Disclaimer: Vox Populi, IIT Kanpur, is the exclusive owner of the information on this website. No part of this content may be duplicated, paraphrased, or interpreted in any other way without written consent from Vox Populi. If you want to reproduce any of the content on this page, please contact our chief editors directly or reach out to us by email at voxpopuli@iitk.ac.in.
In this 9th edition of As We Leave, Sejal Sahu, a graduating Y20 student in the Department of Mathematics, emphasizes the importance of academics, social connections, and personal growth, offering practical hacks for each stage.
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.
Dear Reader, this account isn’t about a perfect college life; it isn’t about a sob story; it isn’t about traversing memory lane and reminiscing the past with treasured recollections of a graduating student. If you’re here for any of it, I suggest you proceed to other accounts. However, if you’re someone who views life through the lens of a video game—where every decision matters, success is sought after, but failures are embraced too — and you’re looking for hacks, then you may proceed further. Although linguistic decorations might feel dear to language fanatics, I’d like to disappoint them here with no fancy literature or descriptions, just authentic experiences in plain vocabulary.
So here begins the account of how I mastered the game named The IITK Odyssey: Quest for Intellect
LEVEL-I: The Virtual Vanguard
Starting this game as a Y20 player wasn’t very thrilling. The first semester began with new aspirations but an old ambience. You could see what was ahead but couldn’t feel it through a glass window. Level -I was about understanding the way to crack academics. How to ace quizzes, exams, and assignments. The JEE mode was on, and very few were ready to let go of their old shells. Had this level not been virtual, the players would’ve had more opportunities to discard their old armour, which they didn’t know was restricting their growth. The comfort level, though, in this level was max. Wake up, attend Zoom lectures, take online quizzes (equipped with innovative ways to prevent plagiarism), socialise over Zoom calls with closed cameras, exchange some funny Whatsapp stickers, eat, sleep, and repeat.
I talked to many peers to find out how they cracked this level. The info revealed that many like me surrendered to their introverted desires, letting go of the dream of socialisation. Being captured in four walls with a virtual window was a pass time for many, other than memorising Art history, the Gauss Law, the Bolzano–Weierstrass theorem, the syntaxes of C, and so on.
The second semester, however, was about reflecting on what you did last semester. This sense is even stronger if you do not get an ‘A’ in your first mail of grades. You feel sad about how you gave away your love for literature, art, and music for nothing. So you try to engage in clubs and fests. The freshmen year teaches you how just relying on yourself is a sin. Reaching out to people would’ve helped you crack this level efficiently. However, at the end of the day, what matters here is learning and exploring what IITK is. The lingo, the culture, and most importantly, the people. For seekers and worshipers of academic excellence, you could do without any of the above, but trust me, life would then have decorated emptiness.
Hacks: Socialise, engage in clubs, don’t neglect studies, look beyond academics, and explore IITK(which wasn’t an option for Y20 players, but okay).
LEVEL-II: The Hybrid Horizons
This level’s first half was like the last level, with online 3rd sem, while its other half was what the first level should’ve been like. The Sophomore year starts with the dawn of responsibilities. You need to figure out what you actually want to do in life. You need to make learned choices. Again, interaction is required at this level, but along with it, you need determination. This level isn’t as easy as level I. You make decisions related to which clubs and societies you are serious about. You need to decide if you’re interested in research or if you’re made for the corporate world.
Sometimes, you would want to vent out, and then your friends, whom you trust, come into play to have your back. Gladly, I had that girl to share my thoughts and gripe about MTH and lean on while managing the academic workload.
Y20s ended this level offline on campus. While the third sem was as chill as can be, the fourth sem was equally worse. A new environment could be intimidating, and you could lose yourself in the crowds. The key point here is don’t prioritise fun over fight. Fight to get your CPI and CP covered for the internship season, which will begin at the next level. Also, take up projects that interest you. If you are from a department like MTH, the academic journey in this and upcoming levels is going to be a bit demanding if you don’t like the “real maths” (I’d refrain from elaborating on the term, but you’ll know it once you take up any abstract course in MTH).
Your friend circle influences you a lot. And many of you might have heard: “You will be the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” So, while choosing your companions wisely is the key, sometimes they run into you. Who would have imagined that a casual breakfast conversation with your behen on a random summer morning, discussing the idea of shifting together, could lay the groundwork for a lifelong friend circle. This way, the end of this level gave me 6 adorable companions who profoundly influenced my journey and helped me rise again every time I fell down.
Hacks: Improve your CPI, practice coding regularly, take up projects, and make meaningful friendships (which will eventually help you crack the upcoming levels)
Level III: The Junior Junction
Here, you play the character of a Junior undergraduate. This level begins with the internship season. You receive hell if your CPI is less than a certain limit. But eventually, by the end of it, you figure out how to make things work in life. You learn that there is more than one way to tackle any problem. More than half are disappointed by the first half of this level, the fifth sem. This semester not only reflects your skills but also unveils the true nature of your companionships.
The companions I had here helped me walk through this rough level where I bagged no internship in phase 1. Apart from that, I also had the Head, Design position in Techkriti. Designing was what helped me embrace my flaws and turn them into strengths. Any such hobby can help you be calm against the storm of inferiorities stirring inside your head. Additionally, it helps maintain momentum in academics and other aspects. Conducting a fest awaited by everyone isn’t an ordinary feeling. People say things turn toxic in these environments, but lotus also thrives in muddy water. The person you become after surviving it would exude a tantalising aura. Moreover, the bonds forged while working together under such pressures are unforgettable. Lastly, when you stand at the Pronite stage gazing down at the ecstatic crowd, you’ll feel the satisfaction seeping in.
The end of this level takes you to the beginning of your adult life — the internship. You’ll set foot into a new phase. You’ll get a glimpse of the future. You’ll understand the value of time and weekends. By the time you finish this level, you’ll see the placements approaching. All this would be intimidating, but you’ll learn to tackle it with time.
Hacks: Keep hustling till the end, don’t lose hope, Use the summers wisely.
Level-IV: The Senior Soiree
This level is equally hell and heaven. This has the pains of placements and the pleasure of pals. Things would seem to be falling apart, but then, miraculously, everything would fit into place. And in the end, your fear would be about losing the four golden years of life. In the seventh sem, you’ll see your time running away with endless placement tests and interview preparation. This would be the sem where you won’t feel happy after finishing your Endsems. However, you don’t have to cease spending quality time with friends, occasionally going out for movies or dinner with your buddies. PPO babies will have the best time of their life this semester. Fighting together will help you the most throughout the placement season. You could never forget the last dinner you all had together before D-day.
And, above all, there are those whom you can count on for everything. I had such friends to hear me out when I vent out my ‘BT’, to motivate me to keep going, to whom I could go and tell in detail how the interviews went. The day your placement portal is frozen is the day you’ll never forget in your life. And when there are people who scream in joy before you can process what happened, you know you’ve hit the jackpot in life, apart from your career.
The last semester, the end part of this level, would be about making memories. Although it seems the easiest part of this game, it is the most difficult. You are processing the fact that the journey with your peeps is about to end, that you won’t be together anymore after these few months. You reflect on the friendships that have been forgotten and those that have endured.
You attend your last Techkriti as an ex-core and witness how far you’ve come. You make your last happy memories with the people who were there with you till the end of this journey, the Strangers who became your Owns. You participate again in Galaxy with your cutest friend and win the competition you lost last year.
You study but just to pass. Ultimately, even seeing three straight ‘A*’s in your last mail of Grades won’t matter much. The sadness of losing people you wished to celebrate this with would weigh more than your academic journey from no A to A*.
Lifting each other throughout the journey is what makes this game fruitful. When you see yourself dressed in Sarees and Kurtas for farewell or in blazers, shorts, and goggles for early morning photoshoots, you’ll find around you a bunch of people and a whole lot of memories, small and big. After the completion of this game, your most prized possession would be the memories; the memories of dancing endlessly in the clubs and fests, the memories of celebrating festivals like you never did before, those of spending hours at canteen gossiping and discussing life updates & feminism, those of working at hall 1 till 12 just iterating and improving the designs for posts, those of solving each other’s MTH doubts, those of spending whole night doing “Hindi Vartalap” with roommates, ranting at hours about why pre-registrations are a waste, those of exploring terraces and buildings in acad area, those of random late night walks, those of fun movie nights, those of playing games and cooking together, those of proof-reading endless grad school essays, those of spontaneous door knocks asking to join for tea, those of planning the trips, those of clicking endless pics and reels on the trips, those of helping each other get ready for events, those of dancing and laughing endlessly at “Hall 1 ki Baraat” and those of taking a reckless decision that transformed life for the best.
Hacks: (First half) Keep going, don’t skip meals, drink water, stay healthy, and don’t take stress. (Second half) Make as many memories as possible so you don’t regret anything later.
Trophies:
If you pass all the above levels successfully, you’ll get some rewards in return. These include:
- A good placement
- Fun and fulfilling vacations (like a Goa trip)
- Golden memories to cherish for life
- Reminiscence of late-night walks and night-outs
- A chai lover padosan, a gossip queen behen, a narcissist feminist, a wing bank, a cute bulla planner, a social butterfly, an always calm fairy, two homies who you compliment as the third idiot, a whole event organising team, a smiley co-head, an MTH BT buster shorty, a chaapu know-it-all, a Ramlila mandali and the sweetest sunshine neta.
This game would make you intellectual in the true sense, where you’d realise that life isn’t just about acquiring knowledge but about gaining experiences. This game could change a homesick teenager into a clingy, sentimental adult ardently postponing the last journey back home.
At the end of it all, you leave your hall gate after hugging a bunch of people with tears in their eyes. From the window inside your last train to home, you see crying faces running outside, waving you goodbye. That is the moment you know you won this game. You won in life!
Written by : Sejal Sahu
Edited by: Vidhi Chordia, Vedanshi Aggarwal
Designed by: Sanyam Shivhare
