Season's Greetings and the Year's Review

A Happy Diwali and Id and a Prosperous New Year to all.

The last year has been one of the more interesting ones of my life. The last New Year was around November 15, I think, and I was all set to give the CAT (Nov. 21) and completely unprepared for my engineering semester 7 exams (Nov. 18 - 30). I cracked one and messed the other. Christmas brought happy tidings of interview calls from the IIMs. I gave more exams and got more calls. Had a great time in two outstation trips - one to Ahmedabad in February, where I did not enjoy the bricks and concrete in the IIM-A campus; the other to Calcutta in March, where I enjoyed the trams, the Metro, the bridges across the Hoogly and the Victoria Memorial, and also enjoyed my visit to IIM-C and its lake-studded campus.

In April, after a rather alarming number of rejects and waitlists, IIMA (WIMWI as I was to call her soon) admitted me. I also learnt where many of my friends would head to in the US. After the last round of exams in electronics in May and June (I was rather worried that I would fail the exams and would be thrown out of IIMA after results were declared), I enjoyed a short 15 day vacation bidding farewell to friends and family.

Headed for Ahmedabad on June 22. Soon got into the habit of sleeping at 3 and getting up at 8 (in fact I think I used to get up at 7:30 in the first month). Also got into the habit of reading regularly before class, a drastic change from my earlier practice of buying the textbook 12-16 hours before the midterm. Made some friends.

In July, I learnt that I had passed engineering (with rather flattering marks at that), and would after all be allowed to stay in WIMWI. By then I had also fallen in love with the bricks in WIMWI, though the concrete in the new campus still does not make the cut.

Enjoyed a week of intense work, competition and happiness during T-Nite in August. Learnt much about my classmates and made more friends.

A terrible dengue (or whatever that illness was) 'epidemic' struck down Section D particularly hard. Going to SAL Hospital and watching my friends in misery is something I hope to never have to do again.

Term 1 ended, and I was through what is often described as one of the most demanding periods of one's life, though I found engineering (especially subjects like Digital Signal Processing) far more unwieldy. Still, the 40+ quizzes were memorable!

A short vacation in Bombay ended with a rather close call while catching the train to WIMWI. But we (Chhedi was with me) managed to make it in time, and of course, since we made it in time, the train had to be half an hour late! The next day, it was time for term 2 to begin.

New subjects, new professors...some great, some good, some not-so-good. In any case, studies were being pushed to the periphery. Chatting on LKP (our beautiful lawn opposite the library) or in CT (our canteen) and DBabbing became more common pursuits. I upped my sleeping hours to 6-7 a day, and cut my studying to 1-2/3 classes a day.

And thus endeth the year - a rather great year. Hope that this year is even better, and I am pretty confident that it will be.