey.. threw in a very well written cover letter and dropped an application onto the site and hoped for the best. The final two I had been in the field and had some recommendations from very kind people who have been a friend and a mentor, and I appreciate it so much. Referrals will significantly help you get an interview and a positive first impression, they don’t really help with you landing the job because the tech screens are usually intensive. I took between a 20–35% salary raise each time I moved jobs. I always ask for about 10–15k more than I actually want— so when they think they’re ‘letting me down’.. I am actually getting what I wanted out of it.After you pass all those challenges.. it is the normal life. You get a nice place, you get some things you like (the fact that I can buy myself Chipotle for lunch and go to a broadway show and get myself a Nintendo game makes me really, really happy.. I don't need a lot!), you make friends, and you make yourself new goals and challenges. I am much more grateful for it now than if I had always had this.What has helped me in my background from medicine: I can interview very well. I learned a lot about presentation and how other people perceive you. I can get along with ANYONE (boy have I met every personality). As someone in the medical field, I was able to relate and gain the trust of almost anyone from any culture/age/background and this is a very useful survival skill. Nothing scares me. Extremely strong communication skills. Criticism is taken well and I adapt to new situations. Nothing is ever too much work, it's certainly less than I had to do in medicine. Having a weird background like that makes you very memorable in a pile of resumes. Not to mention the life experiences and people you meet can teach you so much and there is a world of knowledge in those experiences.I chose to take the good out of that time and the skills I learned in medicine and put it to use in my current life. I chose to use my bad memory to forget all the bad stuff and put it behind me.. it's like some distant dream I had about someone else day to day.. if I even think about it at all. YOU get to choose all of these things :). I don't have any regrets or feel bad about going. Doing so wouldn't help me any, so no reason to waste bad energy on it.. always try and re-route feelings of anger/sadness into productive things that are good for you (like going to the gym, learning something new, meeting someone new, building a skill).. it is hard to feel badly when you just did something good for yourself or someone else! The little things count that you do and think during the day. The minutes make your hours, the hours the days, the days the years... and so on, so really all the seconds are your life and you spend them learning, growing, failing, recovering from failure, becoming stronger, and so on..Plus side, for me I was so unhappy in medicine that the worst day at my job is a LOT better than the average day in something I didn't like. Sure, the debt sucked a bit but hey-- let me pose this question to you: If you could trade 3 years of your life and a little under 100k.. to be happy the rest of your life and well equipped with life skills (working with people, strong detail orientation, passion to do well, hard work, crazy good time management skills and organization).. would you make that trade? I did, unintentionally. Before medicine.. I was horrible at interviewing, working with lots of people productively, breaking down ideas effectively, and taking criticism. Now those are all skills I have learned. The trade-- it was a good deal. I figure these are skills I would have spent a lifetime to seek and could not buy with money if I tried.Ask yourself some theoretical questions to see if you really want to stay or leave:Consider the scenario of leaving med school and what it would be like for you "7 days", "7 weeks", "7 months", "7 years", after making a decision. Now consider if you stay in med school those same scenarios. Compare them. Think about it really hard, and picture yourself at each of those points and how that decision affected all aspects of your potential life. I believe looking at this decision in this way was helpful to me. Honestly, a week after leaving I felt pretty rough and panicked and like I didn't know a thing about programming, almost like sitting on the bottom and looking at a tall mountain. 7 weeks later I was about 3 weeks into my first job, staying busy learning. 7 months later I was in my second job, with some panic at having left what had become a somewhat comfortable environment (at least I was used to my first job), but feeling good I could get another better job. I assume in 7 years I'll be making more per hour than I would have as a doctor, my personal life and day to day enjoyment will be great, and that I will look back and be glad I took a risk and did my best both in medicine, and to get out, and to become someone new in a different career.. but I will let you know then ;)Let's say you were doing well, got 100% on everything in med school ever. Would you still want to leave at all?If yes --> Ok, you should probably get the hell out of med school.If no --> Are you only happy because you like to succeed at things (like any other normal person!)? If you are only happy because you want to succeed and not for medicine.. you should again probably get the hell out and go succeed somewhere you really want to be.Your success in something you want to do will always be more than the success of being called a doctor or other pride that other people attribute to the field. Family will be sad, mine were but they loved me and told me to do with my life what I thought would make me happy.My previous years don't particularly bother me and I don't think about it unless I am reminded of it, though when I do it can be stressful just because of all the change that has happened in a short period of time. The bad thing is that during in my time in medicine, I lost all of my hobbies and the enjoyment of a lot of things that used to be fun.. but I am slowly regaining new ones. It takes time. I feel as if I have melded into a completely new life successfully. I have enough to do what I want to. I have enough ahead I want to work hard. I am always motivated to learn new things or do things I enjoy. I have enough challenge I will never get bored. The tech world has new things to learn everyday, and all of it is so incredibly cool to me.I love my current life, the good and the stress. It's not a fairy tale, but it's pretty darn good honestly and I am always making strides to work towards being happier everyday. I have been very lucky to be able to go into a brand new field successfully and am thankful for everyday.So.. think about what you want for yourself when you are 10-20 years older. Which decision will make you happier?Another thought— Don’t make excuses for yourself if you really want to do something. You can tell yourself all day long that my case worked out because I am younger than you, because I had a brother in the field, or had less debt that you. Guess what. There are oodles of people younger than me, with lots of connections, lots of money, and no debt.. and some are ahead of me and some are behind. It doesn’t matter where they are. I don’t care. I care about myself, where I am now, and where I want to be later. And, so I got myself there regardless of what age or amount of debt.. and I would have no matter what it was or what it took. That is all you should concern yourself with: where you want to be.. and go get there. The reason I post this is to help give you another perspective, a positive story, someone to talk to, and hopefully a guide through a tough time.For very specific steps about how I landed jobs, see here (I tried to detail out as many resources as possible from how to setup a GitHub / Blog and seek out job positions and how to actually study):Crystal Tenn's answer to How do self-taught developers get jobs? I'm 17 & I've been coding since I was 14. I feel like I lack a lot of the skills I need to market myself. I will go to college, but it's frustrating to feel like I’m unemployable if I don’t.Even more specific, I get asked a lot about step by step how to go into software. This is a VERY exact step by step guide to be a C# web developer with a lot of free resources: What do I do, how do I start? Guide to being a C# web developer.—5 years later update (3/2020) and FAQs I’ve been asked:Do you have any regret now that it is years later?No, I still am glad I left medicine and only wish I had left sooner. As far as software goes, still so, so happy I am here. I make a great salary, have work life balance, picked up hobbies in rock climbing and singing, I eat good food, sleep enough every night, take care of myself, and really can’t complain. When I am coding, I am happy and I get to solve puzzles and it doesn’t get old and the people in software are real genuine :)On regret about staying in medicine too long? I do not take for granted my time there and still feel I learned a lot about myself and people and value those experiences. Life is a journey of trials and errors, and it’s best to embrace doing your best with what you know and trying out things that could be wrong, so that you know for sure they are wrong, then adjusting once you have learned more.How do you handle your medical school time on a resume/cover letter?I always did a cover letter for my initial jobs and I always said up front that I was in medical school, why I went in, why I left, and why I wanted to be a dev. From the perspective of an interviewer, they will want to know this and they don’t have time to go asking you about it if it isn’t provided upfront. Be proud you went to med school and that you got in, and use leaving med school as a strength that you made a strong decision to choose another field and proof that you really want a different life.I am not hearing back from jobs.#1 WRITE A COVER LETTER explaining who you are, why you’re interested in that company, why you went to med school, why you left, what you did to be a good candidate for this job.#2 Your resume might not be well made / very good.. pay for someone to take a professional look at it and help you or get someone who is very experienced in that field to look at it if possible.If your resume and cover letter are solid + you took time to make a portfolio and learn relevant experience, there’s no reason you shouldn’t get a phone interview at least.. so look hard into those two pieces of paper and make sure they are done well.Do you know anyone else who has done the same as you and succeeded?Yes! I know lots of people now that it has been many years later. I have either personally talked to or helped out many of them and definitely think its doable and you can do it too if you commit and really want to do this. Just promise yourself to never look back or have regrets if you take this path.Have you heard of / did you see a lot of bullying, harassment, and elitism in medicine?Yes, sadly I have both personally seen a lot of this, experienced it, and talked to a lot of people who have. You aren’t alone if you have experienced this as well. But, on the good side, outside of medicine.. most people are very genuine and what you see is what you get and people like to help each other and miss each other, and are much less competitive/elitist.Do you miss not having a career that helps people?Not really, for me personally, answers will vary by person though. Some folk feel the need to help others on a daily basis, and that was never me. I would certainly love to help people as they come along, and it’s always a good things, but I don’t feel the need to do this with my job and I don’t mind that my job is based around ‘building cool apps, solving puzzles, and making money’. If you feel you need to be helping people, the world, etc. every day with your job, perhaps software is not for you unless you can make that work and find a very good non-profit company.Why didn’t you do software related to medicine? Would you now?I didn’t like medicine and was a tad bitter about it upon leaving, so I intentionally looked for jobs that were unrelated to medicine. I wanted a new second life doing something else that wouldn’t remind me of medicine. Now that it has been years later, I wouldn’t mind, and I do love the good that medicine can do and no longer feel bitter.What are side gigs you can recommend for money while I transition careersI wrote an article on that here: Side Gigs while Transitioning Careers (or in general)What if I am interested in Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, or Game dev instead?These are harder areas to land a job in and you can do research and try to find mentorships from folk who work in these areas. I might recommend you go for a more marketable job that is ‘less fun’ like web/mobile dev in order to get into programming, then you can transition into those areas.What is the best way to find a mentor? I don’t know anyone in software.Go to “meetup.com” and look for any coding, programming, Java, C#, .NET, Python, Azure, AWS, any Meetups with keywords like that. Go learn from presentations, hangout with the people there, tell them your story, and hopefully you will find a friend who can guide you who is local. Locals will know the most about companies that take on junior devs and how to learn and they may be willing to mentor you.Am I too old to go into software?You are never too old to go into software. There may be some bias in Silicon Valley type places for age, but minus that, for the other thousands of cities, you should be just fine getting a well paying comfortable job.I feel too old to switch/like I wasted my life.You need to try not to compare yourself to others and build up your sense of self-worth and self-esteem. Medicine tears a lot of people down and pits them against each other, but what matters is that you find happiness and purpose in your life at some point.. it doesn’t matter when you find it, but that you find it. You will come out so far ahead no matter what as long as you find happiness in your life, regardless of salary/status/success. You will go so much further in a race and be happier running for yourself and not turning your head to see how everyone else is doing, that’s life, live it for you.My parents don’t support my decision.I am sorry to hear that, but when it comes down to it, you can’t live your life for what your parents want you to do.. It’s sad if they don’t agree, disown you, or aren’t proud of you.. but ultimately it is sadder if you live an entire life for them and never yourself. You have to make your own decisions and do what makes you happiest. Most parents do want their children to be happy and over time may come around. Some still won’t but that is on their side to choose not to support you, and you did the right thing for your life still. If you can’t get past how you feel about your parents, it might not be bad to find self-help books in this area or consider therapy for learning how to stop feeling controlled by what they want.Do I need a degree for a dev job?Nope, very few companies select for a degree. A degree can help you, like any other line on your resume, but there are a lot of really great developers with no degree. I cannot tell the difference of a developer with and without a degree working with them, they are equally good and most (not all), but most companies recognize this. Some companies do care, just avoid them, they are in the minority. Ignore what is required on the job posting, just see if they will interview you.I’m applying to LinkedIn, Microsoft, Apple and Google and not hearing back, why?Don’t go applying for large companies for your first dev job with zero experience, most likely it’s not happening. Go apply to very small local places no one has heard of. These junior jobs are for college grads, not for folk from another field with no experience. You can go to those companies later as a senior, and not likely as a new person unless you’ve got one heck of a networking connection… and that might not even help.I am applying to small companies and not hearing back, why?Did you make a very well written cover letter with why you like the company, who you are, why you matter to them, and what you have done to be a good dev? If no, go do that. Take a real hard look at your resume, pay someone to review if needed. Most people who think they have a great resume, don’t. Most people who tell me they can’t land a job, I look at their resume, and it all becomes clear real quickly. Did you make a GitHub? Do you have legit coding projects you did with documentation (on the README.md) and unit tests? If not, do it. Do you have a website with coding and tech blog articles? Go do that too. How will you prove you are a good developer with code and cover letters and a website and no experience?All the jobs say I need a comp sci degree and 2 years of experience for a junior. I can’t find anything to apply to.Job requirements are a list of things a company wants in an “ideal candidate”, not what they actually plan to get. It’s a wishlist. Just apply to it, try to get an interview. My first 3 jobs I didn’t meet the requirements, at all, not even close, and I still got the job. Don’t take the requirements so seriously and let that stop you from trying.I am interested in another field unrelated to IT, what do I do?Do a lot of research into that area, volunteer/intern at local places and join local meetups or events and meet folks in that area. See if they can help you get started with work or finding what job you want to do in your area of interest. Try your best to find a mentor in that field whether its a local one or online. Reach out to people and ask for help and don’t be afraid to do that, the worst someone can do is say no or not reply.. the best is they could help you.I have no idea what field I am interested in or what else I could go into.Think about what you were passionate about as a young kid, what you’re good at, what meets your lifestyle/salary needs, and do a lot of online research to find potential careers that fit all of those categories. Then find people in the field who are willing to talk to you about it and maybe help you get started in those fields.If you could give one piece of advice to me and people like me who left medicine, what would it be?Work on your self-esteem, be confident, be proud of who you are and that you left and the choices you make and others will see that too and want to hire you + believe in you and see you succeed. Work on your mental health if you have depression or feel burned out. You will hold yourself back so much with no self-confidence, take time for yourself to build it back up. Journal, watch youTube videos about self-esteem/self-help, find books, anything you can do to get your mental health in the best possible state so you can make logical reasonable choices. Never make decisions out of fear or emotions or you may end up in another decision you are unhappy with, try to make decisions that are logical and will set you up for a better future. Also don’t overthink decisions either.. try to make your best prediction, go for it, and make changes to your path as needed along the way. It is okay to leap into another field, learn more about yourself, and change again as you learn. Sometimes you need to take action and make change in order to learn more about who you are or develop who you are as a person. Life is a journey =) Best of luck to you in it and hope my advice can help you!

First, history education should not be about dates and people. It should be about factors that brought us to the present - presented in an non-judgmental way. History should not be looked just from the lenses of the present, neither it should be looked merely from the lenses of the rulers of the different periods.Second, it should not overemphasize on wars, invasions, empires and kings. Majority of our past was spent in non-war times. And we were among the least invaded civilizations. Rather than just negativity should place sufficient emphasis on the positive aspects that the common people have achieved - in arts, sciences, trade, agricultural methods, religion, social systems, political organizations, industries, games, mathematics etc.Third, it should give a balanced weight on different time periods. In my recent post on Indian history, a few commented that Mughals and English ruled for about 800 years. They said so because majority of our history text books emphasized on this period. However, if you look at the facts - the time between Babur’s first arrival in Panipat [1526] and the time Britain left India [1947] have only a 421 year gap - well less than 10% of known history of India. Leave alone the fact that Babur didn’t immediately set up an empire in India and that there was a sizable gap between Mughal rule and the British rule.In short, the Mughal+English period is an important but a relatively small portion of Indian history. However, these 4 centuries [1550s-1940s] get more than half of coverage in most classrooms and even in these 4 centuries we miss anything that doesn’t go with the flow [Marathas, for instance]. We should realign with the right weight.Fourth, it should provide sufficient coverage of all regions of India. We hear very little about the Northeast or the central India.Fifth, we have to cover the geography as it relates to history. India’s cultural perimeters are defined by its geography. Its history owes a lot to both its mountains and rivers. Rise and fall of civilizations have a lot to do with climatic changes - caused both by humans and nature. For instance, the Indus Valley Civilization’s collapse was nothing unique - almost all bronze age cultures of that time collapsed both with climatic shifts and disruptions to the tin trade routes. Late Bronze Age collapseSixth, when we cover the independence movement of India, we don’t give students the idea that the Congress of its time was not mostly a party, but an annual conference - of diverse leaders from various walks of life. They had different goals and ideologies who came together in passing resolutions to provide voice to the Indians.Effectively, Congress movement was a nation with multiple parties within. Not only we don’t cover many of these sub-parties, but we also don’t treat the movement’s actions with sufficient criticism. The failures of the Khilafat and Quit India Movement are not sufficiently covered. And the Congress party that ruled India after 1947, made sure a third of all school history books is just from about cherrypicked 40 years of Indian history with no room for struggles that came before or after.Finally and most importantly, history is about connections and not mere dots. It should be presented as a web of connections, with analysis. When we cover an event, its context in the overall world of the time and also the preceding/succeeding events should be given. For instance, the Gupta era’s fall has to be placed in the context of the overall fall of major empires of the time - Rome, Sassanid etc. They were all attacked by the Hun people during the Migration period.Also, do share this post in your network: An open letter to Shri Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India.Part of the India Dreams Collection: Ideas for changing India.

This is more of a suggestion than an answer, but: find out which companies could use your skills. Put together some sort of "packet" (this could be paper or digital) with your resume, a cover letter preferably addressed to a specific person at the organization, and some kind of examples of your work. Send this packet to the companies that, through your research, you have identified as being ones that could use your skills. Send it to one or 2 people at each company. Give some time for them to look at it, and then follow up with contact.It has been 20 years since I worked with international scholars, but I think you would need an H-1 visa, and for that, your employer would need to demonstrate that you have certain skills, and they can't find an American who has the same level of skills. This isn't impossible to do, but you need to convince an employer to invest in you.And of course, keep working on your English. But if you have coding skills, you don't necessarily need to speak great English, just enough to communicate.