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.
For the 35th edition of As We Leave 2026, Riya Sanket Kashive, a Y22 student from the Department of Civil Engineering, takes us through her four years at IITK – from navigating early semesters with a fracture to realising that contentment regarding one’s life doesn’t lie in package, PoR or CPI but how one feels about the decisions one makes and how the greatest virtue lies in being able to forgive yourself and move forward to start afresh.
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.
For the non-readers, podcast freaks, or if you’d like to hear the story in my voice, here’s the audio. Read along 🙂
As a child, I had imagined what it would be like to get a limb fractured. Like many other dreams, IITK made this one come true.
Life hit me with a motorcycle in the middle of my first end-semester exams, and I ended up fracturing my leg. Absolute chaos followed, but I returned. The accident made my second semester harder to navigate. The distances that seemed convenient by cycle now grew formidable, with me having little choice but to walk all across campus, first with crutches, and slowly without. The lack of accessibility on campus cost me opportunities. I missed my first shot at a real part in MClub (there was no lift back then), and did not apply for any position that would require me to go somewhere and write a test.
The consequences weren’t all bad though. I ended up with a single room in first year, something people attain in much later semesters 🙂 The perpetual trot revealed to me the pleasure of walking. I could never really get back on the cycle again; I did (intermittently, for the sake of convenience) but walking started to feel like less of a cumbersome compulsion, and slowly became a choice.
The cursed group I was blessed to be a part of
As walking started to feel like a choice, academics weighed heavier. The early semesters, packed with DCs and labs, led to the realisation that Civil Engineering, while an honourable discipline in itself, was not my cup of tea. I longed for HSS courses and OE credits to exercise the academic freedom that IITK gives its students. What I would do with those credits, I did not know then, but the concept of choice gave me much hope.
My side quests at Mclub continued, leading to the best of friends. Our Mcult hangouts were a constant source of joy through my years here. Through (then) ICS, IITK gave me people who genuinely cared, and gave me a chance to propagate that care further. Outreach Cell gave me immense opportunities to meet people, be creative, take initiative, and be a part of teams with excellent bonding. SIGCHI was an unsuccessful venture, but it did dramatically change my life 🙂
The grand cult outings
When I went to my first SIGCHI meeting, I was humbled in seconds, because I knew nothing. As I set out to explore Human Computer Interaction, my firsthand experience of facing accessibility issues came handy. I could empathise with those who struggle as a result of bad design. This empathy catalysed interest, and I now knew what I had to do with those OE credits; I decided on structuring them into ML and Cognitive Science minors, because they were the best academic options to explore my newfound area of interest. Before I knew it, I had meandered my way through two more minors and eight whole semesters.
Tough realisations, rejections during Intern season, bouts of burnout, and borderline hopelessness resulting from unrewarded efforts, they came and ebbed like the tides. I was lucky enough to have people who would give me refuge, but there were times where I dealt with problems all by myself, (sometimes by choice and sometimes not), and I believe it’s made me stronger. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
Really fun people I wish I had more time with
As I leave, fairly content, let me tell you that the contentment does not lie in the package, PoR, the CPI or the stories. It lies in how you feel about your decisions. Because college is, at the end of the day, a series of decisions. Nobody makes all the right ones, even if one’s juniors, seniors and batchmates cite them as an example of such. You will make decisions that you will thank yourself for, as well as those that will cause you gut-wrenching regret. But you must make peace with them. Trust that tragedies will gently snowball into epiphanies, wait.
My emotional crutches
And forgive. Forgive your circumstances, and its creators, including yourself. Mind you, forgiveness is not losing memory of what happened, or unlearning the wisdom of experience, or even desensitising yourself to what you felt. The intent is not to erase or hide scars, but to start the next day fresh. Life gives us one body and many scars. One past and many futures. So sweat, bleed, cry. Feel your scars burn and heal. Get your leg fractured. Then fix it. Use your crutches, and start walking.
Written By: Riya Sanket Kashive
Edited By: Deeksha Jalan, Pratyush Sandhwar
