Amitesh Singh Sisodia is a Y19 graduate from the Electrical Engineering department. In this piece he shares his bittersweet journey at IIT Kanpur and reflects on his experiences with different clubs, hall cultures, and fests.
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 roller coaster ride of BTech started on July 21, 2019, when I entered IIT Kanpur with my parents. At first sight itself, IITK was a heaven for me. I will try to include all the interesting things in my story, where the people with whom I lived will be the sole focus.
Orientation
The first chapter is about the incredible orientation, which was literally a living trailer of the journey that we were about to encounter. The whole idea of ‘bapu-bachcha’ and ‘bhai-wingies’ was new and interesting. My bapu, Haren Bhandari, was the first senior I met, and he is still the best. He is the only one who inspired me to become an SG. The seven days of orientation were one of the best parts of the beginning. I still remember some of the slogans that we were made to shout: “Blue film, awww’, ‘Baal ho toh kaise ho, Sagnik Dada (my dad, btw) jaise ho’, ‘ ek-do ek-do core team ko fek do’. As I write this, I feel that all those feelings are running back to me. All the goofed-up story of ‘HR Kadim”—still, I am unaware of its need in the whole orientation, but it was a topic of intense discussions in the wing at that time. The freshman and DJ nights followed the orientation. I got a sprain in my ankle and was not able to participate in it, but I enjoyed it wildly at the DJ night. I still remember that night just because of the people with whom we danced. Harlem Shake was also a good thing that happened to me; I showcased my directorial skills (my dead dream now) and directed the video.
The first semester starts (MTH101 scares).
The first semester started with L20 and full attendance (which is now sounding unreal). Obviously, everyone can relate to the fact that MTH101 was the scariest thing. Not to make this ride any boring with the intricate details of personal struggle in this course and how I finally got an A grade (not flexing, btw), let’s move on. There were other courses, including TA101 and PHY102, where we had the chance to meet new people. My lab partner, Ambuja Budakoti, was one of the first people from IITK outside my wing with whom I befriended. Doing TA101 assignments might have been a tough task for many, but it was very easy for me since I had been a good artist as a painter and craftsman in my school days.
PE101 cannot be forgotten. It was the worst of all the experiences. Being an owl throughout my life, it was incredibly tough for me to wake up at 5:30 a.m. after sleeping at 3 a.m. On many days, I didn’t even sleep. After the phase of getting up and entering the ground, out of nowhere, the athlete inside me always became active and encouraged me to join the gym (what unstable thinking!). And sadly, I was also part of NCC; there are no words to explain how painful it was.
Hall Life (Hall 13)
Hall 13 is a great place. It is so big that going from mess to canteen took years (an unnecessary exaggeration due to some bad experiences; people should know the feeling when you have an ankle sprain). BTW, E5 ka tempo high hai! I made new friends and a whole lot of acquaintances in Hall 13. I played badminton for hours, and I still do. I had a dream of playing badminton after clearing JEE, and at least that came true in the best manner. From being a noob to an expert (people say this, not me), my badminton has been great. I pooled money from my wingmates for the rackets for my personal use and forcefully taught them badminton to “play. Badminton, being a recurring topic, will come and go. I also earned some money by doing an internship with Taghive.
Antaragni 19
OMG!! (I wanted to write Gaali, keeping it clean; it was very difficult to stop that urge, btw.) This was a whole new experience and an incredible one. I remember roaming around to see everything and everyone (haha, you know who). I danced and danced everywhere I got a chance. It was great. The pros were great. The best part was being with the wingies and just viewing the scenes. It was an experience that is not easy to explain in words. Very few people know, but I participated in the Antaragni competitions of the Debating Society IITK. I was with Piyush Agrawal and Diya Singhal. It was a good new experience.
E-summit 19
I always wanted to have a start-up (this dream is still alive) and grow it to the highest levels. So I participated in the E-cell events: stock-the-stock, the bitcoin competition, and the pitching competition. The most memorable thing was the pitchers competition, where I participated with my wingie, Sagar Agrawal. I don’t know what we did, but it was a good experience. Sagar, maybe one day we will set up a real start-up (I’m emotional a little bit here).
Takneek
Now comes the incredible part. The hall. Hall-5 ka tempo high hai! I participated in the robotics competition, and our team won the second prize in the competition, and HALL-5 won the robotics trophy overall. I am very, very proud of myself (boasting is required here). We spent whole nights last week hoping that the robot would at least move, but funnily enough, with God’s grace, it worked fantastically, and we won. All thanks to Gawd seniors. Bow down to them. And as everyone knows and everyone should know, HALL-5 won the Takneek. Takneek Winner, Hall 5! I want to write the anthem here, but it will take up space. It resonates in my heart, and so do the hearts of real Shers.
The first semester ends…
Before the end, I would like to mention that the gradescope was a dreadful thing, and the mail was the most horrifying message. Everyone remembers the MTH 101 midterm mark announcement. Being an excessively study-loving person (not a maggu guy; I am intellectual, ha ha), academics were not impossible to push through. Being a batti peep, I also wanted to change my branch, but my dreams were shattered (pun not intended) as I went to study with another wingie, Kush Daga, before the PHY102 exam and landed with a B grade in the course. And then I decided not to study any further (funnily wrong enough for my life now, since I have taken the path of UPSC). Still, grades do not tell the whole story.
Second sem !
The second semester was different in the sense that now people were one semester old and all of them had GAWD-like values. Everyone is preaching everyone’s shit. There were Nisheeth Srivastava and Prof. Harbola, both of them in one semester. Nobody can forget the ESC101 mid-semester lab test and the PYH103 mid-semester exam. I failed deliberately to study this semester, and then COVID destroyed everything. Chill hai vese, who cares now? By the way, one good thing happened: I got my first Academic Excellence Award.
Galaxy
This was the best thing I had that semester. I lived in one of the most bakchod times of Hall feeling through the galaxy. I was part of the photography competitions, which had like 7–8 events. I was part of most of them. The interaction with seniors, the countless night-outs, and the amazing photography mentorship of Devesh Goyal and Deepak Meena were with me throughout this thing. Sankalp Sharma (the Bakchod person who led Hall 5 to win two trophies). I learned so much through this experience. We won the photography trophy eventually (Hall 5 won the trophy after Y17), and it was the best feeling. And, finally, we also won the Galaxy. Galaxy Winner Hall 5!!
Team ERA
Takneek was eventually encouraged to join the tech clubs and teams. With an urge to learn and explore, I joined Team ERA. I knew nothing about coding. Literally no coding. I didn’t even know what C or C++ were. And the test required me to write computer vision code for boxing a blue lighting plate in a running video (an impossible task for me). I somehow wrote something and submitted the file, which eventually did not get submitted (idiot me). The next round’s list was not released, but people got the notification for the interview. I didn’t. I then contacted the ERA head directly, and he (to my horror) evaluated my code live while chatting with me; it was actually an interview in itself. I got selected, and I also got selected in the final round, becoming a permanent team member. I got to know afterwards that Ashok Kumar Chaudhary (the team leader at the time) just took a chance on me, even though my code was sh*t. He, being the real God, took me on the team.
My experience with Team ERA spanned almost two years. I learned so much throughout the journey, from being a technical member to team head. Luvneesh and Muskan mentored me in all the tasks and helped me learn the needed skills. I became a tech guy after I joined ERA. Ashok’s support is also to be mentioned. I learned C, C++, Ros, Python, Fusion360, computer vision, image processing, and whatnot. It was the best place to learn and execute. Any praise will be less in exchange for what ERA has provided me with. I did incredible projects (which were essentially real; funny, isn’t it?) and they are still showcased in my profile. I learned how to communicate and discuss in detail the technicalities of a problem, which will help immensely in the future.
Team ERA was one of the best parts of my IITK life. Even though most of its interactions were online, it still made my life worthwhile in IITK.
Clubs (Robo, Photo, and E-cell) and Counseling Service (SG)
I don’t know why, but I took the advice to explore too seriously. I interviewed in at least 10 different places and got selected for almost all of them. I did fraud in Antaragni and Techkriti roles (sorry fest guys) and took up the Robo, Photo, and E-cell design secy work seriously. The people I met during all these interactions helped me develop as a person. Being a secretary was a great feeling for me, and I learned so much throughout this journey. We did an incredible summer project in the robotics club: the talking bot (predecessor to ChatGPT, ha ha). It was a great project. Btw, I joined the photography club for my interest in photography and also my interest in someone.
First online semester and re-exams
Then COVID struck, and everything was online for almost two years. The first online semester was a mess, and the learning of Cheating101 started. Being a studious idiot, I initially regretted that time but eventually adapted to it. I also took the re-exams (I was an idiot), upgraded one, and degraded another. That semester just went by somehow.
Covid and research paper, fourth semester
The fourth semester was hectic for Batti peeps. The courses started becoming tougher, and internship season started approaching. I studied everything fully, but due to my online and cheating skills (which I lacked hugely), I hated academia. I eventually got a golden opportunity to work with Professor Subrahmanya Swamy Peruru on the topic of the classification of wireless signals using deep learning techniques. I worked on this problem with a PhD student from the University of Washington, USA. He was in the USA, and we had to manage time constraints. We eventually published the research paper. I am so proud of this achievement of publishing a research paper in ML in my second year. It was a great learning experience, and it is a gem mentioned on my resume.
Internship season and the coding mess
The internship prep started in the summer of 2021. It was the most hectic time of my life to date. I had to code for hours and hours and still knew nothing about what to do next. I eventually did the required coding prep, and the internship season started. My friends, Nitin Kumar and Videh Aggarwal, helped me through the academics during that time. It was a stressful month for me (yes, I had to wait for a month to get the internship) to finally land a SDE role at Visa Inc. The 31st of August was the best day. Then started one of the best parts of my life until now.
Coming back to heaven: IITK (Hall 13 and Hall 5)
We were allowed to return to IITK in January. I had been vaccinated before, so I came to IITK as soon as possible. I met my wingies, and that was the thing. The time we spent together in Hall 13 was the best. Then, at the end of the semester, we were moved to Hall 5 (the best hall). We lived there for 1.5 months, and that time was a golden period for my hall life. No hall can match the vibe of Hall 5. The triple share was the best place. It was a ‘dharamshala’ for everyone in the wing. Late-night talks about life, talking straight out of our hearts, make life-long friendship bonds. Hall 5 made everything happen.
Trips Mania (+Bangalore Trip, Internship)
I made many trips around India last year. I hadn’t gotten out of my state of MP before that (just to Kanpur). The Udaipur-Jaipur trip with Wingies was a memorable experience for me. I really opened up with my friends and made them my family. Then, in the summer of 2022, I went to Bangalore for an internship at Visa Inc. There I made new friends, who are now part of my core group. Yashasvii Lohar, Pooja Choudhary, Abhishek Yadav, and Akash Kumar Bhoi These people made my internship time smooth and easy. Then came the Ooty Trip, where I got to know two incredible IITK peeps: Abhay Mishra and Inshit Darania. That trip is still the best trip I have ever had. I went to Delhi with Rishi (my other wingie), and then we went to Kutch-Vadodara in December with Sagar Agrawal, Shubh Agrawal, Prateek Jain, and Videh Aggarwal. I went on another trip to Goa with Aakash, Sagar, and Videh. It was an adventurous trip where we lived the Bollywood life of a typical Goa trip and got destroyed by washing away our phones in the sea (bye bye phones). The latest trip I had was with my whole wing to Prayagraj-Varanasi. It was a wholesome trip with full-on emotions and divinity.
My life and my people
I made many friends at IITK. Nitin, Sagar, Rishi, Aakash, Daga (Kush), Dohare (Abhishek), Bindal (Vineet), Videh, Mridul, Parth, and Gaurav Some became more than friends (they know whom I am talking about). IITK as a place is heaven, but these are the people who make it heavenly. We laughed, played, cried, and stayed together all the time. Our wing is a true family. Whenever someone gets caught in a weird situation, everyone is there to help.
One of the most recent and interesting incidents for the audience is the ‘Case of My Lost iPhone 14 Pro Max.’ Yes, people, I lost it. I dropped it off in the autorickshaw at the IIT gate. The next five days were very tough for me. Going to the police stations, tracking the phone all day long, checking CCTV footage at different places—in everything, there was my family far from home, my wing. Everyone helped me so much. Encouraged me not to feel low and helped me move on. And this is just one incident where my family helped me. They have been a constant pillar of support for me.
All the farewells, Batti peeps, Robo club, multiple wing shoots, DJAC night outs, wing Holi, wing ceremony, can never be forgotten.
I learned true friendship here, made true friends here, had feelings of affection and love, had heartbreaks of disappointment and distress, but all was worth it. I am happy to have such a great group of intelligent (as I think) bhailogs in my life. This IITK journey can only be completed with my wing (+some xtra peeps, ha ha ) and only my wing.
Written By : Amitesh Singh Sisodia
Edited By : Anuj Gargya, Utkarsh Agrawal
