Bachelor of Engineering – The First Ones

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First Day – First Semester – First Year

It was first day of our academic engineering – The Orientation Day. Me, my roommate and other friends went together. It was a large hall where almost 180 to 200 students sat and listened to the management of the college about the good facilities we WILL be having. Two of the senior lecturers also started speaking on the occasion. “God!! When will this orientation get over?” was my reaction. Guess what??? I was feeling sleepy on the very first day in the very first few hours of my engineering life. That sleep marathon continued in the classes and labs. You know what I even slept in chemistry semester examination. And that marathon didn’t end till now. To my luck the day’s event finished thankfully. And we were told to take a note of class timings from notice board and attend classes from next day onwards. So we were free for that day. “OH GOD NO!!, run back to our hostel rooms, escape ragging” was the call.

In hostel I met some new guys, I would say some hidden rockstars of engineering, whose talent I was unaware of. One of those is Narasim. Then I met Praveen and Prashant. My roommate told me they all were from same town, Kanhangad, which is also my mom’s native. So I was started feeling little homely and also because we all talked in one common language – “Konkani”. About 75-80% of the whole college strength were Konkanies. But still we missed Dali Thoye, very much. We all started going for breakfast, lunch, dinner together. We enjoyed the whole day chit-chatting in the hostel, making new friends and main topic was how the ended up in C.E.C – Canara Engineering College.

A few weeks passed by. Our seniors felt they were really missing something. They wanted desperately to prove themselves. So they started ragging inspite of fear of getting caught. Didn’t actually figure out whether they were frightened of getting caught or they didn’t know how to rag. Ragging was very mild. Daily some 2 to 5 people were ragged. I was no exception. All our hostel blocks, academic blocks, stationary, cafeteria, hostel mess were in the same campus. Ragging took place in 3 major spots in the whole college campus. First in senior boys hostel, second in senior girls hostel and There is a founder’s statue in front of academic block, that was the third spot of ragging. The founder’s statue was black, founder standing tall facing the hostels and main campus entrance gate. Why am I telling these details? Because the questions asked for me during my ragging session are directly proportional to these features.

The Ragging
We friends used to take small walk in the college campus after dinner. And seniors used to catch 2 or 3 people and rag us. I couldn’t escape. One fine evening I was caught. My task was to answer one simple question. “How was the founder’s statue turn into black color?” I tried telling them different answers like they painted it black, he was standing under sunlight for more than a year now, etc, etc. But it was all ignored. They needed one particular answer which I didn’t know. Finally I gave up. They asked me to get the answer from any one of my previously ragged batch-mate who passes by. My seniors where so good that they showed me a student who was ragged previous night and knew the answer. Luckily I had met him earlier and got the answer from him now. God!! I said. The answer was “All the black beauties (dark girls) of our college used to play with the statue everyday.” ( Actual answer is censored ) I thought what a non-sense answer. Whatever… I wanted to escape, so just said it. Now the next task they gave was simpler, I had to walk one round clockwise around the statue. I was feeling something is fishy there. Made up my mind and walked around. To my horror, on the other side of the statue there were sitting 3 to 5 dark gals, now staring at me. I said FML and finished the round. HUH!! A big sigh of relief. After all these drama, seniors introduced themselves and became friends and also promised to help me if there was any issue regarding anything in the college.

The Fresher’s Party
The ragging went on for few weeks. But for me there was a one more small session. One of the senior knew that I danced a bit in my high school and PU college days. So they asked me to show some steps which I did. They asked me and one more guy from our batch to dance at the beginning of the freshers party they were planning. The other guy was Nithin Shenoy – who became my future roommate and one of my close friends. So seniors decided to have fresher’s party. They collected Rs.100 from each of us, took permission from principal after much persuasion and finally arranged a party. Me, Nithin and one more girl performed our solos. Then slowly the party began. This was my first party where the music was played on large speakers and everyone danced their life out of their body. For the first time I got introduced to Trance, Rock, Metal and other genres of music. Until that day I never had heard of Bryam Adam’s, Metallica, and Linkin Park (Now my fav band \m/ ) and so many others. Even I was going crazy over the music and danced to my heart’s content. Next 2 days my neck was in pain due to the head banging we did in the party. Wow!! That was an awesome party.

Internals
Slowly time went by and soon it was first internals. Lecturers told us the rules of passing in semesters. They stressed on one point that 15 is minimum average for each subject you need to get in the internals, so that even if the paper in external is tough and you get just 35 you can sum it up to 50 and pass out. I prepared for the internals, wrote the papers. And to my anxiety my marks were like mobile number digits – 9, 5, 8, 7… I was like WTF!! Some how I studied my second and third internals and got just 15 in 4 the subjects. But Maths-1 and Basic Electricals I had 1 and 3 marks less than the average. Both the lecturers asked me to write down all the 3 internals paper and submit within 2 days. Took help from my friends and completed it. Ah!! Now I had average in all subjects. I was proud of it.

Semester Exams
Sem exams were like boss fights in games. After fighting with all the small enemies now finally to clear the level you need to get rid of the boss. These exams were like that. And the first paper was Maths-1. Dammit!! I hate it even now. Most of us went to our homes in the 15 days study vacation, including me. Passed my time eating, playing games on my PC, sleeping on the study table. But didn’t accomplish anything w.r.t. studies. Instead of studying hard, I hardly studied. 15 days went by and we all returned from our homes. Thought all my friends would have prepared nicely. To my surprise none my friends studied. I said “Wow!! Thats cool”. Somehow we studied and managed to write the exams and completed our First Semester. Happily everyone went home but without books this time, to enjoy a month full of holidays.

Results and Second Sem
Holidays were good. I was getting extra love from parents, more importance, more focus as hostel life was first time for me. Everyone of my relatives enquired how I felt the hostel life. Actually some of them started taunting me saying that “if I had studied properly and got good marks, I wouldn’t have got into this hostel thing”. I used repeat the same thing in my heart but with little change – “If I had studied properly, I wouldn’t have been able to experience this fun-filled life” Time passed by and the second sem began eventually. Nothing much was happening around for first 3 weeks. Me and my roommate got into some misunderstanding and he opted for a single room. I was left alone. This was just like a bullet shot. But wait, the real missile comes here – The Results. I was on my toes to see my results. There were all of us pounding on one another. I got my chance quickly. Saw my results… I totally collapsed. I was feeling like someone had hit me on my head with an extra large hammer. I had got just 54% – the first time I am scoring a second class – BANG!!!! . But that was not all. I had cleared 2 subjects with just 35 marks – the first time I scored so low in any subject – BANNGGG!!!!. Wait a sec, the final result is not PASS instead it reads FAIL!!! BAAAAANNNNNNNGGGGGGG!!!! For the first time I had a backlog in my life. And that was Maths-1 FML!!

Life in Depression
For nearly 24 hours, I didn’t come out of my room. I was sleeping in depression, various thoughts wandering in my mind, don’t know what to do next. Main thing is how to tell my parents. After hearing my friends’ results the next day I was feeling little better as most of them had flunked in Maths-1. Yipee!! So gathering all the courage I called up my parents told them. They got hurt very much. But still my Dad took my side, strongly supported me, told me put for re-evaluation, if not write it the second time. Hearing that I promised myself one thing that day, whatever might be the case I am going to clear this paper and in my engineering I would never ever flunk.

One advantage of this result was my relatives stopped telling me how to study which branch to look for a change, blah, blah, blah. All their advise and suggestions were puffed in smoke. PUFF…

Rays of Hope
Things went on that semester my internal marks were good. I was happy, parents got little hope, even though they were prepared for the worst I guess. Then came the college day, I performed 1 solo and 1 contemporary group dance. As any other boy in engineering even I had a few crushes, not serious though. The serious one is yet to come in the story ;P And that was a hope.

In the steps of Topper
By the end of 3rd internals I had average of nearly 18-20 in every subject except Maths-2. Study vacations arrived and then we all went to our homes. This time I had only two subjects in my mind Maths-1 and Maths-2. And I had only 10 marks in Maths-2 internals, that means I need to get 40 in externals. Here comes one more character in the story – the first sem topper. I hardly new him in person, but from my friends, I heard that he is a highly focussed and intensely concentrated student. Heard that he used to PERFECTLY REVISE (P>S: Studying is different; revising is done after studying); he used to revise each and every subject 4 times before sem exams. 1st time during internals, twice during study vacation, 4th time before sem exams. God!! How does he get time when we find it difficult even to list out the chapters in each subject. We hardly get any time to study. So in vacations I used to think about his studying pattern and learn maths, mostly by-heart maths . Thats all I was capable of.

So all set ready for the exams I had Maths-2 on monday morning and Maths-1 on tuesday morning. I did night-outs for both the subjects. On tuesday noon, after two sleepless nights and 2 maths paper back to back, I was feeling really tired. I had my lunch, came to room and slept for next 18-19 hours at a stretch. Sleeping is the one thing I do properly in my life until now. Next day I woke up found out that next exam was chemistry. Grrrr. One thing was sure, In this sem either I will flunk badly in 2-3 subjects or I will clear all. Just dropped all those thoughts and just strategized on what to study and how to write stories in theory papers. I had decided that I am going to concentrate and study sincerely only the programming and computer related subjects rather than wasting time on subjects useless to my specialization.

Sleeping in Examination Hall
So one more sleepless night just to get passing marks in chemistry exam. I was scared of all the chemical equations in it. I knew only one equation: 2H + 0 = H20 which I learnt somewhere in high school. Knowing only one equation in mind, I made myself clear that whatever is the question I am gonna write pages of theory answers. I went to the exam hall. Question paper was given, went through all the questions. Ah!! Felt happy, knew something. Then started writing the answers. Somewhere after 31 pages of story writing slowly from my right side the examiner came and started tapping on my shoulders. I was like shrugging him off but that fellow tapped again and again. At that moment I realized, freaking, I was !#@%$%!SLEEPING!#@%$%! in semester examination hall and that poor fellow was waking me up. Holy crap!!! I didn’t know what to say to him, either “Sorry” for sleeping or “Thank you” for waking me up. I just requested him for water, drank it and felt little awake. And now to my horror I realized that I didn’t write 31 pages instead I found that I had written only 3 pages and that constitutes of just 1 full and 1 half answer. And I had only 1 hour 30 mins more to complete my remaining 80 marks answers. God!! that was an unforgettable experience. Somehow completed the paper writing all stories and came out. I prayed to God to pass me in the subject and save the person who evaluates my paper, because my handwriting was like amoeba. Even I was not able to read what I had written.

Eventually completed rest of the exams. Nothing special happened in the remaining exams, atleast didn’t sleep while writing exams. So skipping it. And now the vacations. This vacation was a little special because I was missing someone I felt special or I made myself believe that she is special. Ok will tell this story in the next post containing my second and third year. Nothing great achieved in those two years. But some minor changes in life.

Wow!! This post is looking similar to my chemistry answer paper , so long, only difference is I didn’t bluff here and most important I didn’t sleep while writing this post

Comments and feedbacks are welcome C ya soooon………………

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