At the end of four years

Four years have passed in IIT Roorkee and the time has come when most of the students who took admission with me will leave the campus. It's a strange feeling ! When I look back, these four years seem to have passed too fast, making me feel that there was a lot we couldn't enjoy together. But, it is this feeling that proves that these four years have been really wonderful (Refer Einstein's theory of relativity for good times and bad times).

I remember the first address by the director that made me sleep and I got ashamed of myself. How could I sleep on the very first ritual of a great start ? But now, I have no regrets. Actually, it was boring and that's why I felt sleepy. Then, I remember our first class in Chemistry Dept. Auditorium. It was that of Physics and Ma'm Tashi Nautiyal took the lecture giving us suggestion to keep ourselves away from Solani River. After the class, we started interacting with each other. The interaction kicked off with our JEE ranks. And now, it looks so cheap to have asked those things. Then Maths, then Chemistry and then, I don't remember. Everything was so fast. That's the thing with IIT- it's so fast that you have to keep running to catch with it's pace. I remember the desperation on getting below expectation marks, the first semester result and the results of the following semesters and how I got used to the results. Then I remember Rajendra Bhawan, it's mess, it's lawn, it's corridor, my room and everything associated with it. How tired we would be after a day's schedule and still, would have long gossips in our rooms.

Then came Thomso and it was such an excitement to attend our college's cultural festival. It was a big event for us. We couldn't have expected that Sivani Kashyap would perform for us before. Similarly came Cognizance, our technical festival, with its own aura. Everything seemed so technical in it conforming with IIT standards. But, it was then. Now we know that getting Shivani Kashyaps perform for us requires only sponsorship money which brands can always throw away as long as we promise them a huge participation across the length and breadth of India. As we organised events in Cognizance in the following years, we realized how easy it was to make it TECHNICAL.

Birthday bumps, night outs, bus tea, movies, listening songs at high volume, computer games (though I have somehow kept myself away from games), last night studies and the silence that enveloped our hostels at the exam times are the things that we would always remember. Dinners at Prakash just after mid terms and end terms were like- we deserve it after such a hard work ! I still couldn't know who we were justifying to. But that is what we call college days. The campus walls are like walls secluding us from the world where there is a word called responsibility.

These four years have been years of transformation. When we entered we were merely students who had qualified JEE. We had been brought up in such a way that we would feel that we could do anything. These four years have made us realise the fact that there are things which are not in our domain. Otherwise, there would be no question of sufferings that we had in these years. There are things that we cannot understand in our first attempt. There are rivals who are too good for us, whom we considered as our reference. This makes us believe that everyone is a mediocre and gives us a better perception of success and failures. At the end of four years we don't ask about our CGPA like we would ask JEE rank four years back to assure ourselves of our position. We have learnt that it was not merely our preparation that got us into IIT, luck played its role as well.

I am happy that I have one year more to enjoy this life but disappointed to note that there won't be all of us who have been there so far to enjoy these days. I wish good luck for the outgoing students! See you guys in the outside world in 2011 !