As We Leave #17: A ride that shaped my life for good

Shobhit Jagga is a Y17 undergraduate from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. He writes about his journey through 4 years of IITK. 

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.

I start off by saying that IITK isn’t paradise, just to highlight that life in it isn’t always pleasant which makes it all the more interesting and memorable, especially when you look back. If I’ve become any better from when I joined to when I graduate, it is by lifting myself up when encountered with challenges that this life posed. The setbacks, especially the unexpected ones, teach you not to take things for granted. They remind you to discard some of the societal notions and stereotypes that you unconsciously imbibe in yourself being a part of the IITK community. My endeavour throughout will be to walk you through my experiences at IIT Kanpur in a manner that you don’t find it too much to go through and hopefully decipher if there’s anything to be learned, anything inspirational lying within it. If not anything else, I hope you’d atleast like the two anecdotes towards the end of this article.

To begin with, I’ll give you a bit of background. Before I came to college, I was someone who found it difficult to be involved socially, all credits to me being a little low on self-confidence. Furthermore, I did not have a clear sense of what I wanted to do in life, and to be brutally honest, my only reason to land up in this branch in this college was my JEE rank. Coming to my hobbies, I had played badminton with my brother a lot before JEE and was hopeful of getting selected in CPA (just that I did not). I was excited to begin college life, anticipating a lot of fun and memories by graduation.

I got along with my wingies, with whom I had a lot of fun in bulla sessions, birthday parties in OAT, fests, PE sessions, etc. I gave time to academics as well, not as much as JEE of course, but I did not get the result I had expected or imagined for myself initially. Added to that, even in the non-academic sphere, discouraging events began to degrade my faith in my capabilities by the end of my first year. But having recently entered college, things were all fun and frolic for me and I was optimistic for things to improve in my second year.

My first presentable achievement, as I call it, was becoming an SG. This, and that our SnT summer project ended nicely and we won the best summer project award. I felt satisfied and it dawned on me that I too have something in me, that I did actually fit in. I really enjoyed the Y18 orientation, more than my own orientation, if I may say so. For most parts, I believe I made more friends in this period than in my previous 2 semesters.

Now comes the time for the downward journey of this roller coaster ride, my third semester. I decided to become the hall captain in Takneek, which eventually for me turned out to be the most wrongly judged decision. I wasn’t able to do justice to the role and to myself. The lack of proper management from my side raised the workload for my companions, which is something I regret to this day. If not anything else, this experience was highly instrumental in molding me in terms of how I pursued things later. My midsem performance left me dumbfounded. I really wasn’t expecting such a bad performance in multiple courses. So the rest of the semester passed in my attempts to improve my performance, to correct whatever had gone downhill. As luck would have it, even my sincere efforts weren’t paying back, leaving me frustrated and helpless for most parts. I routinely felt that I did not belong here and that all this wasn’t suited for me. For me personally, it was in this semester that I experienced an all-time low because it felt as though nothing was going my way. I would say, feeling like you’re not capable of doing something despite your sincere efforts is one of the worst feelings one could have.

I’m glad that I persevered, that I had friends who talked me through and gave me hope, that I did not give up on my efforts, that things finally improved. One major takeaway for me at this point is that howsoever trivial it may sound, it is important to realise that even though your wellwishers would support you, it is you who has to make things happen by introspecting yourself before going on to blame the circumstances as a first thought. If I have to pinpoint why I failed in the previous one, I believe it was because I began taking things for granted and placed intelligence above hardwork. Others have repeatedly emphasised that I’m intelligent/chaapu because of my IITian (and with CSE branch) nature that I might have placed lesser weight to the fact that I was in this place because of my hardwork not intelligence. Fourth semester onwards, I could see my efforts translated to outputs gradually, which might sound so normal and reasonable but felt like a blessing to me. Honestly, I have enjoyed the time since. I had ample opportunities to get involved with PORs as we call them, but the pros would never outweigh the cons in my mind and I would do something else, something seemingly better. I would choose to spend my time in seemingly fascinating opportunities over any other option which is hyped in the campus or which seems to be helpful in my career/courses in some way.

In my third year, I had to change my wing (in the sense of wingmates) since all the single rooms in my initial wing were full by the time I came back. This brought me the fortune of having what you can call a dual citizenship. I had been involved in electronics club and team ERA in my second year but from now onwards, most of my time was spent in academic stuff and happily playing football with my wingies until it was all disrupted by covid19.

I hadn’t given up on badminton all this time. I wasn’t selected for CPA, but was enthusiastic about it nevertheless. I started playing regularly with my wingies in the hall badminton court, after which I eventually began going to the old sports complex where I played with campus residents, PG, PhD students and even professors who used to come there regularly! I won’t lie, it took me some time to match their skill and pace level but I made it a habit to go, play and enjoy regularly unless the streak was broken by assignments, sem exams or my own laziness. I was quite satisfied with my performance during my last days at the court and would always cherish those matches and the moments when everyone clapped at my shots (Because why not? :P) 

Now, in retrospect, I can understand such lowering of confidence and doubting of self as inescapable in some phase of our life here given that we are among the smartest people in the country. I still remember the incident that brought me to this realisation. During my internship in the US, the topic of IITs came up during my interaction with a resident there. Her remark on knowing that I studied in an IIT was reassuring, to say the least. As she said “Oh! The MIT of India”, I was reminded of being in the company of the smartest people there are in our country. And that it is completely fine to have some difficulty in feeling “belonged” and that once I actually do, I’ll undoubtedly have crossed the limits my third-semester self would have set for myself.

Before I move on to the conclusion, I would love to mention two of my fresh memorable anecdotes here. I hope you find them interesting and that they bring a smile to your face in the otherwise unpleasant situation that we have.

Meeting MTH101 professor – I met our MTH101 professor in the old sports complex badminton court in my final semester. My firm resolution to beat him in the match as revenge for MTH went in vain. I distinctly remember myself running here and there, missing his shots at me (just as in MTH101 :P). We interacted a bit outside the court which is when I told him that he taught us MTH101 or 102, although I didn’t exactly remember which. We hit off a great conversation until he asked me “So, what did you learn from 101?”. I actually ended up replying literally what I learned – “Epsilon-delta stuff”. I’m glad that he was polite and replied something on the lines of – “Yeah, the content becomes a bit complex and advanced to be understood by first yearites.” It was a total déjà vu moment for me since the same sentence had echoed across the student body repeatedly in the first semester and knowing that the professor felt similarly was amazing.

Meeting our new DOSA – This goes back to the only incident when I broke covid protocol on campus (too much bragging, huh?). Would surely remember this incident from when I along with my wingies went for a wing photoshoot to OAT. I’m not particularly proud or fond of breaking the norms, and for most parts I feel I just did it in the fear of missing out. And well yeah, paid enough for doing so. Just within 10-15 minutes or so of reaching the OAT, we were asked by sis guards to leave. In the event of doing so, we discovered someone standing at the gate who asked us to go and stand in a distance while he called someone else. We got tensed as to who was going to come, and what was going to happen with us. I was personally expecting dosa or director to come when a jeep stopped outside the OAT from which no one but sis guards came out. It was only when the person who had stopped us started to address us that I realized that he was the DOSA himself! All set and done, he asked us to leave campus and sent us back home (actually they had to eventually send everyone back, for reasons you’re aware of). I told my parents about the incident in the afternoon which happened to be on the same day that my father bought a new SIM card. Later in the evening, I was sitting at my desk when I received a call from an unknown number. I picked it up to listen – “Hello, this is your Dean speaking”. Not going to lie, I was truly horrified at the prospect of being chosen and called to ask about my packing progress. “What happened in the morning?”. I replied – “Umm actually errr we went to OAT and DOSA sir came there and errr…..”. My voice was so muffled that my mother took pity at me and shouted – “Beta, papa baat kar rahe hain”. It was then that I came back to my senses and felt relieved.

For me, IITK was a memorable journey, one that I would always hold close to my heart. It was an important learning phase of life, but that does not mean there is nothing before and after it. I’m still the person who is a bit low on self-confidence, who finds it difficult to get involved socially and also who is clueless about what exactly to pursue in life. I’m going for a job, yes, have tried a couple of things, sure, but I still cannot pinpoint something and confidently say that this is something I want to do throughout my life. But as long as I’m liking what I’m doing at the moment, it is fine to be unable to visualize where I see myself 5 years down the lane, no? And it’s fine to be low in confidence when it makes me humble but to make deliberate attempts to improve myself when it results in missed opportunities, no? I’m just glad that I tried a couple of interesting things which brought me closer to achieving my life goals and was able to satisfactorily live in this phase, among the smartest hard-working people in the country, each of whom had something valuable to teach me. I have figured a lot of things about myself from my interaction with others. And I’m hopeful to use these experiences and interactions to improve myself further, to find my “calling” and be what I should be. With this, I wish you all the best for your unique journey at IITK! Feel free to reach out to me if you feel that there is any way I can help you 🙂

Written by: Shobhit Jagga

Edited by: Ayush Anand, Abhimanyu Sethia