Snehil Saluja is a graduating Y17 student from the Department of Civil Engineering. He talks about his diverse indulgences and interests and how he carved his own path through college.
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.
The biggest challenge in describing my IIT Kanpur Journey was putting it all in a single article. These four years were a long journey, and many memories sparkle when I look back on it all.
The journey of my Abhiruchi: Graphic Design
Being one of the people who hadn’t done much except studies during school, I faced a real setback in my initial days. I couldn’t find a new interest, while my only interest – maths, was being destroyed day by day as lectures of MTH101 were proceeding. I tried shots at everything during Gymkhana week – but got nothing.
During Takneek, I pitched a poster idea to our then HEC President. He liked that idea and asked me to fair out. Somehow on the 5 inches of my phone, with Adobe Draw (sad they are discontinuing it soon), I made the Takneek poster for my Hall, and it looked good according to my-then standards.
“OK, so I design well”. This thought started a streak of ideas, and I continued making posters on my phone (laptops then weren’t allowed in the first sem). One thing led to another, and then one day I was asked if I’d be able to design the manifesto for a Presidential Candidate in the upcoming GE2018. It seemed like a great opportunity back then, so I learnt Adobe Illustrator during my winter break and then as soon as I was back on campus, I started working on the manifesto. It took me 20 days to complete the whole thing – though it was a fair design, what changed my outlook fully was the knowledge (Imagine a first year guy reading the manifesto content of a President twenty times while editing). The potential of student bodies on the campus inspired me (more on that later).
Once I started getting credits for my designs at Vox, which I joined soon after elections, I made it a must to be credited for my designs. And back then when DnA Club didn’t exist, I was one of the people who was approached for any and every kind of design. I have designed things for clubs, friends and internships – things as mainstream as posters, logos (the logos 3 out of 9 SnT teams – ERA, Aerial Robotics and VISION are my creation), manifestos (in almost every general elections), hoardings and as offstream as TA project reports, research posters or even dotted alphabet pads for nursery kids in 5 different Indian languages. I still remember, a a Y12 alum at BCG asked me to design a photo frame for their boss on Antaragni ‘18 day 1. For completing it on time, I was compensated so well that I could try almost all different varieties of foods at nearly every stall in the four days, with my plus one. During my internship at SIIC, I designed and branded their annual event Abhivyakti end to end, which was a great learning experience for me as a designer.
If you’d ask me two and a half years back, for me design was everything. But, as remarked by Tony Stark, ‘A part of the journey is the end’. And one day, when a senior-cum-wellwisher, in his typical about-to-give-a-funda tone, asked, “What do you want to be 10 years ahead, Snehil, an awesome designer or Snehil, someone with many skills and remarkably good at design?” This led me to a deep introspection. Yeah, my design was good, but did I really want to take it to a level where the visual satisfaction compares to that of the feeds of Behance/Dribbble – NO. To which he advised – then stop it right there for some time and explore other things. You can come back later, but stop it for now. And, I left Design there – just like that. All the plans, all the ideas – hired design interns and delegated the existing work to them, made sure that none of my work in the future has design as a mainstream work responsibility and even removed all Adobe Apps from my taskbar (It was a big step for me). I then, explored many different work profiles, through PoRs or interns, for short term projects – Marketing, Media and Publicity, Strategy, Event Management, UI/UX, Web Development etc. – and wherever I could – I used or contributed my design skills. I, not only got me a taste of learning different things but remained engaged. And in this exercise – over time, I realised that I am into building software products – the visuals, the UI, the UX, the design, the functionality, the code – the frontend, the backend – everything intrigued me. And this was really insightful – as while applying for jobs off campus – I clearly knew what I am looking for.
Did I leave design – definitely not. Even though today I am not in a design role – I keep contributing to the design team at my workplace, giving some suggestions here and there and learning more from the product designers here.
Academics and Research
During my first year, I was not able to find the subjects interesting. Given that, working hard and scoring well, relative to others, so that at the end of four years, you can pass onto the next phase with a good score was difficult. This model seemed similar to the Olympic qualifiers to me – and CPI was certainly not my sport.
But when a senior, once in an attempt to defend CE, somehow motivated me to explore CE thoroughly once before forming an opinion, I looked into the sub-branches of CE, and Geoinformatics excited me. I went in-depth, read a typical ‘Introduction to Geoinformatics’ book and I felt that the school mathematics I was missing in college all along – was found in Geoinformatics. This led me to dive deeper.
I didn’t have the courage to approach any professor until mid of my second semester – that’s when I approached Prof Goel in Geoinformatics. I had emailed him one morning and by the evening, thanks to my previous exploration of Geoinformatics, I got an opportunity to work on a project with him in the summers. Then one thing led to another and this pursuit and 3 UGPs and 111 Geoinformatics credits later, Geoinformatics became a deep tech interest of mine. I think of working in Geoinformatics, sometime in my future. There were other perks too.
Firstly, I had a semester drop in my third semester due to medical reasons. I cannot imagine completing my degree within a total of seven academic semesters (and summer semesters) – with 60+ credits each semester, had it not been for my interest in Geoinformatics. All my OEs and almost all DEs were in Geoinformatics – I had put myself away from the uncertainty of getting a non-scoring /difficult course in the Pingala Rejection Cycle.
Secondly, with degree completion in time at stake, I didn’t have much motivation to maintain a CPI. But the easy A’s and B’s in Geoinformatics certainly covered the D’s in Structure courses which required time, consistency and practice.
Lastly, proper introduction and interest in pursuing Software Development would not have been possible, but for the partly core – partly development internship I did in my third year summers.
Hence the takeaway here is- RECONSIDER. Seriously reconsider your branch. Every branch, I am sure has some portion or the other which can interest you – and though many of you run after the MBA, the HSS, the DS/ML/AI courses to complete your credits – all of which is freely available with much better teachers (no offense) online, the knowledge you’re leaving – there won’t be another opportunity to gather again. No course on Coursera/edX/MIT OCW or any other platform ever has matched the practical depth into Geoinformatics I’ve got from the professors at IITK. Hence, reconsider!
The road beyond IIT Kanpur: Intern and Placement
Most of my things in college or in career started with design. My first serious design internship was at the startup of Prof. Ghatak, GitiTech. They were developing reusable paper and needed someone to design different kinds of innovative applications of the reusable paper. I worked with them for a few hours a week, and gradually became such a part of their team that during a fest I remained on their stall showcasing and selling their paper the whole time. And even though I felt awkward standing at a stall, but the sales experience I had in calling college groups to our stall and convincing them to buy the paper was unforgettable. I couldn’t find any of it in the sales lectures I watched some months later. This was when I realised that working with startups is actually the best place to learn and since then, at almost all places I’ve interned at, they have been an early-stage startup.
In May 2019, I joined the Startup Incubation and Innovation Center, IITK as an intern, which I feel was a blessing in disguise as I was intrigued by the professionalism in the body, unlike the student bodies or startups. In my two years working with my manager on and off exploring different roles, the takeaway was how to create a systemized process of workflow between a team so that everything happens easily and flawlessly.
I took a couple of PoRs on campus at various bodies (CS, Vox, EC, HEC, SPO), been a part of a couple of committees, attended many senate meetings, and all of them had their bits of learning experiences.
I started working with Soil Logics, a startup by a couple of Stanford Alumni in my third year as a summer intern and while working on their web application, even though it was a crucial time for me (as I was shifting into a new town in the middle of the pandemic), I enjoyed working on it. Gradually, I realised that developing an application is something that interests me – maybe my new abhiruchi. I worked on a couple of more applications (notable mention – India COVID Support). In May, when I finally decided to drop my MTech in Geoinformatics and look for a job, this experience was what helped me land a couple of decent offers to choose from.
In conclusion, I really have no advice to give which can fit all, hence I’ll leave you with the idea that it’s your canvas – design your own map!
Notable Mentions
- I’ve learned a lot from my seniors at Vox, nothing can start without mentioning them – Pratyush Rai, Harshit Bhalla, Soumyadeep Datta, and the whole Editorial Board 2018-19 (Akash Bharadwaj, Anmol Chaman, Akhilesh Tayade, Smarth Gupta, Smit Chaudhary, Naman Verma)
- A lot of learning was from my manager at SIIC, Rahul Patel
- My bapu, Suyash
- All my wingies, specially Yash (Thanks for being there at every major decision I made), Soumya (Thanks for a lot of things, notably waking me up with all your strategies), Pratham (Thanks for editing every piece of text I sent), Ayush (Thanks for helping me solve every tech mistake I made), Ankur (Thanks for being in the opposite room), Anukant (Thanks for the sport-related advices) and Ankan (Thanks for all those TV series suggestions) and Sanket (Thanks for all the placement gyaan)
- My friends Milind Muskan and Shivansh
- My Civil Engineering Friends: Ajayraj, Nikhil, Sarvesh, Shivam and Riya Saransh Tanmay, who were not limited just to the labs.
- My MTech Geoinformatics friends (Ayush, Dileep, Jay and all others)
- My Baccha Wing (Deepak, Mradul and all others)
- My EC19 team (Rohit Nisha and all of them)
- My Hall 12 HEC Team (Akash Laxman Deepak Jatin and all others)
Written by- Snehil Saluja
Edited by- Abhimanyu Sethia
