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The 13th edition of As We Leave 2024 features Parikshit Tomer, a graduating Y20 student from the department of Chemical Engineering. He covers almost everything about his experience here at IITK ranging from the online to offline shift and how he dealt with the change. Read on to have a good laugh and maybe learn some valuable life lessons at the same time.
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.
It is said that some of all wisdom lies in JEE prep. Well, then the person who said this wouldn’t have had the gratifying experience of being at IITK because all of some wisdom garnered during JEE is flushed down the commode at the unisex bathrooms in RM as you are asked to ‘khol ke bta’ at 3 in the night.
I was very confused as to how to start this AWL. So I decided to do away with the toilet humour in the beginning so that I could talk about my experiences undisturbed by the undeniable urge to talk about a top 3 list of best washrooms on campus.
Before we move forward, a few things about me. I come from a household that runs a coaching institute. And so, coming to IITK wasn’t just a dream. It was part of the Tomer code of conduct. I spent a considerable time of my childhood solving sheets of Mechanics and RBD rather than talking to a lot of people. I was given unrestricted access to the internet at an age when no kid should know what 4chan was. Hence, the ‘overactive imagination’ that my English teacher claimed I had and blamed it to be the cause of my nose-diving grades.
I was a part of the infamous Covid Batch,
So after two online years of changing hairstyles to confuse my peers as to what my actual hairstyle was(only to get a receding hairline on campus due to this damn IITK water), we received the coveted invitation to be able to set our royal posteriors inside an IITK lecture hall rather than wear underwear to CHE211 lectures at 8 in the morning on zoom.
The Online to offline shift reminded me of Saving Private Ryan, where this guy goes on a vacation to a German beach, and then people inexplicably start shooting at him for no reason at all.
Yeah, that’s what it felt like.
Everyone talks about how good it felt meeting friends and all that jazz, but what hit my introverted-sheltered self first upon coming to campus was the sense that I was gonna have to do my laundry. Couple that with compulsory offline attendance in early morning classes, and I was contemplating taking the first train back to Delhi by the end of the first week, and that’s something a lot of people don’t tell you about college. How difficult it is to make it past the first week without breaking down.Not just academics and projects or working on cutting-edge research but also things like eating breakfast(something I still haven’t done successfully) or doing your laundry. College is like playing FIFA against prime BARCA with you having Wrexham United,10 men down.
As a part of my process of fitting into college, I tried my hand at a lot of things. The online sem saw me double time clubs like a high school jock and then end up with no 3rd year POR to speak of as a result. So, if there is one thing I WOULD like for you to take away from here, it is, by all means, explore and try your hand at new things, but,
When people say f*** around and find out, make sure you get to the ‘finding out’ part and don’t become a permanent resident of the ‘f*** around’ ville. Because if you do, then the only thing you will have at the end of 4 years is a seeping trauma of all group projects and a perennial hatred for POR holders.
Over time, the ‘B.Tech’ way of life began to seep in. The cliches became quirks, doing laundry became routine(or an absentee for some), and the people … became closer.
Earlier, what had just been a spectre became an entity doomed to roam and haunt the same hallways as me. The strangers occupying the seats at CCD are transformed from polka dots on a sun dress to characters straight out of a Wes Anderson film.
Now, I have been introverted all my life. I have also been rude and crass in places I shouldn’t have been. Before coming to campus, I thought the world was a bitter place and something best left for others to be dealt with. And I believe that everyone else thought the same of me.
And so, the hive mind of smelly walking Neanderthals I found myself surrounded with seemed to be able to look past my comically large nose, this group of people who weren’t phased by my insufferable love for movies and books. Or weren’t phased by my devotion to Star Wars people who..Dare I say it? It actually tolerated me and made me rethink my zombie apocalypse plans.
What was even more surprising is that despite my best efforts at imagining myself as a lonesome honey badger, I found my neural pathways concocting chemicals that resembled what I can only describe as a delightful blend of serotonin-infused confetti and dopamine-fueled fireworks, sparking joy in the most unexpected moments like a Disney parade marching through the wilderness of my mind.
This was the first sign of what I can only describe as a tryst with my laundry. If anyone asks what changed me the most at IITK, the malfunctioning washing machines here would stand first.
But coming to campus was just the beginning, and our nascent minds were due to a seismic shock popularly described as ‘getting a job’.
I truly believe the intern and placements seasons are just as likely to spawn a radical communist as they are to create a Data Analyst. The environment of those days is something that has shown me humans at all ends of the “characters in a post-apocalyptic world” scale.
Everyone from selfless protagonists trying to help everyone out to scheming marauding asses who don’t tell anyone they have been bitten until the last moment before turning into a zombie. It’s a time of colossal responsibilities heaped on our infantile shoulders.
So much so that ideas of being ambitious or trying to change the world take a back seat when you are trying to get shortlisted in a mid-tier core firm. But at the same time, this has also shown me some incredible people who have dared to go against the norm and chart their way through rough seas with nothing but a broken slipper and a flip-flop to paddle with. Absolute nut jobs who try their hands at firms way out of their league or try out for endeavours deemed too risky by many. This breed of whacked-out crackheads who, despite everything, dare to take a step forward without thinking of setting up a safety net or a backup first is people who I truly admire.
Although these people were hard to find, and more often than not, they weren’t in the places you would expect them to be. But unearthing one of those nutjobs on campus was a true delight and a highly recommended experience for anyone.
Now I realize I have been skipping over a lot of stuff here. My time at clubs like Debsoc and ELS, or my encounter with the absolute sitcom characters that were the professors here.The experience of learning about metal electrodes from someone who had spent their entire lives dedicated to that one cylindrical object to meeting incredible people who you knew were either gonna win a Nobel prize or start their own terrorist division was …something…. to say the least. Professors are a fascinating group of men. They are people who have worked hard to get to where they are today, and their contributions to society far outweigh anything I could hope to achieve, so I believe I am no one to comment on their skill set or credibilities.
Having said that,
I believe there is something to be said about how accurate some of the cliches in Big Bang Theory can be. Academics at IITK is a wild ride, made more so by the sitcomesque professors on our campus. One second, you top a mass transfer quiz, and the next, you are in an HSS class discussing why our society is biased towards poodles rather than pugs.
It is with this dual life of having a hive of friends and a cast of academicians juggling by my side that I sauntered to my final year of college.
By then, the campus irrevocably took home in my heart. This place changed from a pilot episode to a full-blown season. The quirks became endearing, the academics became tolerable, and the hive became larger.
This place, with its DIY laundry and half-cooked potatoes that had inevitably taken root in my heart(those potatoes gave me dysentery, so the heart wasn’t the only place they had taken root in), now gently but firmly was telling me to fork off.
Now, as I do find my posterior being kicked with an IITK logo-shaped boot, I am condemned to look back, and as I leave, I write this, not as a summary of my CV but as a feeble attempt to make a mark on the void. I am hurling words in the darkness of the Vox webpage, hoping someone out there is reading this. To try and chip one stone in this cavernous dungeon. Leaving now makes me wonder if I achieved anything at all. I look across at the corner of my room where the folds of laundry lie washed and clean, and the pictures of my hive adorn my table, and I find myself nodding as I run my hand through the hairline I inevitably lost.
This is why, when sitting in CCD in one of its wooden armrest chairs, Leaning back to the bitter-sweet smell of coffee wafting through the premises. With the comforting hum of conversation in the back, a small battalion of people waiting to order at the counter, and a teeming mass of CCD workers preparing mispronounced Croissants(K-RO-S-AN, like a Japanese curse word) and black coffees, I found myself surrounded by spectres once again. The faces that seemed familiar and yet completely new.People in the same circle of hell as me, and yet with a different prefix to their roll number as mine. I realized that at that moment, I knew no one in that room. As the coffee arrived and the CCD staff gave me a sad, knowing smile, I realized…this was my cue to leave.
Written by: Parikshit Tomer
Editted by: Ashutosh Sharma, Anika Gupta
Designed by: Sanyam Shivare
