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In this 11th edition of As We Leave, Pratham Sahu, a Y21 from the Computer Science department, traces a journey of uncertainty, resilience, and rediscovery. From online friendships that turned into lifelong bonds to leading the Programming Club, interning in Korea, and navigating the internship and placement seasons — his time at IITK was filled with detours and defining moments. Through breakdowns and breakthroughs, he found meaning not in titles but in people, passion, and perseverance. His story reminds us that there is no fixed formula for IITK — just a campus, a community, and the courage to keep walking.
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.
As the start of every other AWL goes, it “is” hard to try and summarise your time at IITK and impart some wisdom to juniors in a single blog of 2000 words. This institute just gives and gives, it may be good times, bad ones, stressful ones, high ones and even the lowest ones. Reflecting upon the past 3.5 years, it’s been one hell of a journey. It’s a journey where you’re supposed to find yourself, but you have never been more confused. It’s a journey where you are supposed to keep walking, but you don’t know where to. It’s a journey where you meet hundreds of people and each of them tells you about a different destination. Sitting at the end of the road with 1200 others, some have found their destination, others are still searching. In this blog I am going to write about the stories that have shaped the version of myself I am today. At places I will give my 2 cents about important aspects of campus life like joining a club, placements, internships, etc.
First Semester
December 1st 2021: This was the date we were supposed to be joining “IIT Kanpur”. Yes, covid. Online classes, online bulla sessions, among us and sitting on zoom calls just talking about ourselves for 7-8 hours straight had become the norm. This was the time when I made friends who have stayed with me through the entire duration of four years.
Around mid-February we received notifications that we would be on campus in April. This was one of my happiest moments. You dont join IIT for the academics, you join it for the campus, the people, and I was about to see the campus I had heard so much about.
PS: We also pulled off a trip to Rishikesh just based on our online interactions. Here are some pictures.
We joined campus in the first week of April in 2022. We were greeted by Antaragni, and dancing to the songs of Sunidhi Chauhan and vibing to Ritviz in the very first week of your campus life has got to be sick. This semester was hybrid and hence a lot of it passed in roaming IITK, random bulla sessions with seniors and others.
Second Semester:
During the second semester, One night I woke up with excruciating pain in my abdominal region. I somehow managed to cycle to the HC, where I was misdiagnosed with gastritis and given strong painkillers.When the pain returned, this time they referred me to Madhuraj. I reached there to find no doctors available. Called the doctor, went to his clinic. There I was advised to get admitted to the hospital immediately. Won’t go into further details, but I had gall bladder stones and was to get them removed. The state of medical facilities in Kanpur(including the HC) is pathetic. It took them 5 days to find out the cause and schedule a surgery for me. Until then my condition had worsened. My father made a decision to fly me to Delhi, where all the tests(which took 5 days in Kanpur), would get done within 30 minutes and they were to place a stent(temporary fix before surgery, since I was adamant to not take a sem drop). I was out within 2 days and after spending a few days at home I was back on campus.
Unfortunately for me, the stent did not hold up and after 2 weeks, the pain was back, and this time surgery was necessary. We decided to get the surgery done in Bangalore, (from where I hail), as it would be easier to recover. I missed multiple quizzes, and as always there were professors whose first questions would be “Why didn’t you mail me earlier?”. How could I? I was high on painkillers most of the time and in excruciating pain the rest. This is not a generalisation, since on the other hand there were professors who genuinely cared and helped me catch up.
However this was the time when my friends came to help. They would visit me at the hospital, submit my TA101 homeworks, assignments and what not to get my sem going. I will always be in their debt. Came back to campus with my mother 2 days before the end sems and tried to catch up. Ended up getting a decent CPI.
Third Semester:
This was a calm semester. I met someone who would go on to be my best friend on campus, my companion and someone who I could always trust in. This is a story for another time. This was also the time I joined the Programming Club as a secretary, and became a student guide. Being a student guide was one of the most fulfilling experiences of campus life. Guiding bachas through the ups and downs of college life, when you don’t really know how to navigate them yourself was fun. At the end of this semester, I had started applying for research internships as corporate internships are hard to find. I still remember that a bunch of us had gone to Mumbai for a trip at the end of December, to attend MoodIndigo. Whilst we were there, we took a day trip to Imagica, and my interview got scheduled for that very day. I still remember taking my interview from Imagica, and getting the internship offer there. Those were some good days.
Joining a Club: Have enthu, but not too much. Stick to 2 or maximum 3 places where you think you would actually enjoy working. Don’t do it for the PORs, it’s really not worth it and it adds very less to your placement/intern. I think a very wrong notion that joining more PORs adds to your resume, trust me it does not. Not even if you want to be a consultant. Don’t be a jack of all, be a master of some.
Fourth Semester:
This semester I became much more involved with the Programming Club, and started taking more interests in the club’s working. I decided to apply for a coordinator and was selected to be one. I have had some wonderful times at Programming Club as secy and a coordinator and have developed some of the closest friendships here. Sitting nights to develop PuppyLove, setting up problems for FPC, teaching stuff I love to juniors, were some of the best times.
I personally believe this semester is one of the most toxic semesters you will face at IITK. I think a lot of people will agree with me. You start getting into a race for internships because it is the first time you face such a thing. However, personal opinion, you are not going to get anything by not sharing. I think it helps you more in the long run if you are someone who shares, and helps others.
Summer at Korea:
This summer, I went to Seoul, South Korea to pursue a research internship under Prof. Jonghyun Choi at Yonsei University. I had applied to machine learning roles, as I had explored only that apart from courses in my second year. Who would know, I would completely shift my field to Systems. This is what IITK is about, you get to make mistakes, find yourself and do it all over again. Coming back, the trip to Korea was amazing! Prof Jonghyun was one of the best professors I have ever met who made me accustomed to his lab and helped me with every aspect of moving to Korea. There is a language barrier in Korea, however if you love to travel(like me) it really doesn’t matter. I didn’t go anywhere outside Seoul, but Seoul was a beautiful city in itself. I wish to go back some time again.
Landing Summer internships in second year: You can read my blog here https://prathamsahu52.github.io/post/research_intern/ .
Fifth Semester:
Internship Season marked the beginning of this semester, and being a student from the CSE department made me overconfident about securing an offer on day one. I had only prepared for quant roles, neglecting competitive programming entirely. My overconfidence led me to take tests for just a handful of companies, and I didn’t even consider applying to day two companies. Reality hit hard—I ended day one with no offers. Devastated, I took a quick flight home to clear my head but returned after three days only to face rejection again on day two. Finally, on day three, I received an offer from Adobe Research. This period became one of my lowest points; I felt isolated, thinking I was the only one facing such struggles, especially when most of my friends had secured placements effortlessly on day one. I used to cry myself to sleep in my room for multiple weeks after, asking god why me? I had completely different plans and ambitions from this, but time always does change. But through this challenging phase, I learned a critical lesson: there will always come a moment when everything seems impossible, the burden feels overwhelming, and quitting appears logical. Yet precisely at that moment—when you most want to quit—is when everything begins to change.
After being placed for internship at Adobe, I told myself I will change, I will focus on what I love, Programming Club, Systems programming, among others. I also took a trip to Goa with my closest friends. I started working on puppylove 2.0 where I worked with some of my closest juniors, Gill, Shreya, Sameer and Yash.
Sixth semester:
This semester I picked up some of the toughest courses of my department, as I was determined to learn from courses and further my interests in systems programming. I also participated in the ISC Student Cluster Competition, where we were the first team from India, and were competing against top universities like ETH Zurich, NUS. Our efforts were fruitful as we ended up 8th of 22 teams and we were one of the only few first time participating teams in the event. This semester was what we call “Apne pair par kulhadi maarna”. Compilers, ISC, Linux Kernel were only the start of my concerns. Running PClub, elections, etc were the rest. But I was determined to do what I loved.
Courses: Pick your interest and pursue it. Don’t chase easy OE’s and DE’s for grades. IITK can give you knowledge if you desire it, so don’t waste that opportunity because you wont get it again. Be thirsty for knowledge and everything else will follow.
Summer Internship:
This summer, since I hail from Bangalore, I decided to travel to and from home as AdobeResearch was based in Bangalore. I used this summer to go to the gym, get back on doing a little bit of competitive programming and focus on placements. I had moved on from the coordinator of programming Club, however as I said, it wasn’t just a POR for me. I talked to folks from LinuxFoundation and Canonical to hold an open-source conference at IITK. Without realizing, I was leading a conference and handling its logistics with Rahbar. I think this was also some experience, dealing with the DOSA office, dealing with organizers, etc, teaches you a lot.
CP vs no CP: I personally have never been a fan of doing competitive programming, but I am aware of how necessary it is for your internships and placements. However, I was determined that learning the algorithms is more important than blindly solving on interview bit, hence with that maturity, I focussed majorly on systems knowledge and algorithms, with bare minimum implementation practice. I believe this strategy worked for me, however everyone learns differently.
I also used my intern money to travel to Amsterdam and Belgium this summer with my mother.
Seventh Semester:
This was the semester when the placement season took place. I had also planned to apply for masters and PhD programs in the US(and Europe) depending upon the university. A lot of my time went into applications, as I was more inclined on pursuing higher studies. This semester, almost every night we played 3-4 hours of poker(just coz recover karna tha), ignoring the placements completely(insanely stressful but fun times). I have made some of the best friendships of my time at IIT Kanpur in the final year at B-mid(x). Sharing ups and downs with these folks has made me what I am and I am indebted to them for it.
This time I was confident of my skills in computer systems and algorithms, as I had spent a year actually focusing on learning the concepts, rather than doing it just for the placements. I decided to sit in the placements as a backup to my plans for higher studies. I was very fortunate to get a placement on day 1 session 1 at Graviton in the systems role, the one that I was passionate about. On achieving this, I decided not to apply to my safety schools and only applied to top schools and funded programs in the US. However this season was very bad especially for cse students due to funding cuts , and I ended up getting rejected from all of them. I also attended the SC’25 conference in Atlanta this sem.
As I may have mentioned before, I am a travel freak, and a group of us took a trip to Vietnam in December. We went to Ho Chi Minh, Hanoi and Da nang, partied, and had loads of fun.
Eighth Semester:
This was more or less a chill semester. I had very few credits left and I picked up a part time internship at a US based startup of IITK alumni who graduated more than 20 years back. Here I worked on what I loved and ended up getting a very attractive offer from them. However I decided to stick to graviton, due to my very hazy future plans and what my gut told me. We also took a trip to Thailand and it was one of the craziest trips of my life. I did every sort of water sport possible, failed in some of them, but enjoyed every single one of them. Koh Samui’s, “Full Moon Party” is something you must definitely attend in your 20’s. Poker didn’t stop. I also spent time with my wing mates and juniors. Parties didn’t stop and neither did “All on me”(iykyk).
The last few days at IIT were very tough. You were going home, but you were leaving another family and home behind. How do you let go of someone whom you’ve cried with, laughed with, studied with? They will no longer be 2 rooms away or even in your same city. I think I will always have very fond memories of this place and IITK will hold the most special place in my heart.
I think IITK is confusing. Everyone will tell you how to live, what to chase or what is success. A good placement? Good grades? Higher studies?. Their blueprint isn’t your map, they haven’t been through what you have gone through. Stop trying to fit into someone else’s formula. Go all in on what you think is right. It’s your life on campus.
Written by: Pratham Sahu
Edited by: Shruti Sahu, Manya Dixit
Designed by: Pragya Puri
