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In this 41st edition of As We Leave 2024, Akshay, a Y20 student from the Department of Electrical Engineering, shares his personal journey, from being a wide eyed fresher, to a leaving the hallowed halls of the place we all call home.
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.
I’m not sure whether this AWL should be just me spilling every single drop of tea about my college life, or whether it should be dark and mysterious, like a video game made by a certain Miyazaki. Truth is, I feel like someone just asked me to say absolutely anything in my native language – I seem to not be able to remember anything! So, forgive me, but this AWL will probably read like a 2013 MLG compilation – lots of jump cuts, zero cohesion, an unhealthy number of obscure references and inside jokes, and a feeling like you’ve just read someone recall a fever dream (which, frankly, isn’t far off the mark!)
In any case, this is how it happened. This is how I survived.
Year 1
“Okay, so the first night is never usually that bad in any of the games, so I’ll play through-“
-Mark “Markiplier” Fischbach, 2018
If you know where the quote is from, you know exactly how my year went. The first year wouldn’t be THAT bad, would it? Sure, we have to stay home for a year and a half because someone felt like bat soup was a good idea, but at least I can learn from my laptop and interact with the greatest young minds of India, right?
All those hypotheses were technically correct – the best kind of correct. I did find the most amazing people here, multitalented, incredibly intelligent – except they were all as big of a goofball and unserious as me. The interactions were not what I expected them to be – in a good way.
The fever dream started with a call from my SG, which was followed by a meeting with him and 5 other equally excited people, who eventually turned into actual bhais for the next few years. Where I expected sophistication and formality, at least in the beginning, I found the most offensive jokes at others’ expense, zoom calls at ungodly hours filled with bellowing laughter, and a place to vent about our professors (looking at nobody in particular. mth101/2).
The people from college I met first were my fellow Malayalees. In a way, my IITK journey started in Kochi, not Kanpur. We were as tightly knit as we could be (like Malayalees anywhere) and they provided a sense of familiarity in a place so foreign. For the next few years, these would be the people with whom I would celebrate festivals I would usually celebrate with my family; the ones I would go to for help in my courses, or to just take a break from speaking Hindi, to be honest. They still remain the most welcoming and helpful bunch of people at IITK.
A decision that set a major course for the rest of the college life was joining the Debating Society in the first year. Under the pretext of debating, we had so many 3 am sessions sharing memes on call instead of discussing what we were screaming at each other for for the past 2 hours. These people would indeed become my main support system at IITK, the people I’d go to whenever I was in dire need of someone to lend a metaphorical ear or a physical shoulder to cry on.
I remember the long sessions Karan and I had on Discord, laughing our lungs out on the most nonsensical things we could say just because we didn’t want to leave the call; the huge roar in the zoom meeting when Shreya got her first break (think “qualified for the final rounds” for you non debaters); the call Akanksha gave me when we broke in a tournament… all a breath of fresh air, compared to the feeling of being stuck in one place for so long (both physically in my room, and the drone of academics).
What did I learn in my first year? I’d say that I realized there was a LOT of work I had to do to become better for the people I cared about, and to become better for myself. The transition from the stoic, emotionless Agent 47-esque person to someone who could contemplate vulnerability, grapple with conflicting emotions, or make difficult decisions impacting the happiness of the ones I cared about, was, needless to say, challenging. But it was necessary. Closing your heart to things is the coward’s way out. Open your heart to it. Let yourself be hurt.
Year 2
“We are many. You are one. Your abilities pale before us.”
-Ermac, in Mortal Kombat
“We” was a group we were too lazy to name. Originally a group to discuss ESC101, it evolved into Harshul, Sanika and I helping each other through the academic nightmare of EE DCs and ensuring we were all awake for the 8 AM endsems. Watching lectures together was the only way we could finish at least one in a single sitting.
Sanika was actually the first friend I met on campus, after a long, only slightly scary journey from Kerala to UP. The campus was beautiful and overwhelmingly large. After the adrenaline rush of leaving home wore off, however, the freezing cold began to hit. This was one of the many things that led to my second year becoming arguably my worst year in college.
I entered a relationship I wasn’t remotely ready for, I fell victim to clinical depression, and academics were as unforgiving as ever. On top of all this, the isolation I put myself through, the inability to effectively share my feelings with those around me really took its toll on me. Getting steamrolled with EE210 and ESO203 was just icing on the cake. But hey, I got antidepressants, finally!
I say “arguably” my worst year because a lot of things went right this semester too. I finally experienced what it feels like to be cared for by someone outside your family, I started to make progress on bettering myself, breaking thought patterns and becoming kinder to myself. At the expense of a few grades and a little bit of my sanity, I figured out the person I wanted to be.
Year 3
“Life must be made simple, but not simpler”
– A certain professor, quoting Einstein
This year, I made some cool new friends – Gaurang ,who weirdly looks like me, and Soham, who does not. These are the people I still vibe with so much, be it the equally broken humor we share, or our love for video games. I also started getting the hang of courses again, with a newfound interest in my departmental courses. Not everything was hunky-dory though, I was having a rough time recovering from depression, and the scrambled mess the previous year had made me, took a lot of effort to put back together.
This was really made worse by the stress of the intern drive, a sentiment shared by many of my friends as well. The stress of academics, internship prep, tests, interviews, rejections brought me to my knees, and by the time I finally got an internship at NVIDIA, I was heavily bruised, battered, and deep fried.
In the end, things worked out for the best. My grades improved, and I had SO much fun in my internship. I finally figured out what I wanted to do with my career. The new people, the new environment in Bengaluru, all made me hopeful for the future again, and it is with this sentiment we go into the climax of my IITK experience.
Year 4
“Hesitation is Defeat”
-Isshin Ashina, in “Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice”
Soham convinced me to download this game called Sekiro, this quote from which became the theme of my final year. Everything was set, with the PPO from NVIDIA, and like Logic’s discography, the pressure finally went away. I had one goal this year: to go out with a bang. To not hesitate to do anything, whether it was to accrue knowledge like a mad scientist, to annoy my friends into hanging out with me or to just show up at their doorstep unannounced, to do the most with my time here, which was quickly running out.
As a result, this year was the most fun I’ve had in the longest time. The courses I had taken up were hard, but extremely fulfilling; the fun I had with all my friends – going to pronites, getting KFC for no reason other than getting KFC, going on a trip to Dharamshala and having the time of my life with the best people there – the list goes on. I finally learnt to enjoy my own company (well, to an extent, at least), finally explored the campus, went on late night cycle joyrides, finished Sekiro thrice, and so on.
I reconnected with DebSoc, which had evolved tremendously in the time I was away. I went to Madras with a bunch of clever juniors (shoutout Om, Praanshu, Shivanshu, Aniket and Siddharth) and we bagged an inter-IIT gold there – SO MUCH happened this year, just because I learned to live a little more and worry a little less.
This is exactly what I want to tell you, my dear reader. Stop worrying so much. Stop caring about things not under your control, and stop worrying about being wrong. We are sometimes so caught up in trying to be right that we forget to be happy. And while I do realize I have as much wisdom as the tooth that the dentist tore out of my gums a few weeks ago, I’d still advise you to be less serious about things. The world is a funny place, and it only makes sense that you have a laugh at it sometimes. You cannot afford to be stuck in cycles of negativity, doubt, and isolation if you want to thrive. To have a better college life, the cycle must end here. You must be better.
Bonus Chapter: Home
“Farewell, good hunter. May you find your worth in the waking world.”
-The Doll, “Bloodborne”
I came back home for the first time in 4 months, after college ended and I said my goodbyes to the ones closest to me and a few professors who genuinely impacted my life for the better. I now spend a LOT of time on my PS5, and while I’m glad to be home, I miss the freedom I had in college, to wake up at 3 pm, to take a bath at 2 am without anyone getting disturbed, to enjoy time with myself alone, away from the prying eyes of others. I am glad college is over, yet there is something so weirdly charming about the place that painfully whittled you and the people around you down into the beings you are today, about collective suffering and joy that brings people together. What is a home if you can’t simultaneously have the best and the worst times of your life there? What is a home without love, and what is love without struggle?
On the bright side, at least it isn’t 50 degrees in here.
Written by: Akshay M
Edited by: Anisha, Devdhar, Mayur
Designed by: Sanyam
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