Siddhartha Saxena is an undergraduate in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering from the Y15 batch. Let’s hear out his journey and fundas as he leaves.
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Prologue
The past few days have been full of nostalgia and emotions as I write this, possibly my final piece down for Vox Populi from my hotel room in Sikkim with possibly the final wing trip ever (at least with as many of us together).
In between the rush of packing things up and doing no dues, I have had the chance to relive not the last four but six years of my life with the aptly titled TVF web-series Kota Factory (which I would surely recommend! ), and it has made me look at how have I been battered grown as a person in this time. The role that IITK has played in it and the factors that were responsible for them is what I would like to talk about or “fundae jo main pelna chahunga” in my “As we leave…”.
Funda #1
Coming to IITK, I felt that if we work hard towards our goals, the sky’s the limit, This concept was ingrained on me even further as I could easily apply it to anything that I had done at that point. At least that was the message that I had learned from my stay in Kota.
All of that changes in IITK. I had a *baapu* with hair flowing by the neck, telling me one thing, the professors preaching something and parents the other. There was no unison in life, no shining lighthouse to guide the way and life became not as simple as solving problems and giving exams.
Over my time, I realized that I had faced it not once but many times and will probably face in the future too, so I call it *not having a f***ing clue what to do in my life*. And it is just that, sometimes there will be only two choices, while some time so many. It comes in forms like, not knowing to continue in a project or leave it? Whether to take extra courses or not? Sit in the internship season or go for a research intern, Job, Research, MBA, Ph.D., start-up? In fact, in my experience, most of us procrastinate and address these questions right before deadlines (as always 😉 ), rushing on them and picking whatever everyone says or *the famous path of least resistance*. At least this was the case with me. In my first semester, I was spent almost all my time with just getting on with academics without looking for what even lied beyond my room. Hell, I ran away to RM or CC at times to get away from all that.
It sure helped me with my grades but at the cost of not being able to even exploring my interests and getting to know the awesome people on campus. The lesson that I have learned here is that, to break the deadlock, we need to understand what we want to optimize in life? Is it happiness, is its impact, is it money or something else all-together and then choose where to devote time. Even after this, at times I felt, I took the wrong decisions, or the timings were not correct but as they say, hindsight is always 20/20, and it’s some strategy is better than no strategy.
Funda #2
Upon entering IITK, I was met with another expected-unexpected thing called *interactions* and it was filled with impulses to make me move out of my comfort zone and then some. At the time, I tried to be camouflage in the crowd so that seniors around, forget about me (just like Dany kind of forgot about the Iron Fleet. GOT Reference). I closed off my mind to all the advice being thrown around and being a shy individual; I was similarly hesitant to talk with the diverse set of batch-mates as well. This was where I later realized that I was losing out! I judged people from their face value and the worst of them. But humans are not made to be binary. In fact several of the best people I know have been people, I would have never talked if I had stayed the same.
I would even go beyond and say that I believe that it is not the state-of-art lab facilities, or the swimming pools or 1000+ acres that make IIT Kanpur unique. Instead, it is the people in it. And without them, it would be no better than a private institute run by babus. The diversity here is unmatched, with people from different parts of the nation, different walks of life, different personalities and views. All clubbed together in an institution that is open to anyone expressing themselves without fear.
Amongst all the people that we meet on campus, we all have a Gang that we belong to, the closest set of friends that we have on campus. Choosing this gang is equally important because they are the people who define us even more than we do at times and as the saying goes “You Are The Average Of The Five People You Spend The Most Time With.”
Funda #3
Another common part of my campus stay has undeniably been stress. The stress of doing good in assignments, exams; the stress of finding an intern, job; the stress of finishing off projects and most importantly the stress to fail. Stress can be a good thing if it is under control but can be a killer otherwise (pun intended). Here, we need to take a step back and look at life before IIT and after it. These are two distinct realities, before joining IITs is a period without responsibilities in most part; on the other hand, freedom is limited. After IITs, as we become adults and there is freedom to do anything but responsibilities too that we need to address.
The period of our stay on campus has the best of both worlds. The stakes are not as high as they might seem sometime. End-Sems, quizzes or interviews might look like the endgame, but they are not, far from it. They are just stepping stones to the next thing in life, and irrespective of what happens there will always be enough doors out there.
The *IITs tag* do guarantee one thing, and that is, even if one completes their degree with at least *some respect*, sustaining life should never be a problem. This also means that we should take as many risks as we want. Taking that extra course that might lead to overloads, or talk to some scary professors for projects, join clubs just to explore, or spend bulla sessions on topics from *urban poor of south Delhi* to the meaning of random curse word. Just do something!
These four years of IITK have taught me much more about everything than what I knew before, while also being one hell of a rollercoaster ride throughout. It was an enigma to me before why college life is so hyped, but it has stood up and above all my expectations. The 1AM canteen bullas, the pre-assignments night outs, the gang trips, the morning PE, the suit-boot mein attending ppts, the late-late night strolls, the movie and football nights, the awesome concerts, the mess food, the subsidized CCD, the wing sharing of hand wash to cycle, the treats, and on and on and on. Ye fakiri waale din hamesha yaad rahenge!
*A wannabe quote to end this*
Things in life are not one-dimensional as maybe our education system teaches to us. Instead, it lies in an n-dimensional subspace where each dimension has a different weight for everyone, and learning those weights, optimizing our goals is life.
