Spandan Senapati is a Y18 graduating student from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. In this edition, he pens down his journey in IITK and how he navigated various ups and downs and paved his own path.
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.
Well yeah, starting an AWL itself seemed like a difficult task for me. It’s tough to pen down those innumerable experiences you have had in 4 years. At this point, I find writing technical paper drafts much easier than an AWL draft. Being involved in research, I tend to read between the lines and with some effort in doing that for the AWL of my seniors, I could interpolate a bit, and here we are. As an abstract, the title “crossovers” could be a technical jargon for a basketball move, it could be a switch in your interests, or it just could be some random word which popped up in my mind when I sat down to write this draft. Well, keep on reading, you’ll know what it means. I know this draft would be incomplete without the experiences that paved the path to the one I’m on. Still, as I sit down, there is a vast lot, some of which are on top of my head at the moment, some of which I can remember vividly, and others have faded into the distant horizons of my memory. But anyway, I’ll pen down the ones that are on top of my head at the moment.
The first year is hands down the best time you’ll have on campus. From the orientation when you meet entirely new people to the end of your second semester, make sure you have loads of fun and memories. I won’t tell you exactly what to do, I’m sure you will figure out your way of having fun, and that’s the good part, we tend to do things differently. That being aside, I can maybe polarise myself a bit towards academics. I know PHY 103 will be a pain for most of you, and you’ll complain that the absolute grading in MTH 102 and TA 101 isn’t meant for most (at least it wasn’t for me). That’s alright, we’ve been through the same, but the good thing is there are your friends to help you out, highly educated and established profs to clear your doubts. Most of us tend to have certain perceptions about professors; maybe we judge them based on how they grade, but trust me, give the professor’s office a visit before you judge. I’m sure your perceptions would change. As a personal note, I was passionate about Maths in my first year and used to talk with our MTH 102 instructor frequently. So once, when I didn’t have my Identity card on the day of MTH 102 quiz II (nor did I check which section I belonged to and ended up in L18 instead of L19) and Prof. Arvind Lal refused to take my attendance, the MTH 102 instructor turned up with “Hey Spandan, it’s all right!! Just relax and give your test, I’ll take care of the rest”. Prof Arvind probably took me for a careless brat, but when we met at the tea party of inter-IIT sports felicitation, he tapped me on my shoulder, “Aren’t you the guy whom I refused to take attendance a few days back? Hi, I’m Arvind”. I was slightly surprised, but we had an excellent informal conversation that day. Profs can be as good as your friends sometimes :P. Prof Arvind is no more, but I’m glad I shared such a fond memory with him.
I was at the tea party not because I was a part of the Inter IIT contingent but because I used to play basketball on a serious note and had practice sessions daily, and our seniors invited us all. At that point, when people from all four years were together on the court, you could see some hierarchy in the sense senior players would be playing matches, and the freshies and sophies would be put aside doing crossovers and handles. I guess that’s how it goes. When I was in the court a few days before leaving, I couldn’t see the same hierarchy anymore. Unusual timelines of Y21 owing to COVID ruined it partially. If ever I had a BT about anything, my roommate Sachin is probably the most chilled-out guy I’ve ever met. You can’t just stop laughing after having a conversation with him. Things slowly started becoming a routine: basketball, bakchodi with wingies, late-night canteen visits, and night outs (which force you to miss classes) when the only full-fledged year we were on campus ended.
During the summer, I was involved in the Basketball Summer Camp and undertook a Bayesian ML project that Aniket and Yatin offered. Aniket is a damn dedicated and helpful senior, more like a friend to me and has been my next-to-reach-out guy whenever I face academic issues. Towards the end of summer, there was the Orientation Process and being a Student Guide, I got to relive the experience once again. I’ll never forget how we lure the “bacchas” with the self-cooked HR Kadim Story. During my second year, I found people more considerate about academics. I undertook a few more ML projects with a friend Avinandan to explore the subject more deeply. The CS coursework tends to become somewhat rigorous towards the 4th semester, which is partly one of the reasons I became irregular in Basketball practice sessions. Avinandan and I were busy applying for ML interns for the upcoming summer.
I did land an internship at the University of Oregon, Eugene, but thanks to COVID, travel regulations were strict, and I couldn’t travel to the US. Well talking of COVID, the short 2-week midsem break turned out to be a long 1.5 yr break from campus. Those years we spent away from campus, friends and studying in a dull online setting were undoubtedly challenging. Still, we went through it, and I’m sure it came up as a learning experience to go through several such hardships in the upcoming stages of our lives. To compensate for the UO internship, I undertook a project on Graph Representation Learning. The subject was new for me, and despite numerous attempts, we couldn’t make much progress. Eventually, the professor called off the project with the excuse of GRL being a stagnant and challenging area to contribute to in ML. My confidence in research had reached a local minimum around this time, and I was starting to get the vibes of “well, maybe ML research just isn’t the thing”. I decided to take a break and explore industry-level ML. Thankfully my internship at Microsoft IDC the next summer gave me the chance to do so.
Oh wait, how did I forget the third year in between. After all, for a CS undergrad, it’s the year which decides whether you’re the one who is going to have the next breakthrough in CS, isn’t it?. Arguably the most stressful one and yet the most fruitful year, you’ll get to evaluate your real interests in the subject. The continuous evaluation induced a bit of extra stress due to the online setting. Thankfully “Valorant” came as a good way of being in touch with your friends regularly. I miss the five stack queues I used to have with my wingies. That being aside, the ML courses kept me sticking to the field for some more time. Although my experience as an intern at Microsoft was incredible, I didn’t get the urge to pursue industry as I found the routine I followed as an intern mundane and the work redundant/trivial.
Around the 7th semester, I decided to let go of ML and start exploring something different. Thankfully for me, there wasn’t any Placement pressure due to the Microsoft PPO. I was occupied with a theory project for an advanced convex optimisation course I undertook that semester. I had explored the field apriori but took this course as a good way of evaluating my interests, given that I had decided to let go of ML. In the final presentation of the same, our work seemed quite impressive to the instructor, and he persuaded us to get the work published. Deep down, I wanted to pursue math-intensive theory, and optimisation was the perfect fit.
During Jan ’22, when we were all called back, we spent the initial days in isolation owing to the third wave of COVID. I caught COVID for a second time. Combined with relationship issues I had at the same time and a wholly fucked up timetable owing to paperwork, my health got affected seriously. I started getting anxiety attacks. I hardly believe there is any Hospital in Kanpur where I haven’t been in the HC Ambulance with Utkarsh / Harshit. My friends Utkarsh, Harshit, and Shivam were the ones I could hit up any time during the day, and they would be ready to help me out. I’m thankful for such awesome friends who stand by your side during tough times.
I took a good one-month break around Mid-February from campus to get back to having a healthy life. When I was back in March, there was a month left, and everyone was back on campus. You could see the joy in students, meeting their fellow friends after a long break of 2 years. Enjoying these few days was probably the only thing any graduating student was concerned about. I was least concerned about my work; it was just making the most of your last few days. People have ways of having fun (if you get what I mean :P) and reiterating the important part about life, and we tend to do things differently. We mostly spent time strolling across the streets of IITK or doing random shit in Yuvraj’s room or just going on late-night movie shows. And well, there were these photoshoots that made you formally realise that you’re graduating xD. As we approached the final days and everything associated with the campus had a “last” term ahead of it, things became harder. The last time I visited Hall 13 a few days before leaving, I felt envious of the freshies for the first time. First-year is the only full-fledged year we spent on campus, and there’s a lot associated with it. While some of your friends bid happy goodbyes, you could see gloomy faces and teary eyes for some others. But eventually, all good things come to an end, and a good ending had an incredible journey.
Well, it’s been long, and I am grateful if you’ve been to this point. As some of you would have figured, my journey in these four years has been quite non-convex. There have been local minima and maxima. However, the good thing about minima’s is there’s always growth around them. Just take these four years to develop and grow yourself as an individual. You’re no longer in competition with the one million candidates; these four years are meant for you to pave a path for your own. Explore everything within your reach before you converge on something. It’s never too late. If you couldn’t find your interests in these four years, chill; there’s a lot ahead. Rather than just “going through these years” of college, try “growing through these years”. I’m sure the global maxima will be pretty high for you :).
Written by: Spandan Senapati
Edited by: Vrinda Sharma, Ritam Jana
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