Semester 5 began in the fall of 2006, with myself becoming more and more mature. This year we moved out of Hall 2 to a different Hall with everyone occupying an independent room. We used to play LAN games which was fun. I once played Age of Empires with many others and was awestruck to find how fast some of us were in that game. I remember a few of my wingmates playing LAN games endlessly for days and nights, still securing good grades at the end of the semester. Those were the geniuses ones, while there were others whose sole objective was to play LAN games without worrying about academics. They kept on suffering but had turned strong through time at IIT.
Again, this year also witnessed a suicide by my batchmate who was a literature scholar but suffered in engineering courses. I remember the reason behind him taking extreme steps but deciding to not share here as it can’t bring back the deceased. However, it is important to discuss such issues and find a solution, to avoid any similar situation from happening in the future.
As this was my 3rd year, almost all the courses going forth were either core/ electives or humanities. I had the privilege to sit in courses offered by some of the best teachers in the country and so I utilized this opportunity to the fullest. I remember getting a bad grade in one of the courses although I thoroughly enjoyed the topic. Ultimately exams determine grades, so there it was! But I think there was another aspect to getting grades that I could never explore even a bit, and possibly I suffer due to that till today in various facets of life.
One of the humanities courses that I undertook was related to organizational psychology wherein our instructor gave us a task. In this task, we had to describe ourselves pictographically and then randomly give our sheet to others and discuss it in a group. The instructor claimed that the activity would bring us closer to each other, and indeed at the end of the session, we felt more connected. Somehow, I could sense the energy surrounding us changing with time during this activity.
Every year, 3rd year undergrads were interviewed for club coordinator positions and since I had joined the photography club in my 2nd year, I interviewed for it and got selected. It was fun coordinating the club as only last year, the Black & White Film Development Room (Dark Room) was renovated and all the gears had been added. We even invited an ace photographer from NID Ahmedabad to teach us fashion photography. We learned the nitty gritty of shooting with different lights which now I can’t recall. But the event was a success with participation from many others. Later, a new faculty joined the BSBE department, who had won various international photography awards. He taught a great deal of photography to everyone going forth and became a faculty advisor to the club.
This was also the semester when everyone applied to places for summer internships. I also applied to universities abroad and after a few failed responses, including one from the US, got selected by the University of Naples for the internship in the coming summer. Working on a summer project at the end of my second year helped me crack the summer internship in Italy as both labs were working on identical polymers.
Semester 6 was also interesting as it happened to be my first semester wherein I got all As and Bs grades. It was also fun as I sat in a social psychology course and conducted a field project to study bystander intervention. Although the instructor didn’t believe in my theatrical skills, giving me a B grade, I thoroughly enjoyed the course. The instructor did mention another thing looking at my handwriting that I am low on n-pow (Need for Power) whereas a couple of other guys were found to be high on n-pow as they used to write huge letters and they are currently doing very well in their respective domains. So psychology works!
In this semester we had a biomechanics course and the instructor gave us a take-home exam which proved tough for all of us. I don’t remember how others performed but I ended up getting a straight B in the course. In the final exam of this course, there was a question that needed justification from equations: “whether a light or a heavy cricket ball would travel faster on a cricket pitch?”
As the semester progressed, I planned to get a passport. For this, I traveled to the Lucknow Passport Office, there was no passport office in Kanpur, wherein an already huge crowd was present just like heavy rainfall on a sunny day. My first trip to the office didn’t earn me any lead and so I had to travel again, eventually, meeting the Head Officer and explaining my situation. I got the passport delivered to my IIT address. It was so eventful. Later, after getting papers from Italy I applied for a Schengen visa at a Delhi consulate. I remember traveling to Delhi amidst my final exams to meet the counselor at the Italian embassy. In spite of explaining to her how important it was to get the visa, they delayed it resulting in me postponing my travel dates to Napoli.
That summertime in Europe was also eventful. All in all, a year in which I learned a lot of new things with a variety of experiences!