The ending of a new beginning!

-Some of this content was written a few days back-

Today marks the day when my final crib session at IIT Bombay for the 1st semester concludes. This day holds many mixed feelings - It's the day when I can proudly say that I've survived a semester at IIT! Not very confidence - inspiring, I know (:P).

Around this time seems to be the right time to wonder about the memorable things this semester - what I've learnt, and maybe what I should change to get a better experience out of Insti life (Yes, adopting the lingo already! :P ).

This semester is maybe (probably) the semester with the most amount of diverse courses throughout the 5 years that I'll be here. So, it was quite fun and hectic at the same time; There was a lot of learning that took place, but I was exhausted as well.

First, it's time to look back at the goals set before coming to the Insti:

Goal list 

1) Decent CPI - I would say probably check. :) While it's not going to be "stellar", it'll probably be good enough.

2) Learning and not forgetting -

Before I came to IIT Bombay, like most of the freshers, I talked to multiple seniors before this new journey of mine. There were a lot of expectations; I’ll get a great CPI while handling multiple extracurriculars, I’ll learn rather than mugging for marks, and I’ll spend a lot of times with friends at the same time, planning new outings everyday!

Needless to say, these are quite naïve thoughts – While I didn’t believe all of the above, suffice to say that everyone can daydream, right?

Something that really hit home for me was, sometimes when I asked a senior what was taught in say this – and that course, they would stutter a lot and say that the course was not really their strength and hence they don’t remember a lot. Well, I thought, I’ll do things differently. My aim for the semester was to gain a good enough understanding of the course material, that if 10 years down the line I had to present the course material, all I would take is maybe a day or two of brushing up – the concept would be deeply imbedded by then!

This sounds like quite an ambitious plan, and rightly so I believe. It’s really hard for me to even remember what was taught in school a year back – how would I go about achieving this?

The answer is that, I had to understand where everything came from! And when is this much easier to do? When you love a subject, of course! Now, here was my plan – I would choose a subject, focus on the part most interesting to me, and build everything around it. That way, there was atleast something from the course I would always remember, and I could build my peripheral stuff around it! Sounds ingenious, doesn’t it?

If you have doubts about the above approach, you’re probably correct. I’m just a student daydreaming – I have no idea what’s possible and what’s not. But, if you’re not remembering what you learn whilst doing your undergraduate degree, is it really worth the effort for a piece of paper?

Just something to think about while I expand on this topic and talk what was lacking in my approach in my next few blog posts :)

3)  Will do a lot of extracurrics along with acads - Unfortunately, this was probably not achieved. While I did some extracurrics, I didn't exactly do a lot - something that I should improve upon and prioritize accordingly for the next semester!

Sneak peak at something I created - a character called "AndaMan" (literally, Egg Man) who fights crime with his amazing omelette making skills and shoots eggs out of his palms. He also has his own theme song that states where he's from! (Hint: You can guess it quite easily :P)

4) Meet a lot of new people - Definitely a check! I met a bunch of great people at my first semester here. We've done quite some awesome stuff together and I hope to continue the same trend in the coming semesters :)

5) Going through the "DIY" approach: Actually sitting down and doing things by myself took me a lot more time than I'd expected; While it was relatively easy to be excited about doing stuff and checking out the relevant books in the library for say the first two weeks, beyond that it was hard to keep it up.

I only got around to doing this just before the endsem; I learnt the hard way that I wouldn't be scoring much without really digging into the topics. So, I spent a few days reading books, the old fashioned "classic" method~~

So, that's how my semester measured up to be in a nutshell. Next, I've planned a photo spammed post for the Electrical department trip to Lohagad Fort and a post on my thoughts and the things that I've learnt in this semester. Also, hope to add something on my plans for the vacations! I'll end with a wise quote from a friend (I'm looking at you, Kushagra!):

"Whatever you do, don't waste these vacations. Learn something useful"

I'm going to take this to heart. :)