After a year at IIT Roorkee, it would be a lie if I said that I haven’t had a near-paradigm shift of personality. I came into the college as quite an unimpressionable individual. The orientation ceremony was pretty decent (read: boring). The only highlight probably was being mistaken as a “foreigner” by some lesser intellectual outside the convocation hall. Constant downpour during my early days here made me love the ambience. The initial days were, needless to say, a bit tough. Give me an extempore topic, I’ll speak. But I was quite the farthest thing from being a small talk expert. I vividly remember my first chapo: the sophomore seniors of our branch treated us in Georgia, and gave us a fair idea of the campus life. Slowly, after a month, I found people who shared almost the same interests as I did, and it was great.

I’ve always had a thing for reading, and writing, so I went for the intro-talks of the magazine groups. Eventually, I got into Geek Gazette, whose magazines literally radiate passion through the content, which is what attracted me to it. I also got into the Debating Society because I thought it would be a great opportunity to reassemble my thoughts, frame, and phrase them in a more comprehensive manner. I went on to adjudicate debates in colleges of Delhi University and IIT Delhi. They were very fulfilling experiences.

Back home in Delhi, my sister had taught me how to play the guitar when I was 10. So I went and auditioned for the Music Section’s Friends of Section (an event where students who are not a part of the music section perform), and performed for the first time in college. It was a great, almost unprecedented, feeling I experienced. I made friends with a lot of cool people there. During my freshman year, I was a bit anxious about my academics from the beginning. But now I’ve realised that worrying is useless (finally, yay!). Mid-semester examinations began and ended in the blink of an eye, with two or three exams in a single day.

Feeling a bit more at place in Roorkee after the first semester, I began cracking lame (read: hilarious) jokes, and world-class puns. After the debates, I joked around and made people laugh/cringe. Ah, sweet memories.

The first of the elated moments I’ve had here includes the feeling of familial care that I experienced during Diwali, when we celebrated the festival with the members of Geek Gazette. The feeling of love and togetherness you feel when they make you feel special by the simple act of buying you chocolates or making you thukpa, because it’s Children’s day or the Lunar new year, has left an indelible impact on my heart. During this time, there were a lot of friendships that I made, with talks in CBRI, MAC, Georgia, etc. These friends are those that have been there when I’ve needed help, a pep-talk, or someone to laugh with. Thomso and Cognizance were fun experiences, with the Local Train and Kenny Sebastian coming in.The trip to Shimla with the members of GG was such a wonderful experience. Fighting with/getting engulfed in snow was, undoubtedly, the best part. Bidding goodbye to my beloved seniors during the farewell in April was hard.

In my one and only year at IIT Roorkee, I’ve learnt that there’s a lot more to learn about a universe of things, summarized in a quote by T. H. White in his book, The Once and Future King, " ...There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn."