It was 2008, second week of July when the new batch of to be manufactured engineers arrived in VIT, but we had no idea we would actually learn and grow here. Well, not all of us learnt engineering but we all did learn a lot about people, friends and life itself. Perhaps we all can agree that no matter how exhausting and frustrating that IT assignment was in second semester, or how impossible it seemed to learn Math from Vijayaragavan in the first, we did overcome all that. We are not gonna miss our college, but the elements that made it up. Our friends, the areas of the campus and hostels and the times we spent doing what seemed bakchodi then but one of the most memorable and precious parts of our lives now.
During the orientation I was told that my classes would be held at SJT. And it turned out be some task to find it. There were no boards leading to it, nor did anybody I asked for directions knew where it was. There wasn’t even a proper road or footpath back then due to the ongoing construction. The tunnel was just a dream back then for the boys in L block. But curse and yell was all we could do and boy, we did add some new words to our vocabulary!
Then came the labs. I hated the chemistry one, but it was Physics that made me walk out of one of the lab exams with just my name on the paper. And that did teach me a lesson. No matter how badly you screw your CATs (no pun intended) a night’s study before the term-end is all it takes to a C, given that the examiner is not hammered. As for the chemistry lab, I had to take it up twice because of the irrational rule which made it compulsory to do your lab too if you failed theory. Yeah, that reminds me, VIT taught me what failure feels like. Not once or twice, but I got to learn that lesson five fucking times.
We accepted the fact that our batch has been a bunch of guinea pigs since school. We became the first batch of FFCS or which was also known as FCFS till recently when our juniors defied boundaries (literally) by sleeping in academic buildings. But enough about them. According to FFCS we couldn’t register a subject unless we study its prerequisite. And we all know this rules was never broken, neither in the third semester nor in the sixth.
But all that has passed and so have we. What didn’t kill us made us stronger. After living in Vellore, the place with only three seasons, hot, hotter and hottest, we can live anywhere in the world, take in all the tormenting and come out smiling. We don’t need an official CR to lead us, we can and have stepped up for ourselves and one of our teachers would even testify. Engineering was never our priority. No course ever is. We came together to learn to live and co-exist and now it’s gonna be hard to exist without each other, but we’re engineers, there’s no stopping us. Even lord Ram needed one of our types.
So, let’s get those cams out and also ourselves and try reliving those four years because it’s been a wonderful journey. We may have not learnt what engineering was supposed to teach us but we surely have learnt what life did.
