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In this 39th edition of As We Leave 2024, Siddhartha Pratap Singh, a Y19 student in the Department of Chemistry, takes us through some stories and some learnings he has taken away from his experience at IITK. He gives us some bits of gyaan and some interesting ways to look at what life throws at you
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.
Before starting this As We Leave or AWL, I wish to put out this disclaimer. Whatever I’ll mention, is my personal opinion. I don’t want to use words like “I think” or “According to me” throughout. Subjectivity is implicit, so please take note while reading.
Space Oddity
“Ground Control to Major Tom
Take your protein pills and put your helmet on (ten)
Ground Control to Major Tom (nine, eight, seven, six)
Commencing countdown, engines on (five, four, three, two)
Check ignition, and may God’s love be with you (two, one, blastoff)”
Writing an AWL wasn’t such a clear-cut decision for me. Last year was supposed to be my final year at IITK and I planned to write an AWL back then but didn’t think I had anything worthwhile to say. Much has changed since then and now I am ready to frame it into words. I guess many of the readers won’t know me. I was never the outgoing type nor did I ever interact outside my social circles. So let me get the introductions out of the way.
I’m Siddhartha, a Y19 degree extended student. I feel a need to make something clear, right at the start. My goal here is not to garner sympathy. I consider this like some personal exercise as I try to conceptualize my stay at IITK and what it meant. You should keep this in mind as you read along and take whatever I say with a grain of salt.
So, all good stories have a purpose and the same is true for an AWL. I had multiple ideas on where to go with this and have decided to steer clear of some stuff. Firstly, this won’t be a chronological list of events as that won’t interest most readers. Secondly, I won’t be talking about certain aspects of college life such as Academics and Career. Those are a matter of your own hard work, some luck factor and you’re better off getting advice from those more academically inclined than me.
The things that I want to talk about are more general. An AWL acts as a way to look into someone’s life at IITK and understand what they got out of it, what lessons they have learned, and what mistakes they made. This is in line with what I believe the goal of an AWL should be and what we were told by our Y18 seniors about the AWL of the then-graduating Y15 batch. The goal of all of this is to better oneself and I’ll be touching on some relevant events.
Riders on the Storm
“Riders on the storm
Into this house, we’re born
Into this world, we’re thrown
Like a dog without a bone
An actor out on loan
Riders on the storm”
There is a deeply concerning trend that I see in junior batches. I know it’s become a running joke when we say, “Juniors are killing the culture of IITK”, but stay with me on this. More and more I have seen that people on campus won’t do things unless they get some benefit out of it. Before they join any club, the students think about what useful skills they may extract from here and based on this they decide whether they’ll join or not. This, however, is not a new phenomenon as it was happening during our first year as well.
Just like most freshers, I went to “explore” the various clubs during the first semester. Due to some expectations from myself, I decided to join the Dramatics Club and did the freshers nukkad in Dram Eve 1. I later realized that these expectations were deeply misguided but we’ll get to that later. One day during our practice sessions, the Y17 seniors of the club asked the freshers a question, “Why did you all join Drams and not some other club?”. Most of us gave the same answers like “I want to improve my speaking skills”, “I want to gain confidence” or “I want to speak better in public”. If you look at the answers, you can see this is the result of looking at the clubs through the aforementioned lens of “benefits”. All of these are skills that will help one professionally and socially and that’s how we were justifying joining Drams.
After hearing from us, the Y17s had something interesting to say, “All these are skills that you can learn by joining any club. All clubs take public lectures, workshops, and many more. Why did you join Drams specifically?”. In hindsight, this was a pretty obvious explanation. We also realized what they wanted to hear from us and we were told the correct answer to the original question, “I like acting or want to act”.
I didn’t realize this back then but I didn’t like acting the same way others did. Also, I wasn’t that good at it. We are told that enthu is the only thing you need but enthu can only get you so far. Yes, you can work hard enough to excel at something but not all things would get the same result. Sometimes the energy is better spent on things you’re more natural at or those you actually like doing. This is where being at a college like IITK helps, you have many chances to fail. It’s not like the outside world where you have to work a job, even if you don’t like it. Here at least you have the option to not do something if it only brings you anxiety. You should use this opportunity to “find yourself” i.e find answers for who you are and what you want. This was the motivation I needed to leave Drams which I eventually did around Antaragni practice.
This is not an easy task, “finding yourself”, and you may stray from the path many times. Sometimes you may do things out of peer pressure. Maybe your wingies are applying for fest secy and you think you should apply too because you don’t want to miss out on things. I also did similar things just because my wingies were doing it. I interviewed for the AnC council for a Secy position (got rejected) and also for Student Guide (got accepted) but this is not how it should be. The desire to explore should come from yourself. You shouldn’t do these things under coercion or duress. Most freshers go through the ordeal of Galaxy and Takneek. I also did as I rejoined Drams during Galaxy, having nothing better to do but that was not a smart decision. I could have dedicated that time to some other club that could have used my skills better.
As you explore you will eventually find the fun in things. As that happens, the idea of “benefits” will vanish as being in that space brings you joy. That’s why you should try to explore as much as possible and as fast as possible. That will bring you the maximum amount of joy. However, I don’t think of this as a dealbreaker. Sometimes things may go under your radar when you go out exploring the various entities. What should you do then? This happened to me in the case of Quiz Club.
I knew about QC as one of my wingies, Mantaas, and a friend, Sanskar, were avid quizzers and both became QC secys. I was not part of many quiz club activities during the first year due to being focused on Drams. I attended 2-3 quizzes in the first year but then COVID happened. My next interaction with QC wouldn’t be until the 6th semester. It was a collaborative event with QC to host a Video Game Quiz and this was my proper introduction to quizzing.
From summer onwards, I went to more and more quizzes with my wingies and other friends, having done more than 15 quizzes and hosted a Music Quiz Club with a couple of Y22s. Now, this experience was way better when compared to my experience in Drams. I say this having nothing but respect for Drams. I have been a fan of their performances for a long time and still attend every event if I can. However, I simply believe I was a better fit here in Quiz Club than I ever was in Drams. Due to a lifestyle surrounded by pop culture and random facts, quizzing came more naturally to me. Looking back now, I wish I had joined it sooner. Still, I had enough fun for it to be worth writing about.
I wanted to bring this point up because my first consistent interaction with the QC started in the 4th year. What I mean to say is, you can always find fun new things. What you may do is try to find some time, set some boundaries (as you will not be able to do everything), and do as much as you can. So whenever you are bored or just want to try something out, get out there. There is a wealth of opportunities. Join the Adventure Club and go on a trek, join the Photography Club for one of their workshops or you can even join Drams if you actually like acting and give commendable performances. You can have fun by just trying out a new club. Just hit up any coordi or secy, they would be eager to help you. And isn’t this the reason why we call them clubs and not companies? They are there to socialize, be part of a community, and just have fun with people who like the same things as you.
Born to Run
“The highway’s jammed with broken heroes
On a last chance power drive
Everybody’s out on the run tonight
But there’s no place left to hide”
As far back as I can remember, I was always obsessed with Video Games. The memories may have blurred but they are still there. My gaming journey started around the age of 4 and I was lucky enough to have gotten such an early exposure to games. Playing games like Contra or Mario on a bootleg console or PC games like Mortal Kombat 4 and House of the Dead was all we did in the summers or whenever the cable got disconnected. As time went on and we got broadband, it was like the floodgates were opened. I was able to learn so much about the history of the industry, various gaming consoles, famous franchises, and so on. I played scores of games and eventually, I learned about Game Development and how outside of India, it was a viable career option for many. That’s when I decided, I wanted to be a Game Developer.
When I joined IITK, there was nothing related to GameDev, but as fate would have it, the Game Development Society was formed just before COVID. Sometime later, the secy form was out and I filled it the first chance I got. I gave my secy interview with zero experience in GameDev or Game Design, only having a low-end PC from 2011. My only saving grace was that I was a gamer and my entire secy interview was just me and the founders (Mayant Mukul and Sugam Srivastava, I owe it all to them) discussing games such as Super Metroid and Fallout: New Vegas and design concepts in them. By some chance, I got selected as secy and that is how the GameDev journey began.
When I started doing GameDev, I realized some things. First, I really liked this thing i.e. if given the option to sit in a room and just to do game development for years, I would do so. This was what I mentioned when talking about clubs. Second, I was actually good at this. This is another thing that I mentioned when I talked about Drams. If you think something gives you joy, but you are not good at it, after some time it won’t. You would be forcing yourself to do it. This was what I felt was different for me and GameDev.
During COVID, when there was no surety of campus reopening or even when the next semester would start, I just spent 10-12 hours a day creating games. That was how the rest 8 months of 2020 went for me. This also pushed me to apply for Group Leader in the club. I got selected and I must say the tenure as leader was such a wonderful time. The time in the council was fun as I already knew many people there such as my wingies, Panshul and Shivam, and some folks from the hall like Gurbaaz and Saad. I also found great friends in the other Y19 leaders and in the Y20 secys, many of whom I consider more of a friend than a junior.
Once you have found something similar to what I found in GameDev, you should then focus on prioritizing. This would be your personal decision and you should prioritize things based on how much you can sacrifice. If you are okay with putting all of your time into this one thing, then that’s up to you. This was the same reason I had and also why I didn’t join any other club or fest team. I thought my time was better spent working on making games than someplace else like Team Antaragni doing god knows what for a fest that I wasn’t even interested in. This doesn’t mean you can’t explore anymore. I did QC in my 4th year when I became free of the club responsibilities in GameDev. However, I still believe that the best time to explore is your first year only. By the second year, your time is better spent on specializing and setting boundaries on what you’re doing.
With a Little Help from My Friends
“What would you think if I sang out of tune?
Would you stand up and walk out on me?
Lend me your ears and I’ll sing you a song
And I’ll try not to sing out of key
Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends?”
Taking a detour, I wanted to talk about the most important part of campus culture which resonated with me, i.e. “wing culture”. This and the “SG-Baccha” culture is something that goes a long way toward connectivity in this harsh campus environment. When observed, each wing is different in its own right. In our case, we were a very sheltered wing. Even though all of us had many friends outside the wing, we mostly hung out in the wing itself. It sort of became a home away from home, a place to always come back to. This homely vibe was also why we never caught on with the idea of spending time in the Academic area as many do. If we had gaps between 2 classes, we went back to the wing instead of going to the Library or Lounge.
This wing culture was severely affected by COVID. I have noticed it a lot in the subsequent batches, especially Y20s. Gone were the shared living spaces that were replaced by WhatsApp groups and Discord servers. You could care less about someone being your wingie since the college experience was entirely online. This helped people in some ways as interaction outside the wing became much easier but also hindered the special status given to a wing. When people finally came to college, they were split up and thrown into random rooms irrespective of wing or hall. Many of these people had no place to fall back upon, a place to call home. No matter how cursed, the Y19s were lucky indeed as the bonds of a wing were never lost, even after COVID.
I feel blessed regarding the people I met on campus and for most of them I still wonder, “What even makes us friends?”. Once me and my wingies, Aryan and Mantaas, discussed this question at length on how and at what point, you may call someone a friend. “Do you have to share the same interests?”, “Do you think alike?” or “Do you have the same belief system?” and for me, the answer to most of them was no.
You may have friends who share the same interests such as in a club or friends you make due to circumstances, like your department friends. Some friendships may happen over time, like in the case of a wing. The bonds get deeper as you spend more time with them. However, there are cases where you cannot put into words why you are friends with someone as you connect with them at a more human level. You may not agree on many things but you know, this is a person you can trust. Maybe if circumstances were different, I would never have been friends with many such people, and that I dread.
I don’t think I would be able to mention all the people who were close to me, so I would like to name-drop everyone. First would be my wingies, I would not have survived this college without their help. Here’s to you Sumit, Aryan, Saad, Panshul, Saurabh, Aman, Ayush, Varun, Bhaumik, Ankit, Shivam, Raghav, Arpit, Mantaas, Rahul, Rajnish, and yes, even you Rupeshwar, wherever you are. A special thanks to Rajnish for bearing with my antics for this past year. Next would be other Y19s such as the folks from C3 Pranjal, Jaskirat, and Sanskar, the other leaders from GameDev, Abhay, Jeet, and Yash, folks from the CHM department, Anil and Ghulam, and even the Y20 juniors from GameDev, Ishan, Naman, Prakhar, Rudransh and many more.
However, what if you don’t get along with your friends or you have a falling out with them? This doesn’t mean all is lost. You must try to fix things with them and make them understand your side. If that doesn’t work, you must remember that you are not alone, there are always people out there who would care for you. Surround yourself with such people, people who won’t judge you. There are always communities you can be a part of such as a club, sports team, department study group, or just a random group who you sit with at the mess or canteen. It doesn’t take much to become fast friends with someone. What I want to say is, that no matter what, you will find someone. And even if it doesn’t work out with them, you will find someone else. Always keep looking, everybody needs somebody.
Time
“Tired of lying in the sunshine, staying home to watch the rain
And you are young and life is long, and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun”
I guess I have preached a lot in this AWL but that doesn’t mean my life is all fine and dandy. Everyone has their own evils, things that they know are wrong but still haven’t fully worked out. If I look at myself, one of my biggest evils would be procrastination. This AWL is another case of me procrastinating a lot to finally write. It has been the source of many hardships, in my academics, in my career, and in my life. This resulted in many lost opportunities and with each, you get a new what-if scenario in your mind, “What if this thing turned out differently?”.
The root cause in most of these cases was either laziness or carelessness. You didn’t study for an exam and now it has come to bite you back. Sometimes though, you were waiting for the perfect opportunity. You feared you would ruin things but till then, it was too late. Now I know, you will never be perfect enough in your mind, the ceiling keeps getting higher. You can work a lot on perfecting that portfolio but after some time, you have to send it to recruiters. You have to shoot your shot or else you will regret it.
There are many such things that I have regrets about, in fact, too many to count. This emotion though, “Regret”, has been a part of my life for as long as I remember. Regrets about the past, things I could change, things I feel sad about. They cling to you and it’s hard to let them go. And the questions keep coming back, “What if I did something different”, “Maybe I shouldn’t have said that thing”, and “Maybe I was at fault and should have apologized”. They haunt me day in and day out as many of these have been the results of my own actions. For those, only I’m to blame but some things were out of my control. Things that would have been the same no matter what I did, but still, I am not able to let those regrets go.
There are too many incidents to count but I won’t be mentioning them here. I’m sorry but I’m not comfortable talking about them. I overthink these incidents a lot and sometimes, it’s not a complete waste of time. It may help you in analyzing your actions and you can learn to be a better person. But after some time, you have to accept it and let it go. What’s gone is gone forever, it won’t come back. The only thing you can do is look forward to the future.
I Talk to the Wind
“I talk to the wind
My words are all carried away
I talk to the wind
The wind does not hear
The wind cannot hear”
Let’s go back to the purpose of this AWL which I mentioned earlier. Can reading about someone else’s life experiences make your own life better? This is one thing that I aim to achieve here. If reading this AWL helps someone and makes their lives better or if any person gains more clarity about themselves by reading about mine, then this will have been worth it.
I don’t claim any expertise in mental health but I think at one or multiple points in my 4th year, I was depressed. Now I don’t want to use the word depression as a buzzword to anyone going through it as I don’t know how to quantify the severity of my case. There was a tragic incident a few months back concerning one of our batchmates and I don’t mean any disrespect to anyone’s struggles in life. I am trying to come at this through my understanding of my own life. I might be wrong and if you disagree with it, you can disregard my opinions as the ravings of a foolish person.
So where were we? Yes, how to make one’s life better? For now, I have reached only one answer to this “Only you know how to fix your life, no one else does”. Only you know what’s wrong and only you can save yourself. What others can do is become your support system. This is what I want the readers to make sure, have a solid support system. Your friends, your wingies, or your partner, all of them are your support group. Never hesitate to ask them anything, they won’t judge you. If they do, they were never your friends to begin with. Also, you will always have your family at your side.
When I look at my case, the only thing I can say for sure was that life was pretty shit back then and I didn’t have a solution for it. My academics were going downhill, I didn’t have a job and there was a chance my degree may be extended. Things were so bad sometimes, that I didn’t even know if I could tell anyone about it, about what was going on. I was scared about what they would think of me. But that was where I was wrong. Sure life was shit, but feeling shitty about yourself won’t make it any better. Did it feel good to do nothing, eat nothing, sleep all day, or talk to no one? No, but it did feel better than interacting with other people. I was not able to live normally, acting like things were completely fine with me.
When faced with hardships, I chose the easy way out and that was to quit. I quit studying, quit going to classes, quit spending time with wingies, and quit my internship, but that didn’t fix anything. That just made things worse and let me tell you, there is no limit to how bad things can get. Things may hit rock bottom and you think, “There’s no way this could get any worse”, and somehow, it does get worse. The only way to fix it is by working on it and the first step is acknowledging it. The first thing you should do is tell yourself that there is a problem. It may or may not have been caused by you but you have to accept that there is a problem, something that is affecting your life right now and you have to solve it.
Hey Jude
“And anytime you feel the pain, hey Jude, refrain,
Don’t carry the world upon your shoulders.
For well you know that it’s a fool who plays it cool
By making his world a little colder.”
Once you have accepted that there is a problem, you can start by finding solutions for it and the best place to start is with your mental health. A sound mind is an efficient mind and it can help you in fixing the other parts of your problem. The best solution for my mental health and maybe for yours, is talking about the problem. This is something you have to do, you talk about it. No matter how hard it is, you say what the problem is, you tell yourself and others how you truly feel about it and if you want, you ask them for help. If someone considers you an important part of their lives, they will do anything in their power to help you. What’s the point of having a friend if you can’t even rant to them?
During the entire 4th year, I didn’t know what to do so I hid the truth of how my life and academics were going, to my friends and family. This didn’t help as things just got worse over time and at some point, hiding the truth hurt more than speaking about it. I am grateful for how everyone reacted to it, especially my wingies, Arpit and Aman who were understanding of my situation. Opening up to them and my family was harder than expected but it was the right step forward. I did not expect the level of support I received, but I guess that’s why they are your family.
I am not saying that doing some therapy with your friends and family is going to fix your life. It won’t, things can always get bad and at the worst possible time. One month later, when I thought that my life was finally back on track, it got worse than ever before. So then what? You think I might have learned my lessons and sought support from others but you would be wrong. I again hid the truth and went back to the old isolationist habits. The only positive here was I was able to pull myself back before I did anything reckless. I gathered up the courage and told my family what the truth was. This doesn’t mean the problem was fixed. My degree got extended and I had to finish it by next year.
Sometimes, things just don’t work out. Life is not your generic AWL where against all odds, the person gets placed right at the end, barely passes all the hard courses and the wing successfully goes on that Goa trip. In the real world, people fail and statistically most of us will fail, at some point or another. But no matter how hard it gets, you can always make it better. Comparing myself to the version of me from one year ago, I can say I am 10 times happier now.
So, did I win at life? No. Did I get that dream GameDev job? Maybe, time will tell. Is it a high-paying job like my peers? No, but I won’t let it ruin my day. Now I know that no matter what, there are things in life to be glad about. Your friends, your family, these are the people who are there for you. Even if you’re not happy with your life, they will be happy with you, however you are.
Melodies of Life
“A voice from the past,
Joining yours and mine
Adding up the layers of harmony
And so it goes, on and on
Melodies of life,
To the sky beyond the flying birds
forever and beyond”
Here we are, the end. For all the “gyaan” I tried to pass on in this AWL, I still feel dissatisfied. With myself. No matter what I say, I don’t always follow what I preach. I mentioned that you should not let regrets control you but here I am, still burdened by new regrets. Even though I talked so much about opening up to others, I still involve others as a last resort when it comes to my own struggles. Believing in something and actually living it are two vastly different things.
I burdened myself with questions, “Who am I to tell you all how to live?” and “What if no one reads this?”. This made me not want to write this AWL. It took time before I realized something, and it also pushed me to write after all. I am sorry if this comes out a little selfish, but I was not only writing it for others. I was also writing it for myself. To remind me, on how to live, how to let go of the past, and how to change myself for the better. I still have a lot to learn and who knows how my story will turn out.
So, what can you do? If you liked anything from what I have mentioned, you can start by trying to implement it into your IITK journey. Go out there and find yourself, only you know who you are. Once you know, work on it. There may be hurdles in your way. You may succeed or fail, but no matter what, never let go of the people who are close to you. You’re not alone in your journey. I’ll also try to stick to the path I have chosen for myself. All in all, don’t stop believin’.
Written by : Siddhartha Pratap Singh
Edited by: Aashika Gupta, Sruthi Subramanian
Designed by: Sanyam Shivhare
