As we leave #32: The Anatomy of an AWL

For four years of college, I’ve been on the other side of the table – editing and following up for As We Leaves from seniors, asking them to follow a unique narrative style. And now that I am writing my own As We Leave, I find it difficult to make it unique, inherently interesting and encapsulating at the same time. There are some conventional ways to do this.

One way is to remember the quintessential elements of the IITK experience – the 7:55am breakfast to catch the 8am class; the nightouts in CC and DoAA breaks before every exam; 3am bullas with tens of wingies jampacked in your tiny room; pointlessly extended club meetings; Kathi rolls on dark OAT stairs after that; taking pride in the exam I aced after the one-nighter; blaming the prof for the messed-up exam; ranting over how these courses are irrelevant to my career; being vulnerable to your roomie at 6am who’s as clueless about life as you are; getting validation from that innocent sophomore after relaying the gyaan you heard from your cool senior in first year; cracking sexist, Islamophobic, homophobic jokes that only your friends are going to find funny, and then switching personality to go to the Feminist Theory class; planning trips that never materialise and ultimately, taking the bus to Benaras with no plans.

The second cliché is to recollect the chronology of the years: I entered this place with severe Day 1 anxiety. I remember crying in front of my dad, thinking if I had made the wrong decision. I was super-concerned about how I’d make new friends and that I’d be lonely when everyone came in with their friends from coaching classes and hometowns. I was quickly thrown out of my comfort zone when I Zumba-ed during the orientation and contested the Senate elections. My nomination was cancelled, and it felt like the end of the world. I negotiated with people and got it reinstated. Through the second year, I was back home, led on by Covid, week by week, with the slight hope that we’d return soon. I hit a mental low and lost all motivation to do anything meaningful. We returned to campus in the third year with a sense of redemption for our lost ‘college lives.’ I remember everyone coughing when the third wave hit us, and H13 was declared a containment zone. Yet we lived in denial to avoid going back home or spending a week in the Yoga hall. It made me realise how important this community was for me and each one of us. The fourth year was all about juggling crucial career decisions and a state of to-be nostalgia. The fifth-year was rather lonely without my batchmates and stressful as I dealt with a terrible placement season. The semesters were interspersed by some incredible summers – I backpacked across the East Coast of the US without a working phone in one and lost my phone to a pickpocket in front of Jama Masjid in another.

The third and fourth cliches are the ‘rags-to-riches’ narrative and the ‘ups-and-downs’ rollercoaster, respectively. But, well, I come from a relatively privileged background. And, my pursuits at IITK have been met mostly with successes, interrupted by rare failures. So, I cannot pretend to have either of them.

The fifth way is to look for what makes your story unique. If anything, that would be my unending pursuit to explore and figure out my interests – I took up every stupid opportunity that came my way, be it selling T-shirts for E-Cell or taking challenging UGPs from genomics to ML. I attended every Institute talk and alumni-student interaction I could go to. I worked in two startups, an academic lab, a big tech firm, a central ministry, a news organisation and now work in an investment bank. I inverted my academic template upside down, did OEs in game theory, cognitive science and literature in 2nd year and pushed boring ESOs to the fourth year – just because I was interested in those courses. I developed web apps in Django for a campus startup and became a Senator in my first semester – just because I felt like doing it. I wandered but also deeply invested myself in pursuits I felt passionate about – like how Vox can be an instrument to fight systemic community problems, and how Statistics can change the way you look at the world.

Just when your AWL starts sounding too pompous, a sixth trope is to confess your sins. I smoked grass and drank a lot of alcohol. I once tried a deer’s shank after growing up in a Jain family for 18 long years. I cheated on tests and manipulated people to get what I wanted. I don’t have a moral high ground, and there’s nothing glamorous about it either. Do I have regrets? Just one, I wish I had done my Covid-year courses more honestly. I feel embarrassed to have cheated blatantly in the online exams.

The necessary seventh is the paragraph for acquired wisdom – to pass on gyaan to your unsuspecting juniors. I’ll use this space to tell you that it is reductionist to weigh everything you do in college by how it will help you get that job or school, because that, merely, is not the objective of college. I did not follow the most optimal path to get a good job/grad school. Nor do I know what I want to do in life, but I’m better off than before. I met the most amazing people in the most unlikely places – and a part of them carries on who I am today. Most of us are unsure and like to quickly commit to an end goal because it gives us a sense of security – steer away from that haste and embrace the feeling of insecurity!

And lastly – eight, the only lasting testimony to this journey – me, as I leave. I’m a completely different person. I don’t take myself and my time as seriously. I take more risks and make more spontaneous decisions. IITK gave me the confidence to deal with whatever goes wrong and that the worst case is not too bad. I should thank IITK for giving me memories I look back to when I feel down. And for giving me friends for life, who I still turn to when I feel stressed.