As We Leave #20: College is a Long Short-Term Memory with no Skip Connections

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In this 20th Edition of As We Leave, Saugat Kannojia, a graduating Y21 student from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, shares some anecdotes on how his college life was shaped by the people around him and the experiences that chiseled them further. It’s filled with memories that will last forever, a journey of self-improvement and it is as real as it can be.

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 IITK.

Time is but memory in the making

Memory is a very abstract concept that can range from being described as an object, like a Skittles box that your favourite person gave to you in the first month of college, to having all-nighters and giving an exam without even sleeping once and getting the worst possible grade in that, so please don’t. I was the first person among my wingies to have their birthday celebrated on campus after a complete online semester, and it remains as one of my best possible birthdays. Yes, I still remember the pain and suffering of being the first victim of 25 hungry wolves out there to get their frustration out on somebody. Some of those wolves settled down after a while; others became even more ferocious and sharpened their fangs even more. That is just how time, experiences, and dreadful intern and placement seasons can change people and how they view their relationships.

Music is just the projection of one’s mind

I have felt very attached to music ever since my childhood, when my brother used to listen to all sorts of songs ranging from Green Day to Mohit Chauhan. I never thought that kid would get the chance to perform in front of 400-500 people and then get requested to do it again in his first year of college. Never have I felt anything more fulfilling than that feeling of fear leaving your body and converting into pure joy, it’s a very rare experience. But the thing is, my music taste was very common for music enthusiasts of the esteemed MClub, or it was too obscure for my other friends who never got the chance to explore music that much. I started to feel disconnected from my own self and started losing my self-confidence after one bad Galaxy performance when the setup went haywire. I started to feel I lost my voice, and my known ones weren’t present for the performances anymore. Once again, I felt that inner fear that the first year me had lost, start creeping up my vocal cords, so it was time for a showdown again. I still remember Acoustic Night’25 which got delayed so much that my one and only song, “Iris” by Goo Goo Dolls, got pushed till the end, and we had our production cut midway, but in that moment I felt how much fear I had lost on my self-journey and became true to myself and my own feelings.

Revenge from Dishonorable people is a fool’s errand

This will be a small section but a very important part of my story because a small number of stories get a befitting closure. I started out college with one of the most common cycles, a blue-coloured Vector 91, having no regrets because it is just that amazing. Amazing enough to get stolen by different thieves or a single thief 5 times throughout my time here. However, whoever the thief/thieves were didn’t know how far I would go to take back what’s mine, so for the first 4 times, whenever it got lost, I used to scour the whole campus, every little spot in my night escapades at 3-4 AM, and found it in very different spots each time. Now, by this time, my cycle had a changed lock for the 4th time, and me being lazy, I only removed one of them from its middle frame and left the others hanging with the keys to all of them in my keychain. By the time that my cycle got lost for the last time, I will admit that my detective skills got a little rusty, and I started losing hope after 2 days of searching, but God, if they exist, gives ways to those who stay honorable in their path, and I got a call from a friend who knew the description of my cycle and said it was sitting idle, locked in a freaking ‘BALCONY’ of some Hall 1 room. I ran at that second to that wing to find that the Dishonorable Thief Who Shall Not Be Named had brought it out and started claiming that it was always his in front of his friends. Who thought that all the locks I had put on my cycle would prove his dishonorable action? At last, I simply left with my cycle without any further discussion because…

With great POR, comes great responsibility

I was never really fond of taking responsibilities, and having an elder brother reduces the need for taking them upon yourself as well. However, I had determined to go on a self-journey, so I had to tackle this problem too. I saw MClub as the easiest target, but being a secretary there didn’t seem to make me feel responsible enough, so I had to bring out the big guns, and I opted for the easiest vertical of Techkriti, i.e., Web and App, since it only required basic knowledge of Software Development which I was already too fond of. I joined properly as a Senior Executive in February, and the fest was supposed to be held in May, so I had to do the unimaginable, and I embarked on the quest to revive the app of Techkriti without any prior knowledge of how to make one. That’s where I felt the adrenaline rush of having a task within a very short deadline in the domain that I had never touched, so I started learning, and I was able to make the app work for release by the start of the fest. I had never been happier of any of my achievements than that since it seemed like a revolt against my own self, and that’s when I started to taste the hint of taking up responsibility. I know people take PORs just to be involved with the people and not do the work assigned to them since it seems like a bore, but in my opinion, why are you doing something you know you won’t like just for the sake of a title? After that, my good senior friend/mentor Sahil Singh introduced me to GDSC, a totally new domain that was supposed to be run from the very beginning by us. I found that very thrilling and started working on making that community something worth remembering and found myself as the Lead the next year itself. I took up that position willingly to keep a regular supply of having a responsibility so that I don’t lose touch with it. Although, I believe these aren’t the real moments that defined this sense of responsibility. It was my circle of good friends, with whom I went on trips, that forced me into life-or-death situations where being the responsible one was the only choice.

In the end, you do everything for yourself

I might not have been the best at academics to make any comments on it, but man, I don’t think I have ever given up on any subject unless it’s ‘Theory of Computation.’ Under no circumstances would my alternate reality self be able to perform well in that; all my hate is channeled to that course. But with hate, comes admiration, and all of that would go to ‘Japanese and Korean Cinematic Art.’ I entered college with a vast movie knowledge base, and I could never find any group of people that resonated with that feeling and make me improve it further, but taking this course just fulfilled that desire of mine. The movies that I watched in that course opened my eyes about cinema, and ‘Cure’ by Kiyoshi Kurosawa is still one of the best movies I have ever watched. Third year is the best time for being at IITK when it comes to academics, because I have expanded my knowledge in a very real sense tenfold by the time it is finished, and I do not regret a second of it. Completing a fully functioning Python compiler (at least in front of the TA) is probably the best feeling I have ever felt regarding something academic in my life, shared with Manasvi and Sarthak, who made almost every course in my tenure feel like yet another hangout session.

When life gets going, you get a sprain

The final year at college is like a blessing when you are sorted and have nothing else to do. You start to make the most outrageous plans, like going for a Coldplay concert and then watching your favourite artists, like Green Day and Shawn Mendes, perform, all in Mumbai. Everything goes perfectly up until the end. But sometimes, the endings suck, and they might take up a huge chunk of money as well (iykyk). Adding on to that, the worst possible thing happened to me: I twisted my ankle on a damn TRAMPOLINEEE!!! The funny thing is that I and Deekshansh didn’t care much about that, and we started wall climbing, and guess who lost the race (name starts with D). But when I came back to college, I got hit with a huge ass plaster for a month, that you can see in the pictures, during my best time at college, when I only had 2 months left, final photoshoots were happening and the final Techkriti was supposed to happen in a week. I feel glad to have such supportive friends, who made me vibe to a Seedhe Maut concert and go wild jumping on one leg, who found ways for me to have all the possible fun I could.

Friends maketh college

In the beginning of college, I used to be very adamant about my self-improvement drive, so I focused on interacting with anyone I met to the fullest, but never to the extent where I felt full talking to them. I made a lot of great friends, but looking back now, only a few stuck till the end, while some were not present in the beginning and became the closest by the end. I am grateful to find such amazing people in my wing, of every possible variety of personality type and on every spectrum of madness. I couldn’t manage my friendships really well in the first 2 years but that’s when I realised that having a smaller number of good friends is better than having a horde of connections. It was the mellow season of internship interviews that made me realise who sticks out their neck for you and stays present when you are at your worst, and that’s when I started to bring out my true side in front of my wingies as well. You don’t know what I would give for one more of our escapades to Ramaiya Dhaba at 3 AM at night, or walking around the whole campus with zero regrets. I think the best thing that this college has given me is introduce me to 2 very distinguished individuals in my life that have shaped my personality the most, Manasvi and Sarthak. They have been my ‘Hashira’ through thick and thin, helped me make my toughest decisions in an instant, and the main characters if my life was being telecasted like ‘The Truman Show,’ and they definitely made the boring part of college something to crave now that I have left the place. Maybe this part is the main motivation for me to write an AWL, because as I leave, I want to thank my true friends(you know who you are), because it is hard to say it in person without getting a comment on your manhood.