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In the 15th edition of As We Leave 2026, Nevish, a Y22 Computer Science and engineering student, looks back at his four years at IITK. He shares his journey from a clueless freshman in Hall 5 to landing a systems engineering role after a tough placement season. Ultimately, he shares how the real prize of campus life isn’t the job or the degree, but the friends who stood by you through it all.
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.
“Shivli gate se aana.”
The phone call from his baapu, Talin, was brief. It was late October 2022, the post-JEE dust had finally settled, and the fresher stood at the perimeter of a 1200-acre monolith. The pandemic still cast a long shadow, forcing a delayed drop and an asynchronous first semester. The gates opened, and the cadet stepped inside.
Chapter 1: The World That the Boy saw
Kanpur welcomed him with extreme, unrelenting hostility. By December, the freezing North Indian fog rolled in so thick that campus visibility dropped to a mere five-meter radius. Navigating the cycle paths felt like wandering through a corrupted PS1 horror game struggling to load its textures, the damp cold biting through four layers of unwashed hoodies.
The cadet, whose curfew was once strictly set to 2200 hours, found his sleep architecture brutally hijacked. He was dragged out by sheer force for the mandatory wing bonding rituals; those relentless, all-night gaming marathons that served as a non-negotiable hack of his biological clock.
He was assigned no roommate, however. The solo room, theoretically premium real estate in the hostel ecosystem, quickly debunked the myth of privacy. Taw, Srujan, Sahil and Likith were always, somehow, to be found in his room. It naturally morphed into the official wing headquarters, operating on a permanent, unspoken open-door policy. The corridor outside E308 became a stage for the canonical events of a first-year existence. It saw the chaotic, screaming matches of Among Us, the outdated but mandatory Harlem Shake, and cross-fire water fights that flooded the cheap tiles.
The survival rhythm was established early. The first class, and eventually, the last paper at IITK deeply humbled him. Apparently, a 2/12 in the first-ever quiz was good enough to make it past half of the class. And the rest of the suite followed. There were desperate group study sessions at the NCL, with Sahil and Likith serving as partners in crime, where half the batch tried to piece together course material hours before a mid-sem. Days were sustained by quick bites at the DOAA canteen between consecutive lectures, and the occasional 0300 hours celebratory escape to Mama Mio when the campus felt too small.
There was the SnT pavilion. There was the Hall 5 spirit, loud and aggressive, echoing through Galaxy and Takneek. And then there was the manic night where the entire wing crammed into a room, sitting on the floor and the bed, to hear him blabber through the entire MTH114 syllabus until sunrise. Videos of that night were uploaded to YouTube; digital artifacts, the first of many to come, that he still hopes no one ever searches for.
As the second semester finally bled into the summer, the initial chaos settled. The curriculum felt similar, but he was matching the rhythm now. Weekly quizzes didn’t shake him much anymore. The SG and AM selections wrapped up, and he found himself saddled with Secretary tasks for Fine Arts, DnA, and GameDev. The first year was over, and the training wheels were brutally ripped off.
Chapter 2: The 63rd Cadet Corps
Entering his second year, the dynamic within the walls shifted. The cadet became a squad leader. The baapu arc began. That meant shielding a new bunch of freshers from the same overwhelming panic he had just survived. He learned to construct a facade, hiding his own academic exhaustion behind the mask of a reliable, unflappable senior. Little did he know, he would eventually go on to become a par-dada.
Simultaneously, the club responsibilities exploded. Juggling the third and fourth semesters meant splitting his waking hours between department courses and endless club sessions. He was coaching the new cadets for freshers, completing massive canvas and wall paintings at FAC. There were all-nighters in the FMC room to finish the freshers’ video or survive the IFP weeks. And, naturally, there were the chaotic game jam moments and the infinite workshops designed to entice the new cadets.
The academic pressure kept pace with the extracurriculars. The frantic 0755 hours cycles to the LHC became daily muscle memory. He decided to torture himself further by volunteering for the Inter-IIT Tech Meet at Madras. The experience was a chaotic fusion of the intense late night tasks, fun memories and bonding with some of the best people.
The physical geography of his life expanded to support the grind. The NCL remained the battleground for academics, but his sanity was sustained by late-night dinners at the hall canteens (H10 being the undisputed best). Yet, the fourth semester held some of the best days. There were endless wing bulla sessions stretching until dawn, cycling trips to Ganga Barrage, and random walks around the campus culminating at OAT.
He eventually solidified his inner squad, Amogh, Anaswar, Debraj, Khushi, and Srujan, a trusted cadre of soldiers destined to survive the coming storm of collective missions, midnight and unplanned operations beyond the campus perimeter.
Then came the post-fourth-semester summer. The absolute peak of intern prep. The chaotic energy of the NCL was traded for the dead, terrifying silence of his home desk. It was a blur of daily contests, shortlists, test links, whiteboard coding, and pure, unadulterated stress as he prepared for the wall to fall.
Then The Reckoning arrived. The cadet was suited up like a commander preparing for a final charge, ready to face the selection committee for the chance to serve within the corporate walls for the coming summer.
As evening crept in, the first line of defense crumbled; he was denied the first position he sought. He quickly anchored to the next set of titans waiting to obliterate him, but the blow was even more massive this time, ousted in the first round of the skirmish. By the third engagement, he felt his resolve breaking. He found himself ping-ponging through the LHC rooms throughout the night, a weary soldier frantically carrying his gear. Only the first rays of the sun brought hope; the final shortlist, a do-or-die mission. He found himself answering for topics he had never even prepared for, completing a 24-hour streak of combat without sleep.
At 1100 hours the next day, the adrenaline crashed. He went to sleep with a Goldman Sachs offer waiting in his inbox.
Chapter 3: Outside the Walls
The fifth semester was overwhelmingly quiet. He chose to sever almost all of his club responsibilities. He had the standing to become a coordinator but he chose to remain a mere operative.
On paper, his profile was entirely secure; he had won the game early. Internally, there was severe dissonance. The quiet isolation bred a specific kind of burnout. It was the feeling of empty success, masked by a brave front during Antaragni and wing gatherings where he now felt more like an observer than an active participant. He retreated home for the winter break just to reset his baseline.
A sense of vitality returned with the sixth semester. The term was a strong one, highlighted by a mid-semester hiatus that involved a spontaneous trip to Lucknow. This excursion nearly took a dark turn with a brush with local toughs, leaving the group truly trapped and relying on raw survival instinct to get through. When they eventually made it back to the institute, they carried a narrative that seemed completely removed from the sterile academic environment of IIT Kanpur.
Summer arrived, moving him to Bangalore for his internship. The corporate machine was vast, the city was electric, and the weekend getaways were exactly what he needed. Bangalore offered sights only it could provide, like a traffic jam in a public bus at 0015 hours. He soon found new favorites in Meghana Biryani and Creamstone DBC. While the climate evoked a sense of nostalgia for his hometown, his time working with LLMs led to a quiet epiphany.
Though the world of data was stable, he realized his true passion lay closer to the metal.
Chapter 4: Perfect Game
Returning to campus for placements required the ultimate gamble. It was his own declaration of war. Rejecting the safety net of the corporate world, he threw himself back into the full-time placement meat-grinder, targeting the ruthless, high-stakes theatre of low-latency operations.
His room, along with the secluded corners of the KD Lab, transformed into a tactical command center. The focus narrowed entirely to low-level systems architectures, C++ optimization, and memory management. He lived and breathed C++ internals. In this intense pursuit, he was flanked by Khushi and Srujan, comrades united by a singular objective and a shared support system. Even their downtime at CCD evolved, with casual talk replaced by systems gossip and collective venting after the grueling tests.
The final skirmish was a suffocating blur of technical grilling and agonizing periods of radio silence. The tension in the Hall 13 corridors was thick enough to choke on. Then, the final broadcast came through. He had secured a Systems Engineer role at Quadeye. It was the culmination of a perfect game of focus, yet the reality of the victory was sobering. Placements were a chaotic, ruthless lottery. He had survived the draft, but the relief was immediately tempered by the sight of so many brilliant peers still fighting for survival down in the trenches.
Chapter 5: The Ocean
The final semester was the golden hour. The pressure valve released completely. The new algorithm was simple: say “yes” to everything.
The tactical mission shifted to recreational sorties across every cafe in the perimeter. There were high-intensity gym sessions with the boys and elective courses taken solely for the intellectual thrill. The F107 headquarters facilitated high-intensity sessions of FIFA and F1, while poker nights in the wing saw him serving as the permanent dealer.
As the mid-semester break concluded, the countdown of the final two months took on a heavy, melancholic weight. Every operation, every ritual, was now somberly prefixed as the “Last.” Life settled into a poignant, recurring cycle: gatherings at CCD, rooftop bullas that greeted the sunrise, the finality of the last fest, and midnight patrols around the walls to document every fragment of their time.
Yet, the morale was at an absolute zenith. They engaged in celebrations so chaotic they could serve as the script for Hangover 4. Through this madness, the bond of the cadre grew intensely tight. The impending realization that these brothers-in-arms, once strangers four years prior, would soon face a Great Divide and return to separate lives was a crushing psychological blow.
Finally, the extraction dates arrived. He watched as each soldier departed the base, tears marking their exit. Then, his own turn came to breach the walls one last time, abandoning the fortress to seek “freedom” in the vast, uncharted expanse of the ocean.
The third-person lens drops. The narrator steps down.
My name is Nevish Pathe, and if you’re reading this, I’m probably already out there, staring down a massive C++ codebase in the real world, trying to figure out how to survive without the safety net of my campus squad.
Looking back at the endsem panics, the brutal 17 hours on intern day, the quiet pride of being a baapu, the fun times at clubs, the endless outings with my people; it all blends into a single, chaotic timeline. The campus will break you down, over and over, until you figure out what kind of code you’re actually made of.
Even in an article this long, I’ve barely scratched the surface. I haven’t even touched on the sheer scale of the fests, the fun experience of being a course TA, the warmth of celebrating festivals far from home, or the countless times I tried and often failed to learn something completely out of my comfort zone. Some of the best memories are the ones that simply refuse to fit on a page.
I wanna thank all the beautiful souls I met here. I might not have named you, but please know that every late-night conversation, shared laugh, and quiet nod of encouragement helped compile the person I am today. I also want to thank all my wonderful seniors. Talin, Pratham, Ojas, Rishi, Shashi, Sarthak, and every other veteran who guided me when I was just a clueless cadet.
To the juniors still inside the walls: Don’t get trapped in the club rat race just to pad a resume. Figure out what actually keeps you awake at night. Placements are a massive lottery, so don’t tie your self-worth to the Day of your draft. The hurdles are towering, the burnout is incredibly real, and the grading curve is rarely fair. But the people you meet in those corridors at 0400 hours, arguing over absolutely nothing, make the entire journey worth it.
Don’t play it too safe. Take the gamble. Bet on your squad, bet on your craft, and whatever you do, keep moving forward.
And when the pressure finally peaks? Give up on your dreams and die. (Levi said this, not me)
Finally, a special thanks to the incredibly patient Aditi. Thank you for navigating my procrastination, dealing with my laziness, and somehow getting me to the finish line. I appreciate you tolerating me!
Written by: Nevish
Edited by: Aditi Narain, Shruti Sahu
