As We Leave…#1

Rahul Agrawal is a final year undergraduate in the Electrical Engineering department. Let’s have a look at his journey at IIT Kanpur and live the nostalgia and reminiscence with him.

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.

यही जाना कि कुछ न जाना हाए 

सो भी इक उम्र में हुआ मालूम

                                                                मीर तक़ी मीर

I fondly remember an incident of me watching some Y18 peeps become club coordinators/heads and thinking to myself- “Wait, what?? These were the same kids asking us whether to fill their admission form with a blue or black pen sometime back.” Time literally flies away. I was told by seniors here in my first year that these 4 years of college are something I’ll remember for a lifetime (even those seniors who had barely completed 1 year here :p). It seemed quite cliché to me then. Apparently, everything about loss and separation is a cliché until you are in it. And here I am writing my memoir for this journey that looks to be almost over.

Honestly speaking, I always thought my story would be a bit too boring for the readers for it being all about my academic involvement. I started off as a textbook good boy. I would complete all assignments and ask doubts in the tutorial session. I would try my level best to be extremely humble and, at times, over-friendly to whoever I met. One can form an image by the fact that I didn’t miss more than 5 lectures in all in my first semester. MTH101, which haunted most of the batch, was the love of my life and my first A*. Library provided me peace and solace, and I would adore sitting there for hours.

An interesting consequence of having the protocols set in your mind is you experiment too little. You can be extremely productive in what you are pursuing but, at the same time, may be closing off some avenues without even giving a try. I inferred something similar from discussions with my wingies and bapu. What followed next was me going to almost every session for which I received a mail. I can recall my first and last ELS JAM session where the final scoreline read something like – (63, 42, 31, 1). I was 1. Amusingly, I got that 1 grace point just because the jury showed some mercy and asked me to start in the middle :p. I decided I need to plan better. Later, Vox nominations came out, and due to my profound interest in literature, movies, and writing, I joined Vox and remained there for the next 3 semesters.

When the dynamics slowly got settled came the 4th semester and the wind of internships. Before the trauma of preparation, the internship season brings you the trauma of finding your so-called ‘interest.’ I was treading fairly well in batti courses, but I knew that could clearly be attributed to my love for algebra, prob-stats, and mathematics, in general. At one point, I was seriously considering a branch change to MTH dept, but could never gather courage nor reasoning to explain myself, forget sharing with others. Moreover, I didn’t find EE dull as well in the first place.

At around the same time, two noteworthy conversations cleared a lot of fog for me. One was with a Y14 going for Ph.D. in communications (a field in EE) and another with an experienced HSS prof I was meeting those days. My question was the same – “When and how did you decide that this is what you wanted to do in your life?” The former said he didn’t consciously choose this. It was just a matter of chance that he stuck with a communications prof during a 2nd-year project, and the rest was more of going with the flow. The latter had a much precise answer- “I haven’t finalized yet. I am still in the transition phase.”

Some important realizations seeped in. No matter how many good or bad choices we have made to this day, we all still have interests and disinterests, likes and dislikes, preferences for the journey ahead. So, any single decision is not going to determine the rest of our lives, and we will have an opportunity to modify it any moment we want to. Moreover, there is no perfect choice. It is about personal acceptance. With me having tried only a small number from an infinite number of avenues on this planet, I may as well have already missed the best path for me long back, but does that make me sad today?

Despite good grades in most courses, I decided to altogether ditch batti core in internships and future research plans. Now when I think of it, I believe it was a somewhat impulsive call, fueled by my miserable experience in a 2nd year EE project. But do I regret it? No, I don’t. I was fortunate enough to get an internship in quants. Luckily, despite having mixed days in my internship, the application of quant in industry aligned with my fascination and seemed to be a possible shore for going with the flow.

The 5th semester witnessed another incident of extreme significance for me. It was the Orientation 18 Hall 13 reporting day. It was my first and foremost attempt to manage something substantial, and God, it was a total mess! All I can recollect is chaos, disorder, and troubled parents running around the entire Hall 13. We all have let ourselves down some time or the other, but letting down those 2400 people in front of you was a pathetic feeling. Having not slept for a long time and being constantly yelled at by every single person in the arena on your first big project isn’t a particularly encouraging sight to behold. I do have an explanation for that collapse, but justification- I neither have nor do I intend to search for. Looking back, from a personal perspective, I am thankful it happened. Having seen that mayhem has made me much more fearless and self-confident. I read somewhere that we never get over failures; we absorb them, and they carve us into different, often kinder, creatures.

I could never end this piece without mentioning my obsession with grades and accomplishments. Just like most of the readers, I had huge expectations from myself coming in here. While this does bring in competitiveness and desire to get better, a package of moments of enormous stress and anxiety comes together with it. 4 years is a long time, and I don’t think anyone really goes untouched with this feeling of self-doubt and loneliness. I am incredibly thankful to the student community for discussing such issues in the open and standing strong with each other at tough times, keeping aside several disagreements we may have had internally. It is hard to explain the amount of mental support I received, especially during the days of placements. 

An inseparable segment of my journey here was my time in Counselling Service. I am immensely grateful to CS for exposing to me to a concealed reality of the lives of people answering much more complicated questions than just career, grades, and extra-currics; for sensitizing me towards the concerns of a supposedly invisible community around us and above all, for a quite selfish reason of giving me some of the most lovable people in the campus as my best friends. I hope we take all the love and criticism we receive both positively and effectively and get more influential in the coming times to deal with mental health issues on campus.

Finally, as I am so close to leaving a place which has been my home for the last 4 years, I must say there is a massive surge of emotions. I am developing a strong feeling that the time we spend here is probably the time when we undermine the charm of this place the most. This imperfect place slowly transforms us all for sure; classifying it as favorable or not is a personal choice to make. We all come here to achieve big, and this place adorns us with so much more happiness. There is a subtle difference between the two, in my experience.  What many of us are aspiring for, typical examples being a high paying job, good research projects, reputed grad schools, administrative services, grades, etc. are simply accomplishments, not happiness. Achievements do build self-worth and are incredibly critical for growth, no denying that, but they may not always translate to long-lasting happiness.

Happiness is something much more bizarre. It is sleeping peacefully in those small cramped rooms that once seemed ghastly. It is lying down in that one wingies’ room the whole day despite any motive. It is going together to mess, canteen, lecture hall, ShopC, OAT, chowpaty, library, HC, and where not? It is making fun of that one person in the group for no reason at all. It is venting out 2 hours straight to your behen/bhai after your first big rejection or heartbreak. It is getting a tight compassionate hug from your squad after getting your first internship. It is walking down the comforting campus lanes the whole night, discussing the purpose of life. It is laughing hard with your squad remembering the crazy shit you all did 1 year back. It is sharing those intimate details of life which you didn’t even share with your parents. It is seeing each other grow and mature with time. It is planning to stay in touch and have regular reunions as you are graduating, despite knowing it won’t actually be possible. It is having a big smile on your face even from the thought of meeting that campus and those few people again after lockdown. That, my friend, is the true pinch of happiness in our lives.

Sounds cliché, doesn’t it? Told you.

Edited by:- Hemant Kejriwal , Aryan Pandeya