Life @ IITG

I can’t believe I am sitting and writing a concluding blog for my IITG life. These days have passed so swiftly that it has left me bewildered like the elderly who try to cope up the rapidly transforming technology. Phew! Treading down the memory lane just broadens my smile ear to ear. What an undergraduate life it has been!

In my freshmen year I had to deal with a wide range of labels. Spanning from a ghissu to a dassu I am just very glad that I truly did not give any weightage to any of it. I know most of the college guys reading this will give an eye roll in the most ludicrous manner possible but the truth is that people do not like to listen to a lecture. No matter how true it might be it’s sometimes better to be quiet. My incessant questions about aims and ambitions and goals and future life and so on and so forth were straight away dismissed without the slightest of thought or consideration. This was the case with the masses however then there were a couple of people who were ready to talk. Talk about all the topics they really wanted to and it was obvious that I got really close to them.

I guess every college student will have a story of their own with the basic elements more or less the same. These elements include an awesome hostel, the world’s best lobby, a lot of acquaintances, a few good friends, a crush or two and one or two closest buddies on whom you can count on anytime and anywhere. My college life included all of this too. In the end I am glad to have at least three names that spontaneously come to my mind when I think about true friends and I am grateful that I was able to find them.

IIT Guwahati is an eclectic combination of peers. You will find here every kind of student (or professor for that matter) that you can imagine. You need to be strong headed. You need to know what you are getting into and be consciously aware of all the actions and their implications. Well frankly this task is easy for most of us. Being aware. The problem is to be aware and to act on it. Most of the people I observed in this college were very talented and extremely smart. The problem with most of them was their laziness coupled with the college stigma of being a ghissu. People just did not want to be associated with an obvious label. As for me, I hardly cared about stereotypes or demeaning lingos which were just a cheap attempt by losers to anchor down the flying spirits reaching towards their goals.

Frankly, in the first half of my freshmen year I was nothing but ungrateful. I was whining and cribbing about the place, the peers, my not so awesome JEE rank, the fact that I was away from two of my closest friends and most importantly whining because I was not happy with myself. I had categorically decided that there is nothing that I will learn or take away from this place. Having thought about IIT Bombay as the archetype of the undergraduate engineering college since the beginning of JEE preparation, being in IIT Guwahati did not really boost my confidence.

So what did I take away from this place? Now when I look back and connect the dots, I realize that IIT Guwahati has silently helped me turn into a person that I could not have expected to become if I was in that dream college. With deep introspection I thought about this question and I had to just look at myself and realize that the answer was very simple. The answer was me. IIT Guwahati gave me an identity. An identity of an awesome (machau ) senior for a really average and relatively okay person like me. That which I know would not have been possible in Bombay. With every other person there getting admits and internships in the dream universities, a KAIST intern would have been hardly counted as an achievement. I am not comparing anyone or anything, neither am I talking about mediocrity. I just know it for a fact that I would have developed an inferiority complex which is the last thing I would have wanted in my undergraduate life. The kind of boost and energy (positive and negative) you receive from peers in IITG is life changing. You just need to be with the right people at the right time and I am glad I was able to do that wisely. All these external factors strengthened my internal desire of being associated with academia and slowly I transformed into someone who became self-sufficient in developing enough confidence and surplus enthusiasm while pursuing various tasks and really doing what I like and vice versa. This interwoven fabric of many reasons ultimately supports my decision of pursuing graduate school as well.

Getting through the Heritage Erasmus Mundus Exchange Program was totally unexpected. I definitely wanted it and that is the reason that I had applied as well but I felt as if I would not get it. I was probably just trying to be real. Getting to know the results brought a wave of joy followed by the tides of realization. I wish I could have been a part of the final semester or the finale season as some call it but I guess I have to come to terms with the current situation. It’s like playing the role of the supporting actor who gets killed a season before and the actor can just hope that the character is dearly missed.

I would conclude by mentioning that IIT Guwahati gave me a thousand reasons to hate it but then it also gave me a few overpowering reasons vetoing in its favour. It made me realize the fact that everyone is fucked up in some way or the other in life, but who is cribbing and who is happy is decided by what matters to them and what they choose to act on. I am glad I acted well.

Here is the link to a song I made about my College life