Someone is Always Better than the Best – My Study Experience at IIT Bombay!

After two years, today, I finally have a free weekend! And I am using this time to reminisce about how I have spent these two years at IIT Bombay.

I still remember how I swaggered in the gates of the mighty IIT-B on the first day, high on my success of getting a ‘silver’ medal at the International Physics Olympiads (IPhO) held in Croatia.

The first person that met me turned out to be my neighbor Satwik who congratulated me. I still remember how I felt ashamed for my pride when I learnt later that he was an International Olympiad guy too.

All the Olympiad guys automatically got classified under the ‘Dare Devils’ wing and I soon had friends that matched and at times excelled my mental wavelength. I have always been for healthy competition and here were some of the best brains I had to compete with.

Later, I also met the AIR 1 guy. I had dreamt of beating him at the academics ever since the JEE results were declared. The desire was re-kindled when I met him.

It is funny how a complete stranger became my biggest competitor. Perhaps, he doesn’t even know that I am competing with him for the last two years. This is something I need to keep in mind – Success reaps Enemies. Fortunately for him and for me, I am only looking forward to healthy competition and mean him no harm.

You know what the long orientations at IIT Bombay are all about? It’s about out-shouting the other hostels! I am never a voluntary miscreant shouting ‘H2 ki ****’ or ‘H4 ki *****’ but I do love to burst my vocal chords at ‘H10 hamaara hai!’

Lectures at IIT are all as good as I expected them to be while joining such a prestigious institution. But I still remember that during my first month at IITB, how I frequently fell prey to the ‘Slumber’ Devil during my Classes. On August 1, I decided I had to overcome this challenge, no matter what!

My first quiz at IITB – MA 105 (in my favorite subject Mathematics too) – cured me from my Slumber Fever forever. I had scored just 5 out of 10. I was shocked. I was devastated.

It was then I met my mentor Rohit Singh. He is an IPhO goldie and has always been an inspiration to me with a CPI around 9.9. It was he who motivated me by saying, “You can always recover from 5/10 dude, pain mat le…” These words became my mantra over the years as I repeated them to myself whenever I failed myself.

Irrespective of what they say, we do not have many girls at IITB. In the InSync Orientation, I took on the role of a female partner and I had to forego my dream of learning Salsa because I did not have a girl partner!

TrackMania was quite fun though. My roommate who was also my team partner helped me in soldering, wiping off, committing mistakes and then rectifying them. We did make our car in time but it could not complete the track. The entire activity was quite stimulating. It taught me to challenge myself and look beyond my limits.

I did perform well in the quizzes later but I ruined my Aditya Birla Scholarship interview due to typhoid. I had so badly wanted the honor but I hardly had time to mourn the loss. The preparation for Line Follower competition (where teams had to make robots that can follow the line on a smooth surface) was going full-on! At IIT Bombay, there is always something or the other going on to keep you as busy as a bee.

Our robot finished seventh at the Line Follower track.

Then started my movie-marathon and I watched 219 movies in 10 months! I could only do so much from getting that looming pink slip for my absenteeism in the mid-sem. Perhaps, the words of my Professor – ‘I believe you’ – held the power of a saber and soon sobered me up for the rest of my duration at the institute.

In my endsems, I cracked the CS101 paper with 70.5/70 and topped my course to get my first ever AP (Advanced Placement) credit. I am glad to report that I did get 59/60 in MA 105 eventually and topped my first semester at the CSE department with a CPI of 9.88.

I am still at IIT Bombay and will keep sharing about my life at IIT with you. If you have any queries regarding my study experience at IIT Bombay, do comment below.

This experience of an IITian at Bombay was mailed to us at our email address blog@askiitians.com.

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This post was published by Nishant Sinha, co-founder of askIITians.