It has been about five months in IIT and I need to pen down my learnings and experiences. A senior told me that these four years would be the most wonderful years of my life and indeed it turns out to be.
The day begins with 23rd july......orientation processes begins.....
The orientation programmes and registration processes themselves extracted much of the enthusiasm from almost all the entrants. Can you believe that the professors were teaching moral science to a bunch of 17-19 years students. Morality cannot be taught, it can only be imbibed by setting an example.
Here comes August....and our semester starts......
The first class was an ultimate bore one. The professor was a shock for a lifetime. All our hopes and expectations came to the ground level.
The second class was somewhat better and thereon the process of continuous evaluation was started. There were workshops, chemistry practicals all in the afternoon and all carried marks to be added at the semester end. We cursed the system for having such a harsh time-table. After having a full-bowl of rice how can they expect us to stay awake in the afternoon sessions of practicals and lectures.The amount of curses that i blessed our beloved Institute and its faculties was greater than the total abuses that ever came from my mouth.
IIT is basically a one-eyed king among all the different blind colleges.The professors, leaving a few, are worse than hell. How can the Institute appoint ordinary professors to teach the sharpest minds of India. The teachers lack enthusiasm. They mug up and come in class. The condition is even worse in tutorials , where teachers are so shameless that they come in class with a piece of paper and ask the students to solve the tutorial-sheets and they note the solutions.
I wondered whether i had taken the right decision in opting the branch at Delhi which was available to me at Bombay too. For the first few weeks i was a bit disappointed.But, thereafter things started to settle.I started enjoying. Couple of movies at the PVRs, me being selected in the hostel footie team and late-night strolls in the campus made me feel at ease.
The other thing that kept me going was the students. I am mesmerized by the IITians to a great extent.There is something mysterious and unpredictable in every IITian. Each and every IITian has something different from the rest of the world. Their taste(be it of books, music, movies or arts), their tendency of going to the grass-root level about anything they are passionate about,their simplicity,their lateral thinking,their curiosity,their interest in trying out new things, their tendency to keep on trying until they succeed and most importantly their humbleness are out of this world. It feels great that AIR 15 and Air 27 are giving importance to a person with a much lower rank.
Having friends who are gold medallists in international olympiads is nothing ordinary and that is where IIT takes a lead from every other college. It provides the best atmosphere for any scientific and non-scientific pursuits.It provides an opportunity for ordinary people like me to become extraordinary.
Coming back to the scenario, for the first two weeks the fear of ragging engrossed our minds the whole day. We always used to move in groups.But the seniors were themselves inexperienced in ragging and they were caught by the anti-ragging squad when they were taking our introduction(poor they!). Now, we feel that ragging should have been there, it would have allowed more interaction of ours with the seniors and would have helped us to take initiatives in the various activities of our hostel. And when I was selected in the hostel football team this interaction developed and almost all the seniors became my friends.
The inter-hostel competitions are a trademark of IITD. And i feel really fortunate for opting Delhi as my institute because it is the best among all the IITs for the cultural pursuits. The first event of the first semester was duo-dancing competition. The high enthusiasm among various hostels was mind-blowing and the cheering gave us a feeling of belongingness towards our hostel. We cheered our hostel representatives and condescended other hostels. It was a great feeling.
Our hostel being a new one provides us ample opportunity to showcase our talents. I took part in Fusion Nite and played the synthesizer.It was great to work in a team and I got to learn many things from my band-mates. Then came the street play. The whole street play was organised by first yearites and it made me shed my inhibitions.
I became one of the most naughty boy in my hostel. I played many pranks with my friends. It was fun being at hostel(even at the cost of lectures...:)). My friends would regard me as the most "kamina banda" of the hostel.
After 1st minors, i became highly disorganized. I slept late and woke up late and missed almost all my morning lectures. But the interesting thing here is that I never regretted of missing one. Thats because the professors at IITD suck. While coaching for JEE, I never missed any of my classes as my teachers were great and it was a pleasure to attend their classes.
Amidst all these activities I always managed to get time for introspection and reading some outbooks : I read Surely You're Joking Mr.Feynman and One Night at the Call Centre and revised Autobiography of a Yogi for the third time.
Night-out before exams are a common thing in IIT. Almost all the exams that I gave, i used to stay awake whole night before. When came the exams, I sat almost without any preparations(night outs leave u oblivious) and as expected I got poor grades. I know i am responsible for this and now i have stopped blaming the circumstances for this.
During this periods there came a virus inside me of writing testimonials on orkut of my friends. Everytime i logged in orkut, i would end up writing testimonials for some of my friend. I wrote a total of 40 testimonials for my orkut friends. This made me glad that at least i am doing something different. This virus is still working and I am doing a lot of writing nowadays.
I joined the institute with no strategy at all. I was just too much excited. I wanted to enjoy life as for the first time i was independent. There was no-one to scold me if i don't study. And am glad to see that i did it. I followed what interested me.
I am totally satisfied with what I have done. I am glad to experience how it feels if no-one tells me to study, when there is no pressure by society and relatives to study. I have enjoyed each and every moment of this first semester and I am proud of what I have done.
I gotta know many things about myself, my psychology, my interests, my thought-process, my hidden talents and I have developed immense self-belief.
I have become a theist and have started looking for deeper vistas of life. Met some awesomely beautiful people and imbibed some qualities from them. I have started exploiting my creativity to the fullest. Most importantly, i have started loving myself.
