Goodbyes are never easy

Now that I am about to leave KGP, the feeling of loss has started sinking in and I can't help but hold on to every moment that I am left with. I don't feel it was an eternity. I also don't feel that I should have done more justice to my time or that I should have tried to be more extra-academic than I was, of course I had inhibitions but I don't feel any remorse. There were times when I had to adapt to the restrictions imposed by the environment and now I realize there are little constraints left.

Four years in KGP is no small time and it does contribute a lot towards building one's personality. Was it the "four years" that mattered or whether it was simply "IIT", I don't seek to find an answer. When we came to this place, we had expectations. We had a mental picture of what IIT would look like. On top of that, we were now in the midst of a never-before-seen competition. These four years have either made us capitulate or to user-define what is right or good. I feel peaceful now. No haggles of hall tempo, CV, CG, extra-acads. Have I graduated above these mundane interests or is it just a self-justified slumber, I wiggle out of these silly questions.

What did we learn here? What we wanted to learn was what we saw others learning or what we felt the necessity for. What we learned was what we had courage for. It's like we have to have a certain activation energy to accomplish anything in our lives. When we reach it, we excel and achieve. You want to become a good orator. What you become depends on how you fight your inhibitions, take up the challenge and perform. After all you don't want to regret at the end of the day.

Every circumstance results in numerous possibilities. It depends on us how we see it, as an opportunity or an excuse. This choice is what shapes our personality and it is the same personality which helps us in making such choices. In IIT we face a slew of deadlines - those imposed on us by professors, student bodies or our personal obligations. Some of us meet them gracefully and honestly. Some of us copy someone's original work or just delay the job or simply shirk off the responsibility. As a result, we loose our genuineness and originality. Take another example, we all see politics here. We can fight it or embrace it or worse, silently sulk or curse it. Do we need more examples?

I used to think initially that IIT environment is not conducive to thinkers and similar lot. I think it doesn't matter whether I was right. I just recall the old saying - Always set the trail, never follow the path. If we blame our environment, we are also blaming the herd of sheep without blaming our own instinct to fall in line.

I thank this place for somewhere I believe it nicely smoothed the transition from our virtual worlds to the realms of reality. Somewhere I believe it made us stronger and better equipped to face the world. You might disagree because it might be just ignorance that makes me so confident in my words. See ya.