Rajat Ravi is a final year undergraduate in the Chemistry 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.
Here I am thinking about my entire journey of IITK, an odyssey to be precise, thinking about how I got through many of the difficult times, and yet here I feel that coming up with the right beginning of this article has to be the most difficult one. Now when I am backtracking my journey, the very first exciting memory that comes to my mind was my interaction with seniors. Like many of the noobs of IITK, I was also terrified of the things I had heard about how the interaction goes. Unlike some lucky people, I was not able to escape this interaction. Well, I was not the only one who was part of this interaction, my “Bhai” Akhilesh Gupta (Y16, MSE) was also there to make this event even more interesting. What happened is something we swore to keep a secret. Now that I am recalling this memory, I guess I was the lucky one to have experienced this phase of IITK.
Like most people, I had a terrible academic start. I think the main reason for that was my sheer overconfidence. In my first lecture of MTH101, I was taught that “there exists a rational number between two real numbers”. This struck me hard. Almost a year before I was solving some mind-boggling problems in mathematics, and here I am proving the obvious things. Similarly, in the first lab of TA101, I was writing “ABCD….”. These things made me drip with overconfidence, and I screwed up my semester. But that just was the starting point on my academic graph. In the end, it comes down to students whether they wish to see the graph climbing up or sink further. I know many of you like myself must have heard that it is difficult to increase your CPI after the second year. Let me tell you this the most depressing and fallacious rumor you will come across during your time at IITK. The credits in all the semesters are almost the same meaning you have an equal opportunity every semester.
Unlike a large group of students, I knew where I wanted to be at the end of this journey, and most of my academic decisions were directed towards achieving this goal. While I was filling out the choices as to which IIT and which branch to choose I had one thing in mind, “my goal”, to be able to get into Astronomy and I think it is self-explanatory that I was looking for institutes which were good in research and finally landed up at IITK. There are many research aspirants out there who are willing to work in interdisciplinary fields (in my case Astrochemistry), and it can be achieved by a scrupulous exploration of one’s own as well as other departments. I have seen people who had great potential to excel in research but lost their interest. The one reason that I have seen common in many cases is that people take UGPs under some professors. If the professor turns out to be someone who is not student-friendly consequently, by the end, students come to the conclusion that research is not suited for them. Don’t let this be the case.
In my third year, while everyone around me was able to secure an internship, I was still mailing different professors in search of a research internship. My third year almost came to an end, and I was still not able to secure an internship. So rather than wasting my summer doing nothing, I decided to do some courses at IITK in the summer and prepare for GRE. To all those out there who are in search of a research internship, don’t feel disheartened if you are not able to secure one. It is possible to build a good research profile by working on projects at IIT Kanpur as well and that is exactly what I did and it finally helped me secure a PhD position at the University of Arizona.
I think I have given too much academic advice which I don’t know if it should have been a part of “As I leave”. Let’s get into some Chill zone and talk about something apart from academics. No matter how much you get into academics, in the end, most of your cherished memories would be the time spent with your friends. IITK has given me friends who are ready to take GPL for no good reason. Currently, I am at my home drafting this article and all I can think of is to make the best of the months that I have left with my friends. After grinding the 7th semester (the most crucial one), we were prepared to go wild this semester, but this quarantine has been a colossal blockade.
The fun at IITK begins with Orientation. You get to know about different clubs and hobby groups and the institute as a whole. I associated myself with the Astronomy club as it inclined with my interests. I guess the entire Y16 batch has their very first HEC meeting engraved in their memory; the “Single Room with A/C” meeting. Being associated with an SnT club, the first significant event for me was Takneek. I experienced my first night out during Takneek. As soon we were free from our event, we were rushed to the common room to help out with the preparations of Rube Goldberg, and this is what happened during the entire Takneek. I think a thank you note for the HEC is in order for creating these wonderful memories. But after witnessing all these inter-hall competitions for four years, the major regret would be that I can’t say “Marathas forever” or “Hall 10 forever”. I know it is essential to take academics seriously, but fun and academics can go hand-in-hand if one has the motive.
I would like to conclude by saying you have four years to be irresponsible here, relax. Work is for people with jobs. You’ll never remember class time, but you’ll remember the time you wasted hanging out with your friends. So stay out late. Go out with your friends on a Tuesday when you have a paper due on Wednesday. Spend money you don’t have. The work never ends, but college does…
Written by:- Rajat Ravi
Edited by:- Akshat Goyal
