First the negatives:
1. It has made me maajorly geela. The culture at IITM and the sex ratio meant that I had little interaction with the fairer (???) sex for four long years. After this I had a little difficulty in adjusting back to having normal healthy relationships with girls. Took me almost a month of IIMB to become normal.
2. It shattered my confidence, like it is supposed to do to every other IITian, but in my case it failed to rebuild it back. Though I had a pretty good background, people used to downplay it majorly and tried to make me feel like a useless piece of shit as I didn’t have good enough grades in IIT. Still struggling to get back my confidence.
3. Pushed me down quite a few notches in the pseud value scale. Funda is I made the mistake of trying to conform. Of trying to do what everyone else was doing. Again finding it difficult to get back to my old (pre-IIT) level of pseud… which I think is essential for a i-banking job.
4. Killed the fire in my belly. Branded me as too arrogant. Again my mistake of trying to conform and I changed my personality to one which I started hating. Became a conformist rather than the rebel I was in school. Mellowed down so much that it further pushed down my already ruined confidence.
Can’t remember anything else as of now…
By now you must be feeling IIT must be the worst place on earth if it can do this kind of stuff to someone like me… However, it HAS had a lot of positive impact on my life. Notably:
1. The brand: I have attached to me what I believe is India’s best internationally recognized brand – IITian.
2. The people: I got the opportunity to interact with some of India’s best scientific and engineering minds. I am proud to have known friends such as these and I am sure that one day when they make it big in life, I can have the satisfaction of being their good friend.
3. The living conditions: I became ‘tough’. Living with little or no water, lousy food, no electricity supply when temperatures crossed 40 and humidity was always over 90%. Whichever lousy place I am posted to henceforth, I can say something like “been there done that (or something similar to that)”.
4. Independence: 4 years of hostel life 360 km away from home has really gone a long way in making me independent and aware about the practicalities of life.
5. Acads: Some profs/courses WERE pretty good, though such kinds are in a minority. Nevertheless a lot of the stuff I learnt there finds a lot of application in everything I do, even in some mundane matters of life.
6. Nothing better: Despite all the shortcomings, I can’t think of any other undergraduate degree in India which comes close to BTech Computer Science from an IIT.
IITM Rocks… I am proud to be an IITian
🙂