Mohd Talib Siddiqui is a graduating Y18 student from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. In this edition of As We Leave 2022, he tells us about the friends he made, the life he lived, and the memories he made in the four years of 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.
It’s almost impossible to believe that the four-year journey has ended, and I still feel the clueless fresher who arrived on July 20th, 2018 somewhere inside me, still in disbelief that I made it here.
Most people that arrive here on the first day, struggle for familiarity in the hundreds of unknown faces around them. However, I found myself lucky enough to have some of my closest friends come here with me, and trust me, it was very reassuring. I remember getting over excited when I saw Varun in the lift, and we found out when we were on the same floor. I had known Manan for four years at that time, and he was one of my “bhais”. Probably it was then that my luck ran out xD
This piece will mostly be about me and the experience I’ve had with my friends because the most precious thing you take away from here is people for life. The four years at IIT Kanpur are your metamorphosis; it is you who needs to build the courage to fly wide and fast out into the world.
The first semester began, and we saw great bottlenecks at gate 3 everyday, nothing less than a long traffic jam. So, I and Atin had the exact same schedule in semester 1 because most of our other friends were in the opposite batch. I will never forget the PUBG duos in the breaks and the dreaded Sundays (yes, we had a Monday TA lab). From a “revision after class” and “sleeps at 10 pm” Atin, we have definitely come a long way to be going to Korea together. Seeing people participate in clubs, events, and freshers’ night did give me a big FOMO. Still, I couldn’t find my way there because I hesitated. The morning HSS classes were the most painful, because we found ourselves in the wing balcony talking random stuff at 3 am, exercising our new found freedom of staying up late. Chauhan, decent guy, the punctual one, was the one to drag me to those classes. Asking for his notebook for the solutions to practice questions was usual, because of course, Chauhan is Chauhan. The first semester flew by in freshers’, Udghosh (2018 one was good) and Antaragni. A lot of my friends and I found ourselves organizing TOSC. It was a fun experience visiting schools and advertising it. Looking back it all sounds stupid, but it definitely was fun at that time, and that is what matters.
The second semester was pretty much everybody realising what MTH people are gonna get in the coming years. I had a lot of fun in Techkriti show management, which is the only fest I worked in. The only thing you need to know from that is, that Shikhar might look scary at first sight, but all he is angry about is the existence of strawberries 🙂
Then there comes the summer, where you hear everybody do gazillion things in the two months that you get and you don’t know what to do. I was nobody different. I was advised by a lot of my batchmates to do a lot of things, but I simply didn’t know how. So I gathered a bunch of friends and we decided to do a CSE organised summer of code thing. Trust me, living on the top floor in the summers isn’t fun. We stayed in the worst part of Hall 3, where there was no water, it was very very hot, and you couldn’t even turn on the lights in your wing because of the bees. So pretty much, it was the worst you could get. What made it bearable was the people I spent time with, because the days went by adjusting and we were all having fun with it. From bathing in other wings, to fighting over filling water bottles, to playing skribbl.io with 10-12 people in the library because it had AC, we did it all in the summers.
I had a bag full of memories already, from Chauhan being stuck in the mud waist high, to having him lose 4 pairs of slippers in 3 weeks, from Shashwat showing his dance moves he used to learn in freshers’ practice, to him studying MTH102 with me a night before midsem, from roasting Siddharth supporting Delhi in IPL, to celebrating Prithvi Shaw’s miss of his century, from us learning to play frisbee at 2am to witnessing Siddharth’s and Manan’s FIFA matches by bunking classes. I could go on and on, and these might be very stupid and common incidents for most people out there, but for a person like me who did not like socializing at all, these were a treasure. I knew that us going to different halls would not be a problem, because people said it limits your interactions and you would interact with your hallmates more, but I knew this was different, and we are still here.
I forgot to mention a five person trip we had just before the summers, planned with the OG and executed well; it was after that, that I took pride in planning trips for my group 🙂
The first year shenanigans were over, and we were in for a bumpy ride through the ESCs and the TA labs. From trying to get up early to attend classes, to not caring after getting locked out of the classroom at 8 am, it was again a wild ride. Many things did change though, from seeing the GC from Hall-13, to witnessing it from Hall 3, was altogether a different experience. Even though I had little or no impact on any aspect of it, I was amazed by the difference in how I saw it from Hall 13 being a fresher. From the breathless experience in Antaragni, to Akhilesh getting to know us closely, third semester had a lot to offer, which I will not bore you upon, if you still haven’t given up reading.
Everybody knows what the fourth semester’s highlight was, not surprisingly, COVID-19. The cursed virus which derailed us. The first few days of the lockdown were all fun and games, in the hopes that this is gonna pass soon. But as the months went by, it became a routine. It was gloomy, to say the least, but it would have been much worse if not for the people I had. Internships, grades, and semesters were secondary, the frustration I felt was immense. I was not one to enjoy waking up, sitting at my laptop the whole day, and sleeping again.
Tough times for everybody, we did manage to sneak out to Lucknow a couple times. Celebrating the success of our peers, got limited to discord calls, Rocket League lobbies, and Skribbl games. It was not as joyous as it should have been, but nobody had a choice. We were fortunate at times, and a bit unfortunate too. For me, it was the best news I had heard in 2+ years, when the Y18s were allowed to come to campus. Seeing so many people back was nothing short of emotional and heartwarming. It was not as lively, because of the limited people back, and some of my friends still decided to stay back home. There have been a very few incidents where I have been carried away, and this was one of them. It was as if I’d been let out of confinement that I just roamed days and nights without doing anything. I began disconnecting from my academics, the only thing I worked on my entire IITK life. If it wasn’t for Chauhan lecturing me for an hour straight, I would probably not have gotten back to working that time.
It was soon the last semester and everybody was on campus. You could see small little groups of people all around having fun, laughing and chatting. But it was accompanied by the realization that this would be one last time back at campus. Days flew by, and we justified our every mischief as a ‘last’. It was all fun until I realized I was leaving the next day. That was the longest night on the campus for me. It was the end to all it gave me; it was the realization that I won’t get up in the morning with my best friends living in the room next to mine. I strolled all night through the campus with tears in my eyes, trying to capture every last corner of it before I went. It was hard to leave my room, to leave my mates, and exit through campus gates one last time as a student.
You would wonder why I did not talk about interns, placements, academics, etcetera. Everybody talks about it; everybody knows that it is important. But as I leave this place, I am made to realize that friends, memories, trips, fun are equally as important. This is more of a thank you note to my friends, which I take away from IITK. And my advice to people who would leave after is to step out, have fun, and make friends because that would be the dearest thing to you when you leave.
To Atin, for being the constant supporter and encourager to push me. To Priyal, for being my emotional stronghold. To Chauhan, for dragging me back on track every time. To Shashwat, for teaching me innumerable things. To Farzan, for all the geeky conversations. To Ankit, for showing what carefree means. To Varun, for putting alarms and sleeping through only to ruin my sleep. To Siddharth, my fellow pen fight champ. To Aditya, destroying us 1v3 in badminton. To Akhilesh, for founding the legendary discord server with me. To Manan, for giving me FOMO to study. To Prakhar, for those enlightening conversations. To Sanchit, teaching us some useful fraud tricks :p. To Shikhar, for the hype. To Shivam, for every sport we played. To Rajoriya, for political banter. To Shobhit, for not coming with us in the wing :(. To Shivangi, for the small group we found in the end. To Jiya, being the most savage ever. To Bansal, for the GOATED fusfus bottle. To ShashKEKWat, for the scam he did to me. To Bhuvan, for the 508th intern treat. To Ipsita, for being the amazing food appreciator. To Ananya, for all the pending outings we have.
I celebrate this end, in the hope of new beginnings to come. Adios IITK! You will always have a place in my heart.
Written by: Mohd Talib Siddiqui
Edited by: Talin Gupta, Sanika Gumaste
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