Yes, it was worth it! Every single minute, every single second I put into the preparation for JEE was totally worth it. And to make 5 years of your life, so great that you write ‘totally worth it’ twice needs a well defined goal and its proper execution. Well if you here just to get the answer to the question of the previous article, you can stop here, now you know. I am really sorry to disappoint all the people who wanted to hear a no! If you have some free time, can bear up some boring stuff and want the details, go on, read ahead :P It’s a long one!
Following from the part 1, I wrote, I lost interest in engineering and studying in general. I did make a new goal; it is something you won’t expect, ‘enjoy college life to the fullest!’ The idea was not to care about academics; the golden days were finally here!
It’s super difficult to describe five super happening years of your life in a single blog article. I’ll skip a lot, but have tried to put in as much as possible! I’ll break it year wise.
First year, the idea was to learn only new non-academic things. Started with Volleyball, the court was right next to my block! Learnt it from scratch and played like an amateur for a semester. I remember, we guys played everyday irrespective of the examination schedule, we just didn’t care. In the next semester, Poker came along somehow. And the entire second sem was dedicated to Hold ‘em Poker. As expected, didn’t do so well academically, but managed to pass all the courses!
Now came the second year. Got introduced to a few economics courses. Found them to be decent and interesting. Got a little more serious towards academics, and I mean very little. Got a new laptop and thus a very comfortable 24-hour access to a very high speed internet! And the rest is history! (I just wanted to write this statement to be a little dramatic :P There’s no need for it to be here :P) In class 12, I had made a list of movies I’ll be watching in college. Took it out and downloaded them all! Started with the entire collection of James Bond. Watched all 25 of them! Then went on and on and on. I watched over a 150 movies in my second year, maybe much more than that, I don’t remember! Meanwhile I also joined the Entrepreneurship Cell as a Media & Publicity Executive (All of this sounds fancy, I know :P). Wrote a few articles, got introduced to Photoshop and Web Development. I liked the group.
I started searching for online tutorials and learnt a lot of Front End Web Dev and did a lot of experiments on Photoshop! This was super fun. From this exercise, I came to know that I have a good design sense. No doubt, I got it from my mother, who ran an art workshop for years! I made random websites, random posters, edited random photos and loved it all!
By the end of the second year, I was introduced to foreign TV Shows. Before that, I didn’t know that so much beauty even existed! Started out with a short anime, Death Note. It blew my brains! I was like wow, I want more! Then it was one show after another! In my third year, I watched over 40 TV Shows in full. When you add up the screen time its not in hours or days, it’s in months!
Someone advised me to learn R, I still don’t remember who. Looked it up. It is a statistical language, used to solve a wide range of statistical, analytics, machine learning problems to put it in very crude terms. Started learning it using different online tutorials and found it pretty good. Used it in my summer internship, which helped me learn it even better. Having a good knowledge of R was a big plus for me during the internship interview in my fourth year!
In the third year itself, I was also re-introduced to a video game, FIFA! We were a group of 6 friends. Each of us played over a 1000 FIFA games, with each game lasting for about 20 minutes! Also in the third year, I became the head of Media and Publicity! Got in some additional responsibilities. It was difficult, but fun at the same time. I wrote a bunch of things, designed lots of posters, standees, badges. Made a website. Worked in team of around 12 core students, became good friends with all of them. All in all, a good learning experience. Academically, I was somehow doing pretty well now! Even I was surprised :P
Then came the fourth year. I had converted my program into a dual degree program, so it was 5 year course for me, but for most of my good friends, it was their final year. Subconsciously, I made it my mission to enjoy with them, as if it was my last year too! Sat for the internship session. Got an internship offer on the very first day of the interview rounds! Was it luck? Don’t know, maybe :P Heard it from seniors that if I give a decent performance in the internship, most probably I’ll get a PPO (Pre-Placement Offer: A divine angel who saves you from the hellish process, regular placements are). I now considered as if I have a job in hand. Now enjoy the two years to come without any pressure! Same drill again, tons of TV shows, movies, sports and what not.
Fifth Year! Got the PPO in September! No placements! Same drill! Had a volleyball court right next to my room. Started in a small group. Played worse than the first year amateurs we were. But decided to learn this time. Started learning basic techniques and in a few weeks, started playing pretty decently. We were averaging near about 4 hours of volleyball everyday! Made us all very happy. The last thing I did before leaving the campus was, played a game of volleyball!
I had finished watching most of the popular TV shows, so started searching for different, underrated, unconventional ones (if you want recommendations, ping me :P). Watched them. But by now, something changed. I lost the appetite to endlessly watch movies and TV Shows. Something similar for FIFA too. Just didn’t like doing these things as much as I used to. The only conclusion I could come up with is that if you do too much of something, however interesting, addicting, after one point, you just don’t like it as much as you used too. Life lesson: Have a bad habit of any kind and want to get rid of it? Do it in extreme! Much more than you can imagine. After some time, you just won’t want it as much :P
But this idea also made me sad. I have very little idea about what sort of work I’d get in the future. But I am sure that I won’t be able to handle same sort of things again and again. Things need to change now and then! At this point, all I could hope for was that I get different type of projects every time. Let’s see what happens! :P Had so much free time in the fifth year that I started questioning life itself! What’s our purpose? I got bored of all the meaningless ‘time wasting’ you can call it. I felt I should do something productive. The immediate goal is to channel that hunger for productivity into job.
I knew it was time. Time to make new goals. But gave it a rest. I needed more information. Info about what exactly goes on in the job life. This time, I didn’t want to make some baseless goals, like I did in class 7 (The result turned out to be awesome, but still)! I know goals are necessary, and I need to make them soon, but I’ll take my time and form some solid ones! Had I not formed the goal of enjoying college, I couldn’t have decided what to focus on, studying, or enjoying :P On scoring less, I would have regretted. And if I had only focussed on academics to score really well, I would have always regretted that I missed the golden days! So that goal was necessary, I’m serious!
In my stay at IITK, I picked up a lot of skills (learnt most of them online) like R, Photoshop, WebDev, Team Work, Time Management, etc. which not only helped me during my stay in campus, during my internships, but will also help me out in the future too! What I want to convey is that my college life wasn’t just a non-productive, fun ride. I learnt about how to finish tasks under pressure within the deadline, about how to be down to earth, about life in general. I learnt a lot about how to be a better person.
I don’t think I could have executed my goal of enjoying the college life any better. Heck, most of my wing mates and friends used to envy me a lot! It was about a 100 days of TV Shows, 250 or so movies, 1000+ games of FIFA, 50+ novels, about 700 hours of sports, innumerable hours of chats and pranks with friends and only a month of academics (Counting all 5 years together)!
I know. This story doesn’t seem that of an ideal studious IITian you had in mind. Infact, its no where near that. But in the end, I consider myself lucky to have passed out decently, to have enjoyed my days there to the fullest. With a decent job in hand, having learnt so much, I don’t regret a moment making all those decisions!
To anyone preparing for JEE, put all you got, sacrifice, it will be worth it! Once you get in, you’ll need your own goal for college. Try to learn things. Pick up skills. You’ll have tons of exposure. Develop your overall self. And study! It’s important too! :P
