Four years an undergrad
I had long wanted to write a blog post about the end of college, but somehow, today when I finally started writing this, I found myself at a loss of words. As I look back four years in time, I see a younger me, a kid eager to explore college life. I vividly remember the first registration, and the department orientation. Interestingly, after the department orientation, the students were taken for a tea session by the HoD and I remember that I asked for a cold coffee at Core IV coffee shop instead of tea. And anyone who has been with me to Core II enough number of times can vouch for my love of cold coffee which has not diminished since š With time I had 7 more of such registrations, each bringing upon a new semester and a new chapter in the college story. And in between those semesters, the interns gave me a taste of how its going to be after graduation, and I longed to be back at college during the interns. The odd semesters after the interns provided the much needed comfort that college isnāt over yet. But this time, for better or for worse, its actually over.
Over the years, the semesters and the interns, I witnessed enormous changes in myself and the people around me. Towards the end of the last semester, there were a lot of discussions on the life in the past four years and the changes it brought along. A little bit of introspection was enough to realize the effects of the past four years. I am now more independent, decisive, open minded, confident and adaptable to situations in general. And I would like to give due credit to IIT Guwahati for providing me with a platform which brought about these changes. I am not saying that IITG was the best there could have been, it sure had its own pros and cons. For every great prof, I also had an equally boring course, for every facility that I used and admired, there was the LAN-ban to hate :P, but thatās how it was and all of it, the good, the bad and the ugly, all of it contributed towards making me what I am, and I am grateful for it. And if all of this isnāt enough, it is at this place that I came across so many people, each with their own peculiarities and their own ways of life. And from these vast range of people, I chose a set of friends. Friends who became an indispensable part of my daily life, friends with whom I shared my highs and lows, my fears and aspirations, friends who gave me advice and sought my advice, friends who laughed at my stupid and not-so-stupid jokes and made me laugh till my stomach hurt, friends who mocked me and admired me, friends who never let me be overconfident, but also never let me lose my confidence. I have read time and again that you make friends for a lifetime at IITs. I am not sure on how true or practically viable this is and I donāt know how close I would be with my current friends in the later parts of my life, but what I do know for sure is that the times I spent with my friends was awesome and something which I enjoyed thoroughly.
Apart from all the behavioral changes and the emotional connect, I also consider the undergrad to be a rewarding journey as far as experiences are concerned. I have witnessed a large array of situations each of which brought upon a new experience. I have had couldnāt-be-better days and I have had couldnāt-feel-worse days, I have had regrets over my choices and I have had delights over my decisions, I have felt accomplished and I have felt lost, I have bonded and I have felt lonely, I have been tired and I have ran a cross-country (literally :P), I have worked relentlessly and I have relaxed as if nothing mattered and all of these combined and offered a mini-life experience in the short span of time. All in all, these past four years have taught me a lot and the lessons learnt will forever be with me. And as low-spirited as I am about this ending, I am equally excited for the new beginnings. Earlier on, during the second or third year, I imagined that I would be really disheartened about leaving college and would never want to move away. But to my surprise, I am really enthusiastic to embark upon a new journey and make a fresh start from the scratch. Of course, it means getting out of my carefully built comfort zone and I do have my apprehensions, but well, Cāest La Vie! š I also take this as a positive sign that I have had my closure with the college and the people and the college life in general.
While a part of me wants to believe that I am done with college and have learnt all there was to learn from it and taken everything it had to offer me, there is still some part of me which I believe will forever remain etched to the college memories. This part of me will miss the jokes and laughter riots at mess tables and walks, the cold coffee and patties at Core II, the labs, the assignments, the admin canteen dinners, the walks, the philosophical discussions, the future-plans discussions, the not-so-serious discussions, the midsems, the endsems, the calling-people-during-classes, the coding sessions, the sitting with friends doing nothing and pulling each otherās legs for hours and hours together, the dumb charades and poker nights, the rooms and classrooms where I spent major portions of my college time and a lot more. A part of me will certainly miss these. š And with this, I bid adieu to undergrad life with just one thought in my mind ākahani khatam hai ya shuruat hone ko haiā š