Muskan Jaiswal is a graduating Y18 student from the Department of Chemistry. She talks to us about how the four years at IIT Kanpur changed her as a person and helped her grow.
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.
Hey 🙂 Here is my As we leave, I don’t want to leave this place but here it is. It’s the time that I summarize my four years of IITK and pack my four-year memories with me and cherish them for life. During my orientation time, Along with excitement about the new journey of life, I was thinking about how I will get through these 4 years with new people, and now at this stage, I am feeling, do I really need to leave this beautiful place and amazing people now. On my first day of college 20th July 2018, I was homesick and was crying for home and now after 4 years, when leaving college on 12th May 2022, I was campus-sick and cried for the campus with the song in the background playing “Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna”, hugging, crying and making promises that we will meet again soon.
These four years had changed me as a person a lot. Before joining IITK, I was very confused because I was getting a chemistry branch and IITs are supposed to be BTech degree programs but mine was B.S. When I was allotted B.S, in Chemistry I thought of taking a drop and sitting for JEE again. But then somehow I dropped the plan and felt like “Jo Hoga Dekha jayega” and believe me this was my best decision of not taking a drop. I entered IITK as an introverted kid, I remember my first day here at IITK. My parents were there with me and everything was new in that hot summer. I met my Student Guide and Behenas together in the evening for 10-15min. I left with my parents to stay in a hotel with them as I was not ready to leave them. On the next day, orientation started and my parents left for home in the night. At that time I cried a lot because this was the first time in my life when I was away from my parents. I was homesick for almost a month. I started getting involved in different activities(Freshers, Fests, SnT club activities, etc.) and finally, I became part of the Election Commission as an Election Officer and that journey went on to finally becoming Chief Election Officer.
As I am not too good at making friends, It takes time for me to get comfortable with someone and share things. But I met some of the most amazing people in my four years during Elections whom I won’t be able to forget in my life. Every person taught me something and helped me improve myself, some people became my family for life.
I still remember in my first year there was a session on “know your department” and 3 seniors took that session. In that session, we were told that there are very few companies that open for the Chemistry branch and those companies too prefer other branches over chemistry in placements. At that time I thought chemistry would not give me a job so I should start taking interest in research and would need to go for higher education(in which I was not interested), but during the CHM102 course, I understood that chemistry is not for me and I didn’t have enough cpi to change to the good branch. Then I heard “coding Karlo, job mil jayegi” but when I was doing ESC101, I felt coding is not my cup of tea. I was very worried about the future but thought let’s go with the flow and I continued working at various places. But after seeing my first year CPI I understood that I need to prioritize what I want to do. I can’t do everything and focus on academics at the same time.
So, at that time I prioritized the Election Commission and Udghosh to work for the second year.
Then in march during Holi break most of the people went home, I stayed back at the campus during vacation but then we received a mail on 13th March 2020 that we need to go home because of covid, and then who knew that Covid will take 1.5 Years from our college life, during that time there were very few people with whom I was in contact regularly because I was not good at maintaining bonds through calls and texts but there were some people who made efforts to maintain that bond virtually too and they made me come through that covid time by being in constant touch through calls and texts(Thanks to them).
In my third year, my involvement was only as a manager of the Election Commission from where the actual change in my personality started showing up. I started becoming an ambivert from an introverted person, I was not afraid to talk to anyone. This change was seen by my parents and they became confident too that I can handle myself now. Then in my 4th year, I wanted to be the core team of Udghosh because I worked for Udghosh since my first year and always wanted to be the one conducting it as well as Chief Election Officer obviously because EC is my family and I enjoy working as an EC member, I can’t leave the one thing that is very close to my heart(There are many who criticize it, but idc it’s my family :)), but taking both positions was not possible for me because of Placement season and also a conflict of interest in two positions. So, I was confused between the two but then CEO nominations were out before Udghosh and I applied for CEO. Then finally the journey took me to the Chief Election officer which gave me a lot of different experiences and made me realize many things that I myself didn’t know I am capable of handling. My tenure as a Chief Election Officer was one of the adventurous journeys for me where I faced much criticism and went through various situations. There were times when I didn’t eat a single bite in a whole day, I was awakened for almost 48 hours to ensure everything is going smoothly at election time, and I was needed to take every decision very carefully because many out there were just waiting for me to make a small mistake and they again start criticizing the EC. There were times when I cried too because it was getting too hectic for me to handle various situations and pressure at the same time but obviously I couldn’t show it in front of anybody otherwise my team would have lost their motivation and I wanted to look strong in front of everyone. If someone had told me that I would need to face all of these situations if I become CEO, still I would have become the CEO because of things that I learned in this journey, I couldn’t have learned anywhere else. I was able to handle those situations because of my team (I love you all my 007s) without whom elections were not possible for me. I especially want to thank those people who supported me at that time of Elections and motivated me to go on. If I sum up my CEO tenure then it was one of the best experiences I had in my college life where I learned a lot and this made me a strong person both mentally and emotionally who will not be afraid of anything anymore.
My fourth year flew away in the blink of an eye. 7th semester went on worrying about placements. Then the 8th Semester started with Elections till mid-February then Holi, Techkriti, Udghosh, and Antaragni back to the back, Batch Video, DE, photoshoot, EndSems then finally Hall-1 ki baarat was an amazing experience before leaving, With all of these four years flew away. And as this was the last semester, I had only 3 courses with 28 credits so I totally neglected the academics but then we received mail about offline classes and EndSems. At first, I got worried because seriously I didn’t study a word this semester, then I thought “Abhi enjoy kar lete hain, baar baar yeh din Nahi Milenge” but when EndSem started approaching I got panicked because there was one course in the IME Department where I was worried that I may fail this course but I don’t know how I received a ‘B’ grade even after giving a disastrous End semester exam…xD. If I speak about placements, I was not sure what profile I want to apply for. But I knew I definitely don’t want a Software profile, so at that time I decided to go with a consulting profile. That time was one of the toughest times yet exciting, from not getting placed on Day-1&2 to getting placed on Day-3 in the profile I was interested in after many rejections.
I finally got placed in a Consulting Firm, there were a few people who supported me and helped me to get through with whom I understood the actual meaning of friendship, staying up for me the whole night so that they can wake me up at the time of interview to coming to my room for checking up if I had eaten anything. I would never forget the support and motivation that I got from those people.
Then the day came when people started leaving for home with nostalgic Goodbyes and finally I was leaving for home that ended with meeting some people a day before leaving and a perfect nostalgic night out with beautiful sunrise.
“The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot.”
I just want to advise my juniors that you don’t need to be scared of anything or anyone, if you are right nothing can happen wrong with you just believe in yourself and keep on moving ahead in your life. You will not get these opportunities to explore your interests and learn anywhere else, Don’t lose these golden four years. Also, it is very important to make good friends while you are in college. I don’t think you can ever find such a great peer group in your life. Some people will get hurt because of you, you will get hurt because of them, and people will get distant in the journey but still, always cherish those moments that you spent with them because at some time they were a special part of your journey. With this, I want to wish you all the best for the future and feel free to reach out if you feel I can help you in any way possible
“Your future is an unwritten symphony just awaiting your creative, daring, and unique talent to make it a masterpiece.”
Seniors who guided and helped me throughout – Mayank Chauhan, Shivansh Tripathi, Rahul Sethi, Snehil Saluja, Ekta Singh
Senior and an important friend – Prince Kumar
Smriti Chhattani, Saumya Singh, Divya Adil, Shivangi Gupta, Jaya Srivastava, Ravina Chouhan, Pranati Majhi, Hinisha Bansal, Muskan Agarwal, Tanvi Nerkar, Mrigya Gupta, Honey Nikam – Wingies + Adopted Wingies xD (Thanks for all the memories)
My Best Friend – Priya Tholia (Thanks for everything <3)
My constant friends from the beginning (Milind Nigam, Kaustav Sen, Deependra Chansoliya)
My Branchmates (Sanyam Khosla, Sakshi Pawar) – Thanks for helping me pass all the DCs and DEs :p
Vedaant Sikka and Kartikeya Dhakad (Thanks for helping me and being amazing friends)
My juniors – Samiksha, Sparsh, Piyush, Devansh, Ankita, Rinku, and Navshruti (ThankYou for supporting me)
Last and special mention to my 007s (Y20 and Y21 team) – Without you guys conducting elections was impossible for me.
IITK you gave me what I always yearned for – friends for life!
Written by: Muskan Jaiswal
Edited by: Mutasim Khan, Sanika Gumaste
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