Before the CCNA, before Canada, before the home lab — there was a small institute in Kathmandu and a soldering iron.
During COVID, after finishing school, I enrolled in a technical training program at Kantipur Technical Institute covering chip-level laptop repair, Android mobile repair, and desktop/laptop hardware and networking. It ran for about 8 to 10 months, and it was one of the most hands-on things I've ever done.
I remember waking up early every morning and walking to the institute. In the beginning, even opening a laptop case felt like a big deal. By the end, I was diagnosing dead boards, reading schematic diagrams, and repairing real customer laptops — not just practice units.
The thing that surprised me most was schematic reading. Understanding how power flows through a board, tracing circuits, finding a fault — it changed how I think about hardware entirely. That foundation quietly shows up in everything I do now.
It wasn't glamorous. But it was real, practical, and taught me how to think about broken things — which turns out to be the most useful skill in IT.
That's where it started.