Semester 3 began in the fall of 2005, with myself and everyone else around me becoming more confident about the functioning of IIT. At the end of the first year, we D-mid guys had a huge debate in our wing as to who would be my roommate in the second year. We sat down for a few hours, and ultimately decided for my Sardar friend to join me as my “roomie”. There were other candidates: my first roommate, my first friend from “dabba” dept, another champ, and the last one whom we used to call “bumbe”. If I remember correctly, this was also the year wherein we witnessed a suicide by one of my batchmates, who had anxiety about his academic performance, but actually was doing far better than many at that moment. Well, student suicide is a very complex and challenging topic that demands the utmost attention but certainly very little is done about it. India being a complex society grapples with its many internal issues, and this is one of them.
In this semester, we had one very interesting core biology course in which many facets related to organismal development were discussed. Other than the instructor, a few other prominent professors from the NCBS, BHU, and DU travelled to Kanpur, to share their insights with us. I remember doing a field project for this very course (Gecko’s Foot, discussed in my other blog). The remaining other courses were mostly engineering-based and were equally interesting. After my poor performance in the 1st semester, I had become more studious and thus spent only so much on the extracurriculars. In fact, I had stopped participating fully to institute cricket practices as well, which didn’t impress many playing there and so obviously didn’t get selected for the inter-IIT sports meet in the subsequent years.
Most will agree with me that IITs are great but they have so much comfort that makes students lazy on campus. I also got lazy and instead of trying my hands at various initiatives, did just a few selected things only. Being in an IIT is like being in a Western country. There is comfort and not much to worry about. Focus on your main problems and the rest will get taken care of on its own. Do you agree?
Nevertheless, I participated in the Udghosh sports tournament that year playing with our seniors in their cricket (phatta) team. I was the only one chosen to play from our batch for the Hall-2 team and rocked the show in our first match. We managed to win 2 matches but were ultimately eliminated at a later stage. I also coached D-mid cricket team named (Ganesh’s Super fatoos), a lot of time and planning had gone into strategically naming this one! During this match, the guy batting in the opposition team was someone who played institute cricket with us. I remembered his style of batting, he would try to sweep every ball. He did the same with the tennis ball and ended with the ball flying to the fielder. But the fielder dropped the ball and that was it, this was that moment when Australia dropped Virat Kohli and ended up losing the match. So did we! But it was super fun, as we played night cricket in the field next to PG halls.
Later that year, I shifted gears from cricket and dance to the Photography club. This gave me and other members unrestricted access to the variety of shows in Antaragni. With the special pass, I would sit right in the front row of all the events and take pictures. Of course, one of our objectives was to make money for the club, which we were able to partially achieve. This was a fun experience as opposed to my first year in Antaragni.
Somehow my interest in pursuing research took me, in winter, to spent time in a Biomaterials lab in BSBE, understanding the nitty-gritty of polymer chemistry. It was a brief little project of 3 weeks that helped me learn how the research project works and the PhD under whom I was working, gave a positive opinion about me to the PI. I had to reproduce the protocol developed by the PhD and show output within a given error range.
One major struggle that every IIT faces is the male-to-female student ratio. Not having an opposite gender as a friend can have positive or negative effects on your well-being, so the mystery still remains. What to do? I remember many of us trying to woo the only few ladies in the house with some succeeding while the most failing.
Semester 4 had mostly core courses related to biology. For one of the courses, the instructor told us during our end-semester exam that he had designed a puzzle for all of us but when he showed it to my wife, she told him that no one would be able to solve it and the whole class would fail. He changed the exam paper! In spite of this, only one guy (Not me!) got a C grade and the remainder of the class got a D grade. All the hard work from the first three semesters was brought down due to a personal problem and a couple of courses, and my grades suffered again this semester.
Nevertheless, it was a great beginning to the biology-driven courses at IIT Kanpur which helped me look at it from the systems perspective. I remember being curious in the class and at times answering the toughest of the questions! I hope that the ability to ask the right questions and answer the toughest of the problems will take us miles ahead.
This semester was also special because for another reason. One of my friends was failing a lab course due to which he was on the verge of getting terminated. There was a catch from which he could have been saved, and so 3 of us fought for him and helped him pass the semester with just above the bare minimum grade.
During the summer, I stayed back in the college and participated in a project in the same biomaterials lab. The project was great and opened new avenues for my future research career. But due to me helping my friend earlier, summer vacation turned tricky and I had to hear some tough words from my professors. But in the end, I wrote an apology letter after which everyone was happy and our boy was safe.