Placement Diaries

I am still not placed after two weeks and it is a real bummer. Eye-opener of sorts. I can't say that there is a silver lining here but I am forced to think in retrospect. What went wrong, what and where I lacked.

The thing is placements are too random to pass a judgement on yourself. But I can't hide from the fact that the guys, who I was certain will get offers within the first three days, got it. So again not that random to not admit that something in me was at fault too.

To begin with, I lacked confidence all through the session. All through the interviews, I felt like I was scratching a lottery ticket hoping luck turns my way. As fucked up as it is, I was hoping for them to commit a mistake of hiring me. That's what I thought about my job offer, a mistake on their part.

Really crazy how those minor psychological flaws manifest in the interviews. Afraid of being wrong, taking the easy route, not challenging yourself, things of that sort.

As under confident as I was, there were other feelings that took away the spotlight from the better part of me. Like the fear of not getting placed for the past year. I only worried and felt like that I don't have it in me that companies would value. That's the worst part of it, you know. Setting value for yourself too low to distance yourself away from race, that you were set to run. One might trick oneself into believing that setting humble goals will serve as baby steps but essentially it is just escaping from the realities. IITs have brutal competition and you thrive only by throwing yourself into the crowd. It's kind of like how you move in a mob. You just get in the middle of procession and the crowd moves you forward. It is uncomfortable, sure, but it gets you where all go, which is what you want to.

I see now, little clearly, that how I value my time, capabilities, skills are reflected in my conversation and my dialogue and it isn't hard for interviewers to pick those signs up. And they should too. A company cannot benefit from people who don't believe themselves and value themselves.

I can't just whine and rant endlessly over the randomness of the placements. 

I gotta say though, this placement gifted me with the confidence that was missing for quite a while. Like Neo from The Matrix

 I am beginning to believe in myself.

I was lost and when you are lost even the most natural phenomenon haunt you. The rustling of leaves, the gushing of water, the animals' sounds, that might be cheerful normally haunt you in the dark night. That's how I felt about every human activity. Every accomplishment intimidated me. 

My theory is that this placement exposed my greatest fear. It stripped me of the only shroud I so desperately wanted to cover myself with. Now that it is all out I have nothing to hide. Nothing to prove to anybody. 

It might just be the best thing to come out of this failure.

So I am at a junction where I have no option but to be confident. I see no alternative than to believe in my capabilities and skills. 

Life at IITRoorkee-Part 2

Almost two years back I wrote a rant about life at IITR. I accidentally stumbled upon it a few days ago and I couldn't believe I wrote it. In my defence, I was going through a mid-IIT crisis(A term I like to throw around as an explanation to the sudden unleashing of the beast as observed in most students somewhere around the end of the second year). So I decided to write a new post and here we are.

I came into this college as an arrogant prick and I will be leaving as an a humble, down to earth marginally unconfident piece of shit.

I don't know whether this is a good transformation or a bad one(that stands testimony to my unconfident part) and I will see to that. 

What I will say though is that the fundamental change that I went through, irrespective of when and how has been a great process to witness. How I learned to not just identify other people's talents but acknowledge and be inspired by it. Before that, I was so self-absorbed that I didn't bother to look it, not so much disregard it.

But even more amazing, being the first person witness is how it all went down. How in my first year I tried to protect myself from what I mistook as unnecessary noise and how in the second year it somehow found its way into my brain and shattered my beliefs, my biases and essentially left my whole personality hollow. That's the toughest part in my opinion. I could have easily given up, and I tried, but the dominating environment that encompasses the campus didn't let me succeed. So I had to feel the pain of seeing the truth. Seeing the world as it is. Acceptance of truth is the final stage but seeing the truth requires a lot of gives and little takes that makes it such a hard tradeoff. Needless to say that by the end of the second year I had succumbed to the pressures and in a pressure to adjust taken to some bad habits, the details of which I shall spare you. It was a miserable year for me and it becomes clear when you read this blog I wrote at that time.

By the third year, I had come to see, not accept, the reality as it is-Unbiased, non-judgemental. It opened my brain to new challenges new puzzles that it had never been exposed to. So the mental workout that followed all through my third year of college life left me exhausted but I learned many lessons along the way. That confident, out of touch with reality self was replaced by deeply thoughtful, sceptic and unconfident self. Looking at that state from outside one would have easily said that's not growth but a downgrade. But as I looked at it my earlier confidence was not stemming from my conscious assessment of my capabilities and shortcomings but just straightforward cockiness the types of which most people have dealt with in their lives. 

So in a way, it was a relearning process and it was necessary to unlearn first.

I will branch off from topic here and add that at the same time internships were going on and as I was back then it was hard for me to give my best. I was in an unfinished state at that time and needless to say they didn't go very well. Although I landed in one Japanese company, corona took away that opportunity. So eventually I ended up doing an OK-internship. 

So with corona's unexpected entry, there was a minor pause in my campus life. But amazingly the flow that had been acquired somehow kept me growing even as I was sitting at home doing nothing.

It is almost the end of the first semester of the fourth year as I am writing this and I am beginning to accept the reality. I have chosen to readjust my beliefs that are coherent with universal truths, the mathematical facts if you say. I can't say I am finished work. But I am close to building the foundations that will guide me through.

This couldn't have arrived any sooner. The placements are going on. Not that bagging a lucrative offer is somehow a testimony of who I am as a person, but since I an relieved of the intensive work my brain was doing, I can now focus on preparing for placements. 

Zombies In R-land

What can I say, Rajiv Bhawan has to be the most notorious hostel to exist in the IIT Roorkee campus. Now I am not a fan of ghost stories but you don't always experience things that land right in your comfort zone. Some are beyond normal, if not haunting.
I spent my first year of college in Rajendra Bhawan right next to it. I used to see this half-brutalist piece of infrastructure every time I came back from LHC. Every time I resisted the temptation to go inside. But after summers of 2018, I was shifted to this hostel. I didn't feel anything different. On the contrary, it was a pleasant experience. Who knew what this hideous place had in store for the likes of me for the rest of stay.
It was mid-January of 2019. I was in my room when I heard a loud noise outside. It was a human cry. Now you don't get alarmed by these things in hostels. You think it might be another episode of someone freaking out after having had too much shit to take in a day. But that noise was edging on the upper limit of audible range. I came out of my room to see who did that and more importantly what made him do it. A sophomore year is a least busy year and you always have time to hear college life rants. So you never miss an opportunity to hear these rants. 

I came out of my room, looked around and noticed that the wall standing opposite to my door was painted red. Now you always find something written on corridor walls in hostels. Hell, you rarely find a clean wall. A swear word, an edgy movie dialogue but mostly the cave drawings of pre-human fantasies about women flash everwhere. In a place where no one can stop you these walls serve as an excellent outlet for creativity and frustration.

But this was different. It was written in red. And not the colour as much as the words were scary. And the font bore a heavy resemblance with those of the Harry Potter movie posters. And it was the mysterious shriek that added to the fear.

Now the corridors here are never properly lit. You might blame the administration but that would be unfair. The students, mind you, break the tube lights as fast as they are replaced.  As if they have taken a vow to break them or something.
So the only way I was able to read the wall was because of the light leaking out from my room.
That was when I noticed. A figure. The closest thing to a zombie you will ever see in real life. It leaned forward not sideways, head bent, hands cutting through the air like he was practising slow-mo karate.
What do you do when you see a zombie in a hostel. Yeah, you guessed it. You do nothing. It's not an everyday thing. There are no safety instructions there.  So I just quickly entered my room, shut the door and waited for footsteps to fade away. They did fade, alright. I stood in my room shaking with fear and thrill. 
For next night and indefinitely after I saw experienced similar episodes every now and then. Little variations. The words changed. Their colour did too. Even the face and silhouettes. So there were many. But who were they? Where did they hide during the day? And most importantly how come no one else sees them.
Now when they pass and I stand at the door. They don't notice me. They just go on. And then another one passes, on and on and on. In the morning the chain stops. The light breaks into the corridors and I see humans all ready coming out of their rooms for breakfast and class.

But quite interesting that every experience ends with me finding the butt of the joint on my flooring the morning. Quite interesting that only I notice these zombies of IITR.

My fear borders on curiosity now. What I wouldn't give to sit with one such zombie one day and ask him everything I want to know? Or do I already know them?

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