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In this 27th edition of As We Leave, Pankajh Jhamtani ,a Y21 student from the Department of Statistics and Data Science, retraces his meticulously layered and emotionally charged journey.
From remote Zoom orientations to leading one of the most demanding roles on campus, from heartbreaks during intern season to a walk-in dream placement, his narrative captures the raw beauty of community, perseverance, and growth. Whether it was ALs, coaching friends who never gave up, CTM interviews , or spontaneous trips and deep conversations outside CS, each moment was a hidden weight in his final model. This AWL is a tribute to a journey shaped by conviction, recalibration, relentless care, and the ever-burning drive to keep becoming.
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.
My Class 8 teacher once wrote on my report card: “Sincere child, can do better.” The only thing that has changed since then is that I’m no longer a child. I always do what I think I am supposed to do. So here I am, writing this As We Leave piece. Because I suppose graduating folks are supposed to write something, to pass on a few things and to leave behind a story of what these years meant (maybe read it sometime in the future during nostalgic trips).
Perhaps I’ll structure this story like an ML model (maybe I did learn something from studying data science for four years). So here’s how I explored various ‘features’, got into training loops (learning and failing), and tuned to something better.
Thank you, Riddhi, for keeping so much patience with me while I procrastinated writing this and structured it in a complicated manner!
Initialisation: some context and some new beginnings
I grew up idolising my older brother at IIT Roorkee. As a school kid, I saw his life, which looked pretty great, internships, placements, papers published, well-paying jobs, etc. To me, IIT was a great shortcut to a comfortable future. So I decided to pursue the IIT dream. Before this, I was the “sincere” type-happy with 80% marks. The IIT buzz changed me, and suddenly, all the hard work started.
COVID was the random seed in my initialisation. With boards cancelled, JEE preparation became manageable. But college began remotely. Though my campus was just six kilometres from home, it felt worlds apart, accessible only through a screen in those initial months.
EDA (Exploratory Data Analysis): Exploring the Dataset Called College Life
My college life began in breakout rooms and Zoom calls—logging into orientation, late-night Smash Karts tournaments, branch meets, bulla sessions, and even a virtual fresher’s dance. Academics felt surprisingly manageable (iykyk), and the online setup made the transition feel easier.
Online had some silver linings; I stayed close to family and maintained strong ties with my coaching friends—a bond I’ll revisit later. Yet, the novelty of online college soon faded, leaving me yearning for the IIT Kanpur I had envisioned. When COVID cases dipped, we organised a small ‘Kanpur meet,’ and I even visited campus with an alumnus. The real magic, however, unfolded when the long-awaited email arrived: we were finally going offline.
Stepping onto campus was surreal. Meeting my baapu Sarthak, roommate Ayush, exploring the campus, wing guitar seshs (thanks to Rohan), celebrating birthdays, attending my first offline concert with wingmates, and experiencing in-person orientation—it was the college life I had dreamt of. Naturally, this shift introduced challenges. My midsem grades slipped as I grappled with balancing exploration and academics. I joined the dance club as a secy and participated in events, only to realise the toll on my health. Yet, those late-night practices, exhausted laughs, and 6 am run-throughs will remain cherished memories.
Simultaneously, I began exploring other avenues. I joined Techkriti as a Senior Executive and BCS as a secy. It was a Stamatics project that sparked my curiosity in machine learning (ML), and BCS fueled that interest. Though my role at BCS taught me little directly, it exposed me to fascinating concepts, inspiring me to dive into projects, courses, online resources, and a UGP in later years. All this led me to a really ‘deep’ craze of ML.
Around then, I also explored the Counselling Service. I applied to be a Student Guide, thinking it was all about fun during orientation and connecting with juniors. But the SG interview was a wake-up call. During the roleplay, I was faced with the kinds of real problems freshers might struggle with. It wasn’t easy, but it helped me see myself—and CS—in a new light. That experience planted a seed for something much bigger later.
Forward Pass:
In machine learning, every forward pass takes inputs, processes them through the network, and produces an output. Every semester felt like a new forward pass—learning from previous mistakes and trying to optimise for better results.
After my EDA phase, I identified the key features to focus on: academics, meaningful relationships, and finding my true calling. I decided to leave the dance club, redirecting my energy toward my studies, health, my role at BCS, and tried to fix my sleep schedule(Still working on it).
Moving to Hall 5 marked a new epoch. The SG workshops began reshaping my understanding of what CS truly meant. Those sessions taught me that empathy isn’t just a nice-to-have quality—it’s essential for meaningful human connection. I learned to listen without judging or fixing and to be truly present. The workshop training days were transformative, and as an AM/SG, I experienced the beautiful side of CS—the genuine care and the quiet fulfilment of helping someone. Guiding my Bache and wing Bache, each with their unique stories and struggles, helped me feel something different.
This understanding of support, reinforced by unwavering support that I got, especially from my coaching friends (more on it later), inspired me to apply to be a CTM. The interview was intense, confronting my thought process and perspectives, but I made it through, and suddenly I was part of something bigger than myself.
Juggling a demanding CTM schedule alongside repairing strained friendships and preparing for internships during my second-year summers felt like training multiple models at once. Though exhausting, at least the summer allowed me to mend bonds and contribute to a memorable fresher’s orientation, if not a good internship.
Loss function:
Loss function in an ML model quantifies how far the model’s output is from the real output. So here I’ll talk about a few things that disappointed me in my college life.
With a CPI below 8, belonging to a new branch (Statistics and Data Science, SDS), pursuing a BS program, lacking adequate coding preparation, and insisting on tech or ML roles, the internship drive was an uphill battle. The exhaustion from orientation didn’t help. I even missed one internship test during orientation just because mai line mae “gap cover kara raha tha.” Seeing peers secure internships while I struggled, hit harder than expected. Though genuinely happy for them, self-doubt consumed me. Nights spent crying in my room, imagining worst-case scenarios, tested my resilience.
I did give a few interviews, but couldn’t crack any initially. I pushed myself, eventually raising my CPI above 8 in the fifth semester. On January 16, I secured an off-campus internship offer, though delays in receiving the offer letter kept me anxious. I continued applying elsewhere, landing a remote on-campus ML internship on February 20. I accepted the offer because I never got the offer letter for the first one. The role was of my liking but I didn’t like working remotely with a low stipend. Though it was not what I imagined, it restored my confidence. Yet, I knew I had to work harder for placements.
Even CS had its downsides. While my CTM tenure was mostly great, there were some points where I would not like CS or me being in CS. I spent less time on academics, coding, and socialising with friends, though I did forge new bonds within the CS. The role demanded so much that personal and professional priorities sometimes took a backseat.
Backpropagation
The beauty of neural networks lies in backpropagation—learning from errors and adjusting weights to minimise future loss. In this section, I’ll talk about the few things that I got the chance to improve.
Intern season was a wake-up call. I really did not want my placements to suffer because of anything. Since the remote internship wasn’t much of a burden, I started improving on things related to placement prep immediately. I took light courses for the 7th semester and utilised the summers to learn coding. I had my closest friends (ALs) with me in the 7th semester, helping me at every point of the placement journey from the start of the 7th semester to 1st December. I was able to prepare for the placements properly because I was preparing with them. Everyone, like my coaching friends and my family, constantly checked up on me and supported me. I also prepared with better resources and covered things I couldn’t during the intern drive. Finally, all the efforts paid off, and I got a better placement than I imagined for myself.
Beyond career growth, I nurtured personal connections. I invested time in rebuilding friendships, cherishing everyday conversations, card games, late-night walks, concerts, shared meals, and spontaneous food orders.
On February 23, an email from our CS coordinators urged us to consider applying for the coordinator role. Before the 20th, I didn’t have an internship, and I was very sure that I wouldn’t apply for this position. I just felt that I should spend more time focusing on my career. But after the 20th, I was a bit confused, and some of my co-team members, especially Sanchit, asked me to talk about it with my coordinators to make an informed decision. My friends were also divided in their opinions about my application. I did sacrifice my time with them for CS in my ctm tenure. I had my placement prep, academics, wanted to enjoy my last year in college, wanted to spend time with my friends, and my real sister’s wedding was in December. My mom’s advice shifted my perspective. She reminded me that life often demands juggling multiple roles, urging me to embrace the challenge if I felt passionate. Inspired, I applied for the coordinator position, promising myself that I would not let CS affect my placement prep, my relationships, and my little brother’s duties for my sister’s wedding. I kept my promise and had a much better CS tenure.
Regularisation
Regularisation includes all the things that prevent a model from overfitting. For me, it includes everything in my life that kept me sane in this emotional rollercoaster of life.
ALs (Ache Launde)
From the beginning, I struggled to find a friend group where I truly felt I belonged. I had a good bond with my roommate and his friends, but something felt amiss. One random evening, seven of us wingies went out for a movie. On the way back, a classic bitching session turned into a WhatsApp group, leading to a potential college waala group. Well, the loss function measuring mismatched vibes was still too high. An epoch later, the group converged to a perfect set of 7 friends. We moved together to our new wing (B-mid) in H5 in the third year, and then to H1 (D Top). Rohan, Aayushman, Rachit, Chetanya, Akshay, & Sahaj became my family at IITK. Whether it was during the placement grind, intern drive, or just low (or high) days, everything was great because of them. They have always been there for me, and it’s really difficult to imagine that they will not be there in adjacent rooms. We also did the mandatory Goa trip together. I will really miss bullying them, get bullied, some dark humor, hanging out in D319, some random singing, giving and getting advice on weird shit, making bets, deep convos, TT matches, hanging out in canteen, and what not. Life without them toh ‘mushkil hi hai’.
Coaching Friends
Thanks to the online semester, I stayed closely connected with my coaching friends. They visited often, we ordered food for each other, I sneaked them into fests, danced at concerts, and made some unforgettable memories. But not everything is rosy. At the start of my second year, something felt off. I can’t exactly describe it—academics felt heavier than they should, friendships became complicated, and I wasn’t in the right space. All this chaos sometimes slipped as rage or frustration, hurting these long-distance friendships.
It’s hard to realise you’re going through something while you’re in it. I didn’t trust anyone in college enough to open up, and I didn’t share much with family either, mostly because I didn’t understand what was happening myself. What helped me stay afloat were the frequent visits home and, most importantly, my coaching friends. Even though I lashed out at times, they didn’t give up on me. They helped me make sense of it all. It did damage my friendship with them, but we rebuilt everything really well. That’s what matters—when people don’t give up on you. Even though they weren’t a part of IITK, they were an integral part of my college ‘Regularisation’ kit, and they will always hold a special place in my life.
ICS and JaSBAAtein
ICS gave me a lot of things, but the thing I’ll cherish the most will be the friends I made. There have been some people who are the easiest people to open up to. And by people all the teams that I have interacted with, Y20, Y21, & Y22. I‘ll always remember all the deep convos we had in the CS office (and the road outside). I’ll always remember all the times they did things for me without showing that they did a favour. I’ll especially remember the times I spent with JaSBAAein (our coordi pen name: Jhamtani, Sanchit, Bajaj, Amay, & Aashika aka PAPAS). I’ll be indebted to ICS forever because it gave me such wonderful people in my life. I’ll miss all the bitching sessions, panic nights, very very long discussions, cs office waale deep convos, and organising some of the best events together. Kudos to Santanu sir who made ics easier than what it was.
SDS
Being part of the first batch of the Statistics and Data Science (SDS) program felt special. We were only 32 students, but my branchmates were some of the really great people I found in this college. We also had some of the most dedicated professors—Prof. Dootika Vats, Prof. Arnab Hazra, and more, who made the learning journey worthwhile. Not only was the course content so great, but it was also very relevant that some of it was directly asked in placement interviews.
Of course, not everything was smooth. Some courses were rough, sometimes because we were the pilot batch and sometimes because of my own mistakes. But overall, the SDS experience was rich and rewarding. I attended almost 80% of the classes (with or without attendance) till the 6th semester (yes, I was that person) because I genuinely found the content exciting—sometimes even like JEE days!
SDS also gave me some amazing people. I made two sisters, Lakshika and Vanshika, without whose notes my degree would have been impossible. From pulling all-nighters on assignments to rage-dropping courses—we did it all together. (Kudos to Lakshika, Vanshika, Arqam, Om, Shrish, Gaurish, Rohit, Kundan, Kanishk, Digivijay, Divya)
SDS and its people kept me sane and focused, and I am grateful for such a unique experience.
Ensemble methods: A home away from home
Ensemble methods in machine learning combine multiple individual models to make better predictions. Here I’ll talk about CS, a place where people come together for the greater good.
My CS journey began with a naive assumption—I thought being a Student Guide meant organising fun activities and bonding with juniors. When I became an SG, I understood the responsibility of being someone’s guide/mentor in this college life. But it never felt like a weight because I understood that CS wasn’t about having all the answers—it was about creating space for people to find their own.
Because of a great experience as an SG and because I knew how it felt when someone didn’t give up on me and was always there for me, I decided to apply to be a CTM. I was not sure if I deserved to be one, but I did it anyway. I think it is the only POR on campus that is associated with character. Once a ctm, you have to behave a certain way and people look at you a certain way. I did become a ctm finally.
Suddenly, I was confronting real mental health scenarios, complex issues, and finally felt the weight of being someone’s support, because sometimes it might be as intense as being responsible for someone’s entire future or life. Apart from all these mentally taxing things, being a CTM has a lot of physically exhausting things. During those intense summer months, our team of 20 conducted over 1200 interviews, each lasting 40 minutes to an hour. And of course, Orientation has its own share of sleepless nights. But why do we do all this? This is the beauty of this ensemble method. We spend so many hours interviewing candidates for AM/SG because we want the best for the freshers, people we have never even met. We conduct orientation just to ensure a smooth transition and a comfortable life for the freshers.
We conduct a lot of events to spread awareness. It hurts to see the low turnouts sometimes, but that is the stigma we stand to fight. We do it all so that anyone going through a hard time doesn’t think twice before asking for help. We are all actively available to help others and be bridges between counsellors and students. And let’s face the reality, the counsellors aren’t the best ones, but it does help sometimes. If not with one counsellor, maybe some other can help you out. And I know this because I have seen things work out for people.
We do a lot of things only for the sake of others, but we are not perfect. I wanted to improve upon some things in my ctm tenure, and I got way too attached to CS. That’s why I wanted to continue in CS as a coordinator. My coordinator tenure focused on addressing what I felt was missing during my own CTM experience: making team members feel genuinely impactful and always supported. I never could take personal support from my coordinators, and I tried to change that in my tenure by just trying to be approachable and be there for my CTMs. I genuinely cared for all of them. My CTM tenure also focused a lot on events. In my coordinator tenure, I tried to change that by supporting initiatives and taking charge to see them all executed. My coordi tenure was much better, and everyone got too emotionally attached. Everything was great for me until we had to decide who to pass on the baton. It was one of the toughest decisions of my tenure because I didn’t want to hurt anyone.
I could say both my tenures had ups and downs, but both of them were extremely successful. I believe I did impact a few lives positively, and as a whole, CS impacted a lot of lives. I will now leave this college, but I know that CS will always continue the great work, and the values of CS will always be a part of me.
Final Epoch
The last epoch of my college life was the placement season and the 8th semester. Placements were insanely stressful.
I gave all my placement tests ‘with’ ALs. In October and November, all you do is give placement tests, there were so many tests and so many companies. We were constantly checking the placement portal and planning our days around the tests. And among all this, I did some chota bhai waale duties for my sister’s wedding. To be honest, I did coding with all my dedication, but I wasn’t very good at it. Modest coding, CPI, and belonging to a BS program lead to the same traumatic experience like intern drive. I had zero short lists till 29 Nov. Despair loomed, and I was crazy afraid thinking about the worst things in my life. I would’ve broken down if it wasn’t for the people around me.
On November 30, I got 4 shortlists – 1.1, 1.2 and two 2.2. My first interview was really bad. I said things the wrong way, and couldn’t solve basic puzzles. 1st December is my mom’s birthday. I even forgot to wish her. I still remember after my first interview I felt a lot better. All the anxiety went away. I was ready to take a nap and then prepare for my 1.2 interview. I was discussing it with my friend that if he got a walk-in in Microsoft or some other company he’d probably crack the DSA interview. I said I’ll probably not be able to crack it. Within 5 minutes I got a call from Manavjeet, “Aapka Microsoft mae interview h aap aa jaiye”. All my friends who were not in interviews ran with me to the venue. The first round was online. I didn’t have earbuds and I randomly found Amay there. He gave me his earbuds for the round 1 interview. 1st interview was really good, the interviewer’s name was also Pankaj. I knew I had cleared round 1 when I got out. Round 2 was slightly difficult, I had to write the code on a piece of paper. I wrote the code correctly then I was grilled on my intern work to the point where I thought my intern research was pointless. I thought the interview was not very good, but I still had my hopes up. After a few minutes of waiting outside the venue with ALs, the HR came out and showed a thumbs up to me. I cried then and there. From no shortlist to 4 shortlists to clearing a walk-in interview, I was finally placed. I quickly shifted my focus to ALs and their placement, ran for them, and supported them. 1.1 was over. Meanwhile, I also wanted to share the good news with everyone else. I called my coaching friends early in the morning and they were so happy. I wanted to tell my family the good news face-to-face. So at 8 am in the morning, I took an auto to my home. Bought some sweets on the way. Now the last thing my family knows is that I am too stressed and I did not clear my first interview. (Context: Both my brother and his wife are Microsoft employees) I go to my home, wake everyone up bring them to the hall, and tell them ki ghar mae ab 2 ni teen MS employees h. Everyone was so happy for me. I came back to campus around 11 am. Rested for a while and then again started running around for my ALs. Running with their resume. Trying to push their interview according to their priority, bringing them food. Within 6 days, everyone was sorted. But I came back home on the 5th day because my sister’s wedding was very close.
The eighth semester was a whirlwind of CS responsibilities, trip planning to Shimla, Goa, and Haridwar, and joining Prayas—a long-cherished goal. 8th semester was packed with a lot of parties, clubbing, random night outs, trying every crazy thing with my wingies, making batch videos, writing testimonials, and thinking every moment that this might be the last time doing a thing. CS meets, placement prep and getting placed, trips to Shimla, Goa & Haridwar, DE, Hakuna Matata, living the last days with ALs, h1 ki baraat, and a random villa party, were the peak moments of this final epoch. I never imagined that the 8th semester would be so hectic but it was packed with all the good things.
Evaluation metrics
To judge how good a model was, we have evaluation metrics. So how will you judge my whole college life? Obviously CPI. Okay, who am I kidding? It does matter for some important things of life but it definitely isn’t a strong metric. Yes, without it I might not have gotten a placement better than I expected. Placement was one of the major goals that I came to IIT for. I value the profound lessons that shaped me into the person I aspired to be. The lifelong bonds I forged with friends stand as another vital metric. The rest will be tested in the next phase of my life.
I’m unsure if I mastered data science in these four years, but this emotional model of life will guide me forward. It’s far from perfect, yet I know it’s the best I could craft. Maybe this is what we are supposed to do – continuously train and improve. I’ll continue doing this because, as I said at the start of this article, I always do what I think I am supposed to do.
torch.save(model.state_dict(), ‘pankajhsLife/iitk/modelweights.pth’)
Signing off,
Pankajh
Written by: Pankajh Jhamtani
Edited by: Yeva Gupta, Riddhi Shingte
Designed by: Pankhuri Sachan, Pragya Puri
