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In the 21st edition of As We Leave, Ishi Jain, a Y22 student in the Department of Statistics and Data Science, writes about the fine print nobody warns you about – the rejections, the friendships, the playlists that got her through both. Four years, one long Spotify queue, and a lot of growing up no one signs up for on purpose.
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 IITK.
I don’t think I ever agreed to the terms and conditions.
Not consciously, at least.
There was no checkbox on the day I came to campus. I just came to study Math, which immediately felt like a mistake after seeing my MTH 111 quiz 1 marks. For context: I was a very big nerd when I arrived. For the past four years, all she had done was study. So I came to college with one quiet, burning intention, to cover up for lost time. To live fully, in whatever way that meant. And IITK, in its own chaotic way, gave me the freedom to figure out what that even looked like.
There was no pop-up saying “By continuing, you consent to confusion, comparison, and frequent existential crisis.” No fine print warning me that the version of me who leaves would be unrecognizable to the one who arrived.
And yet, somewhere between that first hello and my last goodbye, I must have clicked “Accept.”
I did everything college had to offer. I religiously studied to get the best grades, and I cried enough to fill a dry river when I couldn’t get an intern. I dyed my hair purple, learned to swim on campus, and racked up nearly 80k+ minutes on Spotify in the last two years. The library became my second home. I went from barely attending classes to showing up at professors’ office hours. I went from proving 1>0 in MTH301 to publishing a paper in the last semester with my best-friend. I went from running home every break or weekend to planning multiple trips a semester, and still running home on long weekends, because some things don’t change, and honestly some things shouldn’t. I found some of my best friends here. And I lost some of them too. And through it all, I tried, really tried, to feel okay even when there were a hundred reasons not to. Somewhere between chasing things and losing them, between feeling too much and pretending not to, I lived a hundred different versions of myself in these four years.
And now, as I leave, I don’t think I can point to just one version and call it me. But maybe that’s the point.
As quoted by One Direction: having no regrets was all I wanted. But here we are. I wish I had been smarter about managing my academics, not just studying harder, but studying with more intention, more curiosity, less panic. There’s a difference between grinding to survive a course and actually learning something, and I didn’t always choose the second one. I wish I had held on to some friendships I let go of too easily. I wish I had taken more chances. I really wanted to perform in at least one ME but couldn’t. I wish I had raised my hand more in rooms where I felt small. I wish I had asked for help sooner, more often, with less shame. But it’s okay, I did what I felt was right in the moment. The hard years weren’t wasted. The 2 AM anxiety was teaching me something about my own limits. The 1st semester gradesheet that made me question all my choices, was the beginning of learning how to fall apart without losing myself. Everything had a clause I couldn’t read at the time. Everything made sense, eventually, in the margins.
I didn’t have a lot of friends in school, or maybe you could say any. I never imagined I’d end up so lucky in some of my friendships here.
I met a lot of great people, but looking back now, only a few stuck till the end. Some weren’t even there in the beginning and became the closest by the end. As pointed out by a friend, I tend to back out of plans that involve too many people. And honestly? Fair. You don’t really get to talk to anyone properly in a big group hangout. I’m a small-group, deep-conversation, let’s-just-sit-somewhere-and-talk kind of person. It took me a while to stop feeling guilty about that and just accept it as part of how I’m built. I couldn’t manage my friendships really well in the first two years, but slowly I realized that having a smaller number of good friends is better than having a wide web of connections.
I don’t think I could have survived this college without my friends.
Sitting in my friends’ rooms laughing so hard our stomachs hurt, watching Nandini mix all the cards in Uno just because she was losing, Vasundhara functioning at 0.5x speed, Nandita counting how many hours of sleep were left before her 8 AM class and giving me free cuddles. Ordering-in with my roommate Aditi. Deciding what to wear together before every fest or outing and getting ready side by side. All the rant sessions, gossip sessions, and conversations that somehow stretched till 3 AM without any of us realizing where the time went. There was something so beautiful about how ordinary those moments felt while we were living them, and how impossible they feel to let go of now.
And then there’s music. I had always loved it growing up, but somewhere during these four years, I fell in love with it in a way that surprised even me. Not casually, the way people say they “like music.” I mean the kind of love where a song plays and you feel understood in a way that no one’s words have quite managed. It became constant when everything else was shifting. It held me through the rejection emails, the late-night study sessions, the days I felt alone and the days I couldn’t explain to anyone, including myself. 80k+ Spotify minutes isn’t a statistic. It’s a diary. And my friends knew this better than anyone, which is probably why they got me the ‘Lil Ish DJ’ title that is honestly the most accurate representation of who I became here.
IITK is beautiful in a way that sneaks up on you. It’s not the kind of beauty that hits you immediately. It’s the kind you notice slowly, on a random evening when you’re cycling back from somewhere and you stop for no reason and just look around. The sunsets were my favourite. The sky from the fountain area in front of CCD on certain evenings turns colours I don’t have names for. The C5 balcony at 6 PM is the best seat in the house if you’re lucky enough to catch it. And at Kargil Chowk, the sun manages to align itself perfectly between the branches every single evening, like it practiced, like it knows it has an audience. I’ve stood there more times than I can count, sometimes mid-conversation, sometimes alone with my earphones in with a perfect song to match the feeling, and every single time it felt like the day was worth it. Even on the days it wasn’t.
Kanpur gets a lot of hate, and sometimes rightfully so. But the campus? The campus is something else entirely.
ELS was such an important part of this journey. It gave me some of the best people I met in college, batchmates, juniors, and seniors. Through ELS, I got to go to Rendezvous at IIT Delhi and Inter-IIT Cult Meets at IIT Kharagpur & IIT Patna, which felt less like competitions and more like very elaborate adventures with the best people.
The trip to Delhi was my first college trip and I was very excited. It was my first chance to attend a fest outside IITK, that excitement lasted right until we were informed that participants were not allowed to attend the concerts as there had been a stampede the previous year. It was disappointing at the same but in hindsight, it hardly mattered. The trip itself was peak. We spent our time exploring Delhi with our coordinators, jamming in the metro, wandering around Chandni Chowk, eating at famous Paranthe Vali Gali, walking around CP, visiting India Gate and many more places I cannot remember at the moment. There was an incident that happened with us at CP which sent Mayur into a 1 hour state of shock. The details are funnier when told in person.
Kharagpur scared me a little at first. The campus was huge, slightly intimidating, and every building seemed to come with either a horror story or a deeply questionable legend attached to it. But somehow, that trip became one of my favourites. I still remember me, Nandini, and Mayur watching the sunrise at the IITKGP helipad. Roaming around campus with my friends half-lost, not entirely sure where we were going but very committed to the bit.
Patna was different and the best I believe. By then, I was one of the coordinators, and since only Nandini and I had gone from the club as coordinators, we had a lot of responsibilities on us, which was unfortunate because neither of us looked like people who should be trusted with important things. Before leaving, everyone kept warning us, “It’s Patna, be careful,” but IIT Patna ended up giving me some of the warmest memories of college, even though I managed to break my suitcase on the very first day while dragging it across the broken road from the railway station. The campus looked beautiful at night, with warm yellow lights spread across the campus and that perfect December cold in the air. We went for a last-minute Christmas Eve dinner at a nearby restaurant as a club, and I never knew that dinner would become one of my favourite memories from college. It’s funny how the unplanned or almost-cancelled things always end up being. We girls stayed up talking so late into the night that we ended up sleeping in the same room, with seven of us sharing a double bed. We brought a medal back home which became one of the highlights of our tenure. And yes, I will never forget those long, unforgettable, wonderful, and messy train journeys we took to reach these places. Sorry to all the people we prank-called in the middle of the night out of nowhere :))
The intern season deserves its own paragraph, because that is the period when most of my character development happened.
I was told by everyone, seniors, friends, people who seemed to know these things, that I would have an offer on Day 1. And I believed them. Fully, completely, without a backup plan, because why would you need a backup plan when everyone’s telling you you’re a sure thing? I didn’t apply to Day 2 or beyond. Why would I? I was going to be done by Day 1 evening.
I wasn’t.
Six rejections on Day 1. I counted them like they were punches, because that’s what they felt like and the worst part wasn’t even the rejections themselves. It was the silence after. Most of the people were celebrating, making calls home, putting down their laptops with that specific exhale of relief and I was crying in my room with no plan.
I’d been at the top of a hill, or at least I’d believed I was, and in the span of one day, someone pushed me clean off the edge. I hit the bottom and had to figure out, slowly, how to get up again.
Eventually, I got an intern. It wasn’t the one I’d imagined, wasn’t the timeline I’d planned, and for a long time it didn’t feel like enough because I kept measuring it against the version of Day 1 I’d been so sure was mine. It took me a whole year to stop doing that. A whole year to stop replaying the what-ifs, to stop flinching every time someone brought up internships, to stop treating that one day like the definitive statement on my worth.
It wasn’t. It isn’t.
But here’s what that period gave me that nothing else could: it broke the version of me that needed external validation to feel real. The scrambling, the rebuilding, the having to figure it out with zero plan and a bruised ego, that was where the most growth happened. Not in the wins. In the recovery. It molded me into a better person.
Overconfidence is a funny thing. It feels exactly like self-belief until it doesn’t. Having faith in yourself is good, but leaving zero room for things to go differently is a plan built on a single point of failure.
Build the backup. Apply anyway. Not because you doubt yourself, but because the world doesn’t always read the script you wrote for it.
Eventually, I fell in love with this place. I mean the unglamorous version: slow Tuesday evenings, fountain area sunsets, my 10 PM coffee, the strange comfort of being surrounded by people who were all slightly unhinged in their own particular ways, and the feeling of coming back to your hall after a hectic day just to knock on your best friend’s door and talk for hours.
I fell in love with my own company. That one surprised me the most. I came in needing to be around people constantly, and I leave having learned that some of the best conversations I’ve had were the ones I had with myself, on long walks, earphones in, figuring things out one song at a time.
Basically, I turned into Lorelai Gilmore: emotionally attached to coffee, deeply unserious at times, slightly overwhelmed all the time, and somehow getting through life one conversation and playlist at a time.
Although I don’t know what I exactly want to do in life , somewhere along the way I ended up loving my degree.
Then, the last semester comes in. With so many things planned each day, it becomes hard to press pause and realize that these beautiful four years are really ending.
Sitting in your friend’s room at 3 AM for what might be the last time, watching her pack. Walking to the mess for that last dosa. Writing testimonials for your friends and not knowing how to fit four years of knowing someone into a text box. Clicking photos with everyone you know, thinking one photo can somehow summarize and treasure that beautiful bond. Painting with your friends in the wing corridor. Writing for the last time in the group chat “Koi Divyam Chalega.” Having that last Mocha with your friend, which had been a ritual after every single class. Watching someone cry on leaving, when you were so sure that person could never cry because they had always seemed that strong.
Nobody tells you that the last semester doesn’t just feel like an ending, it feels like a hundred small lasts happening all at once, and you can’t catch all of them. You only realize something was the last time after it’s already over. And that’s the hardest part, not the goodbye itself, but all the goodbyes you didn’t know you were having.
So here it is. The full Terms and Conditions, retroactive and honest.
You will not remain who you were. Not everything will make sense while it’s happening. You will outgrow people, and people will outgrow you. You will feel behind. You will have days where you feel completely alone. You will realize no one really has it figured out. You will rewrite your definition of success. You will develop an emotional dependency on coffee and music. You will convince yourself “this is the worst place.” You will miss versions of yourself that existed only here. Some friendships will feel like home before you even notice. You will wish you had taken more pictures. You will learn the art of pretending you’re okay, and then slowly, you will unlearn it. You will build routines just to survive. You will start valuing peace over everything else. You will realize effort doesn’t always guarantee outcomes. You will miss the simplicity of having your people around. The small things will matter the most. You will leave with more questions than answers.
And you will miss this place and more importantly the people in ways you can’t imagine yet.
I accepted all of it. Eventually. I think I always did.
Signing off, with a full heart, a very long Spotify queue, a tiny DJ set, and a cup of coffee that’s gone cold because I got too distracted writing this.
Written by : Ishi Jain
Edited by : Adiba Areej Laskar, Lavanya Srivastava
