Considering the state of mind that I had that day, I guess its quite an achievement that I have moved past 5 semesters of IITM life without major hiccups. IITM has been tough, but it has indeed taught me how to be strong and how to say a "no" boldly. These 5 semesters have been a great learning experience and hope the next half of IITM life also is.
5th semester was probably the toughest of semesters personally for me. It might not be as tough as the 3rd semester on the face of it, but considering the sheer mental struggle I had to undergo post-Shaastra to get some focus back, I hope I dont recount such an experience again. The sem is not done yet, but I have learned to hope against all odds. A brief break up of what happened during this sem.
August:
Moved into a bog room-201. I was really terrified to move into that room, simply because it was the room adjacent to the toilet, which was used by the freshies. The bog did become worse through the later days of the sem, but it didnt terrify me as I did expect at the start. Had my plate full with the core works of Shaastra. I had put full fight for it to get things done earlier than usual. There was another 2 week fight early on with the acad section to change my minor from Physics to Economics (thank goodness I did change it). It was also a month when I became the secretary of the Metallurgical Students Association (MetSA). It was another dream come true. I had only dreamt of becoming that when I was first introduced to Amalgam-the dept festival. Being the MetSA sec, I had to immediately coordinate with my co-secretary and conduct the Freshies night and the Brahmprakash quiz--I guess we did a good job. 2nd August was probably the last day I saw a movie for the next two months to come.
September:
Shaastra work load slowly crept up with events and hospi tightening the screws on us. It was also a month of crashing servers and desperate mails to keep the server up and running (looking back-it was actually fun). The pre-Shaastra core treat, where the pizzas arrived two hours late was enjoyable too. In between came the quizzes. All of my quizzes bombed, except for possibly the F-slot quiz(which might have been saved by a dumb question paper). Quiz 1 also witnessed an event, where a certain prof walked out of the exam hall without collecting the answer scripts! I cant forget the convo that we had with him, trying to convince him not to take stringent action against us, immediately after the exam. Cores for Amalgam 2011 were also elected. I also secured a coordship for Saarang, 2011. Late September witnessed severe fights to get stuff working. But I did like the workload that was given.
October:
Shaastra happened. It was not a very great Shaastra personally-my best performance being a 4th round finish at Pentathlon-but definitely gave me a high for the sheer magnitude of the fest and also my contributions in making the festival better. The closing ceremony was wonderful. Shaastra was swiftly followed by an all core-treat and the devil called quiz 2. I did manage to pull my socks up to a decent extent, but I wasnt out of the woods yet with respect to quizzes. Post quiz-2, I had one of the most torrid times of my life, when I kinda burned out. I lost focus, was searching for something motivating and was tired both physically and mentally. Add to this, slipping health and severe lapses in concentration. It was partly because, the huge workloads suddenly stopped and I felt like a jobless bugger all of a sudden. The month started with a high, but ended up spiraling down as I hit an all-time low. Had somehow evaded work for Saarang and ensured that most of the coords were selected for Amalgam.
November:
Recovery time. I took in a lot of time for introspection and managed to get some focus back onto academics (economics presentations helped). Project was not progressing at the pace that we expected and it was hard to motivate the core team for Amalgam. The design core was changed and hopefully the team has been motivated to the extent that I tried to. A lab course project was done at the last moment, much to the displeasure of the Prof in charge of the course. Add to this-myself and my co-secretary were late for the viva! Finally came the end sems and as usual, flunked most of the exams (including severe bulbs to utter non-preparations leading to being blanked by the question paper). Economics exam was particularly severe, as I had studied till 6 am in the morning only to be asked questions from those chapters that I had not covered. Anyways, all is not lost and hope I can have the results my way, God willing. The sem ended with a thud with growing disparities between ourselves(myself and my co-sec) and a certain MS scholar. I only wish that things are resolved the way that we want them to be.
Hence goes another roller-coaster sem. I am happy that I have crossed this. Hope this december can be peaceful and fruitful all at the same time simply because, sixth sem-academically the heaviest sem ever-is not far away.
cheers,
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