North Penn alum has future in the “cloud”
He was sitting in his room in December doing what any college student does: studying for finals. After a few minutes, his phone dinged and read “Microsoft update available.” Fear and excitement entered his mind at that very moment. Tejas Priyadarshi opened the update, and a big, bold message appeared reading “Congratulations.” He got the job offer he’d been dreaming of: a software engineer with Microsoft.
Tejas Priyadarshi, a graduate of the class of 2018 at North Penn High School, starts work in February of this year. He will work with Microsoft’s Cloud and AI teams. While he knows there is still hard work to come, he can still recognize the diligence it took to bring him to where he is today.
“This is something I’ve really been working towards, I’d say even since high school. Computer science and programming have been something that is integral to who I am,” Priyadarshi said, “It was a long ambition of mine to work at one of these big tech companies, and throughout college, I applied many times. Sometimes I didn’t hear back, sometimes I got rejected. Sometimes you’d make it through the interview process and get a disheartening outcome. But each year, you’d improve and refine your skills. And it can lead to outcomes like this. The feeling of getting the job offer was full of extreme excitement and relief. The goal of mine for so long finally come to fruition.”
For him, North Penn was helpful in finding his career path. His time here included being a member of FBLA and participating in Code Quest, a coding competition. That, alongside classes and other activities, prepared him for college and beyond. He cites Ryan Kolb as someone who played a factor in developing him into who he is today.
“I really got my first exposure to programming from Mr. Kolb, and I owe a lot of my early development to him. My first job directed towards my career came from him. One day we were in class, he called me aside and said, ‘There’s this opportunity at Lockheed Martin. It’s a coding competition. I can sponsor it if you want to compete,’ and I competed and earned an internship. It was because of the opportunity Mr. Kolb gave me. The fact that he thought of me means a lot to me,” Priyadarshi said.
Priyadarshi also thanks Linda Westerland for her influence and has fond memories of being in her classroom late after school.
“She helped a lot in terms of letting us work super late in her classroom. When it came time to submit for FBLA competitions, she would be working with us, literally until 9, 10 p.m., which is well past her working hours. She dedicated so much time towards us,” Priyadarshi added.
After high school, Tejas attended the University of Maryland and graduated with a major in computer science and a minor in statistics. His dedication helped him learn new skills outside the scope of coding during his time in college.
“I learned resiliency, but also realized that goals worth having often don’t often come very quickly, and that’s they are worth having. So you feel disappointed in the moment, but if you can let the disappointment fade and maintain the bigger picture, you can accomplish so much,” Priyadarshi said.
The road to this moment, however, was not without its difficulties. In the video segment, below, Priyadarshi details a time where he struggled and figured out how to overcome challenges.
Overall, he had moments where he felt lost but found ways to get through it all. Priyadarshi views everything with one key thing: perspective. Perspective is something he holds dear, especially when it seems the world was caving in on him.
“Sometimes it’s really easy to get caught up in the minutia of applying for interviews, networking for people, and preparing for certain problems. When you get stuck, you can bog yourself down. Sometimes you might ask what’s it all for, and I think keeping perspective of why I was doing it is what kept me going throughout that process,” Priyadashi said.
Moving forward, Priyadarshi has goals that are still growing, He plans to one-day spearhead projects that can change humanity and take ideas that seem unfathomable and bring them to execution. Priyadarshi also plans to eventually run his own company. Helping people is the one thing he wants to do.
To Priyadarshi, though the world can be scary and intense, he asks that people keep looking forward and offered a piece of advice to all North Penn students.
“Find something that you’re super passionate about and work really hard for it. Oftentimes, I would try to pursue a lot of different things, because that is what I thought was needed to be successful. There’s so much pressure to check off as many boxes as you can when it comes to college, so you can be seen as a student with good scores and extracurriculars. But having come on the other side of the system and pursuing something I truly like, knowing why you’re doing these activities, and genuinely being passionate about it makes it all the more rewarding when the work pays off. Work hard for what you’re passionate about.”