PART TWO OF THREE
Journey Through College: The Life
About living alone, finding something I loved so that work no longer felt like work, and about self-doubt — in a position of responsibility — as I rushed through my life in undergraduate college
During my last ten days of undergraduate college at NITK Surathkal, I wrote about ten of my most treasured memories, lessons and musings, one day at a time. This was shared in a private medium, which I later archived.
About 1.5 years later, I decided to make them public, and shared them on Medium split into three parts.
In part one, I spoke about the place itself — symbols that meant something special to me.
Below is part two — talking about my experiences as I learnt to live alone, found work that I loved to do and what holding a position of responsibility was like for me.
7. My Room
In the summer of 2016, as I stepped into my third year of engineering, I was allotted a single occupancy room in one of the Mega Towers (a hostel block within campus). It was the first ever room I had that belonged entirely to me, and what a rage that was for me back then!
I carried out many experiments in my room during my stay here. On the first day itself, I decided to move the bed out of my room. I wanted to make more room (hehe puns) inside my own room. I slept on the floor for almost two years on a thin mat. I wanted my body to get used to lesser comforts, and it worked wonderfully, so much so that now I prefer a mat over a soft bed for a refreshing nap anyday! There were days when electronic components and tools were strewn all over the floor as I worked on some of my projects, and days when I would wipe my floor so clean that I could see my own reflection. Once, I decided to pull out wires from the switchboard and connect it to an simple circuit I built along with a Raspberry Pi. Result? I could now lie on my mat and turn off the light by a tapping a button on my phone screen. Effort saved? No need to get up and switch the light off. Experience? Priceless.
By the end of 2017, I had moved out my table and bought a small laptop table, about 1–1.5 feet tall. In 2018, I converted a cardboard box it into a mini-bookshelf. I hacked furniture out of boxes, bottles, wires. This was my first ever room, I tried to do every possible experiment to determine how my surrounding affected my thoughts, my mental state. I believe that the place you live and sleep in has a significant effect on you, as this is the first thing that you see in the morning, this is what you see before you sleep. There’s a lot I have learnt here, and I will employ some of it when I live alone, soon, as I move to a new city to be by myself.
6. My Work
I will soon have a B.Tech. degree in Information Technology. Clearly, this involves writing code and thus a significant portion of my time here was spent on working with code.
In my first year, I discovered that ‘computer’ and ‘programming’ need not be collocated at all times, as I learnt that I could write programs for little micro-controllers that did NOT resemble a regular computer at all. I also discovered that programming need not be just printing text on screen, as I had started blinking LEDs and moving motors and building simple robots by then. It was very fascinating, to see the result of your work in front of your eyes. My imagination w.r.t. the use cases of this knew no bounds.
In second year, we were taught socket programming. I was told to write a little program that sent a string from my computer to another over the local network. To my astonishment, it worked! I tried it over WiFi, and it worked again! It was magic to me. I was so excited back then, I went on to build a small application to transfer large files over the local network between me and my friends in hostels that were over hundreds of metres apart.
I went on to work with multiple devices communicating over the network in different ways, and this was a part of my final project. Back then, I would be asked what the excitement was all about — well of course it worked, it has to! Yes, true. I had done my homework before I wrote the programs, I knew the theory, I knew the answers to all the ‘how’s and ‘why’s already. Yet, it did not fail to fascinate me. It was just like, while knowing all about rainbows, we would still tend to stop and glance at it’s beauty, wouldn’t we?
I think as a society, we have grown very hard to impress. I don’t think this is bad, this is what will make us push for more. Yet, I think we need to learn to sometimes stop and appreciate the things that seem little, like the socket program. When you think about all the intricacies and difficulties that were overcome while designing these little things, you would learn to appreciate them. For me, this fascination about how wonderfully it all works together drove me to explore, do more. I didn’t have to compromise on sophistication to love these little details. I enjoyed it all. And are we not at our best, when we are enjoying what we do?
5. The Tronix Committee
NITK Surathkal conducts a student-organized technical festival every winter, which has a supremely creative name — ‘Engineer’. All events and shows that take place during this festival are organised by some designated committees. One such committee is the Tronix Committee.
The Tronix Committee conducts various events, and also puts up some lovely exhibits here and there. The idea is to provide a platform to participants to showcase their creativity and skills in building robots and solving problems, and also to give a regular student a taste of how beautiful and fun electronics can be, via the exhibits.
I joined Tronix in my second year, when I had just dirtied my hands with electronics. I was given the task of completely designing and implementing a solution for a difficult problem (for a beginner) by my seniors, all by myself. They provided me resources, helped me when I was stuck, but told me that they haven’t solved it themselves yet. I remember working days and nights on end, trying to figure out domains I had just touched upon, to solve a problem which seemed so simple yet the solution complex. It soon became a prestige issue. I HAD to solve this. I did great progress, but failed. What a disgrace this would be to the committee, I thought, but the committee did not fail. It turned out that the same people who gave me the problem had also solved it even before it was given to me. With all credit to my brilliant seniors, I learnt a few things: One, I work most efficiently when I have a difficult problem to solve. Two, to make someone work efficiently, I should try giving them a difficult problem to solve.
My next year with Tronix came with additional responsibilities: guiding juniors, more projects and work, conducting workshop sessions, administrative tasks, and so on. My growth was rapid. Soon, I had learnt every little detail about the committee, and working with the same seniors I mentioned earlier gave me immense exposure and perspective. Consequently, for my final year, I was given the responsibility of leading the committee that I, by then, had fallen in love with.
As the head, I experimented a lot. Many worked well, some okay. I learnt, it is hard, to lead. One tends to blame themselves for every single failure, for all that did not go right. Maybe this should have been done instead. Maybe that. It could have been better? But am I not responsible for all? Should I micro-manage, should I rather not? I spent nights in a row working, without sleep. Work was the highest supreme. Am I doing it right? I ended up with more questions than I got answers. It always kept me on my toes, thinking, learning.
Looking back, I see a better leader in me than I ever was. Maybe it was the questions. Maybe, the hunt for answers will reward you with knowledge. Maybe the reward would sometimes be more questions, with more difficult answers. I guess, it will always be in the best interest to have a deficit of answers, and to never stop the quest to find them?
I questioned so much, at NITK.
Part One:
Part Three:
If you’d like to share your views, maybe have an off-shooting conversation from here, feel free to message me on Instagram — where I had originally posted this series. You can find me using the handle @hexbioc at just about any online platform I use.
