As we leave #11: Whirlwind Transitions: My IITK Voyage

Lakshay Rastogi is a graduating Y18 pursuing a double major in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and Biological Science and Bioengineering. In this piece, he is reflecting on his transformative journey at IITK, he realized the dilemmas he had faced. The pressure to excel academically and the struggle to stay true to himself had been challenging.

Disclaimer:- The views presented below are the author’s own and are not in any manner representative of the views of Vox Populi as a body or IIT Kanpur in general. This is an informal account of the author’s experiences at IIT-K.

Hey yo!

I love ticking off things on my Bucket Lists, it gives me a great sense of accomplishment, and writing an AWL feels like checking another one of the items. I think it has already served its purpose for me, and for those who are reading it, I hope it does the same for you too.

I can vividly remember thinking of writing this article while reading the AWL articles when I was in my 2nd year. I could think of so many things to include in it that now when I am graduating, it feels ironic to be at a loss for words. Leaving college is a big change. Every little thing feels so important that I find it difficult to decide between what to write and what to omit.

I was a conventional academically inclined student (or so I think?) who faced the same dilemmas about courses, projects, internships, clubs and careers that almost everybody else does. I had come to IITK with a long checklist, and I wanted to do everything. The inability to involve myself in extracurriculars during JEE prep time, and had motivated me so much that I wanted to explore everything that this institute had to offer. I wanted to dance, I wanted to play, I wanted to act, and so on. Now when I look back, I feel happy because I can see that, consciously or subconsciously, I have done a lot of the stuff that I had to head out to do. It has been an incredible journey. I can see how much I have grown, how much I have changed, and also how lucky I was that it all turned out to be for the better. Also, what makes this feeling even better, is that I can feel this happiness radiate off almost every student graduating.

But I am still at a loss of words, it is very difficult to decide what I want to include in this article. Maybe I should stop over-analyzing and just start? I am bound to end up making some progress, and well, something is always better than nothing. This may seem a little unconventional, but it is a strategy that I have unwillingly adopted countless times in my life here, and they have led to some of the best things in my life. I feel that as long as I was willing to take the first step, IITK was always there to help and guide me. And I think it does the same for everybody else as well.

IITK gives you a lot of opportunities to pursue whatever you feel like. However, I do think that the time here is just not enough to find exactly what clicks for you. I don’t mean this negatively, it is just how it is. You can’t find your lifelong passion in just 4 years.  But what you can do is try things out. I think this is why these opportunities are abundant.

When you enter here, you are given this free pass to go do whatever you like with no prereq, except very importantly, “the enthu”. In this exploration stage, some people get lucky, some stay confused, and some just go down the same conventional path, which is delaying the decision to find what one likes. You’ll find a lot of people who seem too sorted and a lot who seem ‘too chill’ about life. I was far from chill, and the thought that this might be the only place where I am allowed to try out and, more importantly, reject things without having any consequences, used to haunt me continuously. I felt as if I was running out of time. Like others, I was worried about finding my passion at 20, thought of placements as if it was the job I’d do all my life, and treated life decisions as if they were utterly irreversible. Having no clear idea of what I wanted from these years or what I wanted to do after college, I could say that I had no “north star” to guide me. The independence that I got allowed me to choose what to do, and knowing the level of impact that these decisions might have on my life was very overwhelming. But I think what made the entire journey worthwhile was that I never stopped going out and exploring, something I would advise everybody to do. It was while going through this process, where I tried things out, introspected and retrospected on them that I realised what IITK actually helps you with, and it’s more than just acting as a means to find your passion. 

IITK is quite a close-knit community, it is an ecosystem in itself. And I loved it the way it was. But it’s a different picture outside and within the campus, both literally and figuratively. You get more exposure here than when you were in school, but it is still not how it is in reality. You go out for internships and exchanges, but that’s also for a short time. You know that you will come back to these comfortable surroundings eventually.  Even though it doesn’t really expose you to the real world, it does wonders to prepare you for it. It instils in you the courage to back yourself and take risks. Pushing you through rigorous coursework time and again trains you to work hard. And by its diverse opportunities, you become aware of what is there for you to do.

It helps you figure yourself out. IITK constantly puts up questions to you. Who are you? What do you excel at? What are your weaknesses? and so on. And when I think about the way it does this, a picture comes to mind, which is of a parent sitting at the table with his child, tutoring him and saying, “Hey kid, so now I am going to give you this situation and let us see how you react to it and handle it. Don’t worry, if you keep trying honestly, you’ll not fail. It may seem fruitless but believe me, you’ll realise its importance later.”

IITK makes you comfortable to change, both within and around you. That being said, IITK definitely changes you. I was a people-pleaser. I highly valued what people thought of me as a person. Most of my satisfaction came from the respect people gave me through my achievements rather than the achievements themselves. Think of the guy who loved to be the monitor and would complain about even the silliest things to the teacher. I was very similar to that guy, and naturally, I had the same attitude coming in. Had it not been for the post-Covid semester I had here, I think I would have stayed the same. Living in a town where I had no school friends and online meetings being the only way to communicate, I was pumped up to be back in college and wanted to meet a whole bunch of people. I wanted to be more social. I knew this was a change in my attitude, and was okay with it. But it wasn’t taken positively by many people, including some of my friends. For them, it was seeing a different Lakshay after 1.5 years than who they had said goodbye to. At this time, I felt very confused. When I felt happy with how I was behaving and functioning, I could not see why there were people thinking that I had changed. Some even made comments that I was acting fake. I was constantly in a state of self-questioning, in fact,  I remember crying out in front of a friend about this. I also thought about returning to who I was so that other people like me and keep their feelings the same towards me. The influence that this time has had on me as a person was life-changing. It taught me the importance of letting go, expressing my emotions and making myself my number one priority. It also taught me how sometimes good communication and empathy solves the problem. But most importantly, I realised that either you choose who you want to be or the world will do it for you.

IITK also helps you realise what being a part of a community is. It teaches you how to build and maintain one and makes you realise why it’s so important. Every activity you become a part of, whether it be academic, sports, or maybe one that relates to a very distinct passion that you foster, comes attached to other people with the same interest as yours. I found my closest friends through some of the activities I was engaged in. A lot of this was because I was willing to venture out and take part in things. If I had chosen to stay within my comfort zone, things would have been much different, and I don’t think I would have had the friendships I have now.

IITK also makes you realise how effortful it is to maintain relationships, whether work or non-work. It’s different from school. School gives you a routine that makes you meet your friends every day. But in college you actually realise the efforts it takes to maintain friendships, especially when you have a good lot of friends. You go through a lot of ups and downs. I remember  I had almost called it quits with a friend and told him, “Maybe we are just not cut out to be friends”, and now still have him as one of the best people in my life, and somebody I can really count on. I see a lot of people facing similar problems, and I feel an absurd feeling of satisfaction whenever I see them. I think this is because I realise this is one of the many ways IITK prepares one for the outside world, and know that it is for our own good.

It also makes you go through a whole range of emotions. You feel happy, sad, vulnerable etc. etc., and it sometimes tinkers with your moral compass as well. You realise how normal it is to reach out for help and what it means to be there for someone in a time of need. I have cried, ranted, laughed, and shared a lot of emotions with my friends, all of whom I love dearly and would not exchange for anybody. I remember just before the Y18s were going to graduate, my wing and I were sitting, and somebody randomly put a guy on the spot to talk about the experience of this last semester. He started with how much fun it was, how everybody stayed together and shared so many memories, and I don’t know when tears started falling down my eyes, and then in some time, all of us were doing a group hug and crying like babies.

I give a lot of credit to IITK for this. It gave me my people for life.

It would be incomplete if I didn’t talk about the thing that almost every senior is concerned about nowadays the “culture”. A lot of people attribute a lot of random shit and trivial things (which they do to fulfil their own void of fun) to it. While I don’t necessarily think that hurling abuses through creative slogans to people of other halls or forcing people to participate in inter-hall events by dragging them against their wishes is a part of this culture, I understand the logic behind it. It easily relates to every way that IITK helps you grow. The “hall feeling”, a part of this infamous culture, is instilled as a means to encourage participation and, more importantly, as a means for students to come out of their shells and make connections. Forcing people to take up something in inter-hall events forces them to explore something that interests them. The countless nights that go into preparation, the problems students have with time management, and the results that they get, whether positive or negative, in my opinion, help them grow in some way or the other. 

Sometime along the way, I think these core ideas were forgotten, and random reasons for the existence of this culture were promoted. I played a lot of Squash, and during Squash, I saw the transition from not having a culture to what having a culture means. The culture of an institute is something that you, as a student of that institute, feel proud to be a part of and propagate. A culture of participation in sports, a culture in research, a culture of promoting inclusivity, a culture of collaboration, a culture that celebrates arts and technology – a culture that makes you a better version of yourself. This is what I think it should be like. 

Lastly, I would like to emphasise that all the things that I did or happened to me were only possible because I ventured out and showed the courage to try. I see a lot of people shying away from doing things they want to do just because they are scared. Scared for a lot of reasons but scared nonetheless. What I have observed is that taking even the smallest of steps helps.

And even if later you feel you are not cut out for what you set out to do, at least you’ll not be as clueless as you were before. I know this is not easy. It is very difficult to take that first step. But once you realise that this way actually works, it becomes a lot easier. This also resonates with a saying that I have, which I use a lot, and even have a T-shirt of – “ek hi to life hai”. Looking back now, I don’t recall if it was my desire to explore everything or my fear of missing out on anything that made me come up with it. But whatever it was, it has had a very fruitful outcome.