Disclaimer: Vox Populi, IIT Kanpur, is the exclusive owner of the information on this website. No part of this content may be duplicated, paraphrased, or interpreted in any other way without written consent from Vox Populi. If you want to reproduce any of the content on this page, please contact our chief editors directly or reach out to us by email at voxpopuli@iitk.ac.in.
In this 1st edition of As We Leave 2026, Sruthi Subramanian, a graduating Y22 from the Department of Mathematics, reflects on the unseen parts of her journey at IIT Kanpur. Looking beyond achievements and milestones, she shares how her four years here have shaped her into the person she is today, while building lifelong friendships and lasting memories along the way.
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.
People only see the best parts of you, and that’s how the world is designed now – companies have to talk to you and decide within 20 minutes whether they want to hire you or not. You have limited time and space to express and define yourself, and that limits who you are to your most recent professional experiences, your coding profile, or your CPI. I am basically my LinkedIn profile right? The metrics determining how well we fit into any group, is predecided, and we can choose whether or not to keep moulding ourselves to the ever changing mould… and we tend to keep changing, till one day we realise that we may not need to, to still be happy in life. Maybe we are still too young to see that, or maybe it is just the way society is built that forces us to not see it, even though, deep inside, all of us do. When I was a part of Vox, and I was a POC for a few seniors for this very series, I often got questions about what should be in an As We Leave. I always told people to make it their own – It could be anything. Make your own mould. Because, I truly believe that everyone is different and everyone has something unique to say. In this spirit, I want to do something different. I was told by a professor here that experiences are ‘real’, only when we have the ability to look at the bad as well, and not be disillusioned by seeing only the positives. So, I want to talk about the parts of me that people didn’t see, the parts of me that people did not ask advice from, and the parts of me that I hid, even from myself sometimes. More than my CPI, my branch, my grades, my PORs and my internship. Behind many successes, there were days of crying, stress and the feeling of not being enough. I also want to quote a few people in the process (anonymously of course), not to pinpoint or try to make anyone look bad, but just to put into perspective of who I am, and share the importance of just being kind, because behind every smile there is a story of hardship and struggle. Nothing comes for free, and the price of excellence is more often than not, very high.
Any resemblance to a real person/place/incident is purely coincidental.
A few months before IIT
“Don’t expect her to get into an IIT”
I did. And I got a better rank than the person who told my parents that.
Year 1
“So you have a high CPI. Which branch do you plan to change to? Anyway, you won’t get Computer Science”
I got the subject I wanted, and have no regrets.
Year 2
“I’m not asking for much. Itna toh kr skti ho.”
If I do a little for everyone, I won’t have any time left for myself. I still kept doing it, till at some point I realized that I could just say no.
Year 3
“The company you got an internship in tends to take more girls.”
Does that mean that I was not taken on my own merit?
Year 4
“So are you doing anything useful this semester?”
I shrugged.
“I thought so”
I smiled, not because I was happy, but because finally, I did not feel the need to justify anything to anyone anymore.
My last four years at IIT Kanpur was the first time I stayed away from home on my own. It gave me a glimpse into what the real world is like, and it taught me a lot – all the way from how to wash my own clothes to how to interact and deal with people – as a junior, as a senior, as a peer, as a student, as a teacher, as a mentor and as a mentee. My time here has been filled with the most unexpected dualities:
This is the very place where I have been the most overworked and underrested with no ounce of energy left in me.
It is also the place where I have been my most inspired and motivated self, reaching for the stars and dreaming big.
This is the very place where I was first stalked by a guy, and cycled back to my room as fast as I could, to get out of that situation.
It is also the place where I felt comfortable enough to wear shorts for the first time in my life (which is big because even now, most of my cupboard is made up of kurtis).
This is the very place I started off as a quiet and naive kid, who sat in whole meetings without saying one word.
It is also the place where I ended up leading meetings and running my own initiatives (a special shoutout to Stamatics and Vox Populi for giving me a supportive space to grow into who I am today).
This is the very place where the people I thought of as friends used me.
It is also the place where I made the deepest friendships, and found people to whom I can say anything to, and whom I will treasure forever.
People complain a lot about the pressure and the stress from being in such a high-achieving environment, and I couldn’t agree more. But at the same time, I believe that being here sets a different standard for what you perceive as normal and what you expect as the bare minimum. When you get used to such a system, you get used to working hard, and delivering good quality work. That sets you up for success. Such pressure is also a privilege, because it prepares you to do well in what really lies ahead. Being in IIT Kanpur has given me the opportunity to learn from, and interact and work with many people who are very very good at what they do (that is both a consequence of and a factor contributing to the environment here), and I definitely take back many lessons from each and every one of them.
If there is one piece of advice I could give anyone here, it would be to take care of yourself first. There will always be club meetings, society commitments, quizzes, and project submissions. But if you are not healthy and well, both mentally and physically, you will not be able to be your best self anywhere. Put yourself first, because you deserve it, and because that is necessary for consistent results in the long run. It is not easy, and there will be many factors pushing you to do otherwise. But think of yourself as a pressure cooker on a gas stove. If you don’t let the whistle blow intermittently, it could lead to a potential explosion.
I want to conclude with a shoutout to my support system. There is no way I would have made it without my family, friends, seniors and professors. It is said that when you are lonely or feel down, all you need to feel better is 8 minutes from a loved one, and as I leave IIT Kanpur, I realize that – while I did not always see it, I definitely had those people all along. Those who gave me more than just those 8 minutes, and those who realized I was down even when I did not say it. While a non-trivial part of me is grateful to be done with my degree and to be free of all the stress (at least temporarily), a part of me aches to say goodbye to these people, who knowingly and unknowingly healed parts of me they did not break. They are the real reasons behind everything I have achieved and I am forever grateful to them for making me who I am – for pushing and motivating me to keep growing, and for believing in me on days when even I did not believe in myself.
Written by: Sruthi Subramanian
Edited by: Amirtha Sreya S, Shriya Suravarapu
