its been due for few days now. Finally got some time to write this.
My first year in Nitt was nothing less then a rajnikant movie, second year proved to be even more challenging to me. From the day when i entered Nitt my only aim was to make sure that every soul in NITT knows me by name, I dont know whether it was good or bad, but i wanted to be like that.
I had gone for trip to badrinath and kedarnath so i joined college a week late. I started my second year with very high hopes. I had opted for chemical engineering perhaps thinking that, it will be more practical then Mechanical and Instrumentation Engineering. Only now did i realise that chemical was a very boring course and to make things worse we dint get the best of facultites in Nitt to teach us. :( My frustration with chemical engineering led me to quit as the class rep. I wanted to be as away as possible from the dept :(
But this opened up a new challenge for me. I wanted to do something different in college. I dint want to end up being yet another studnet passing out of Nitt!! Thanks to the boring chemical engineering my focus shifted to extra curricular activities in my college.
I had worked for Nittfest '07 ( intra collegiete cultural festival of NITT) in my first year. I had befriended many seniors in that process. The likes of Anand, Kaushik, JK, Patwa etc were role models to me. They were the perfectionist in my college. These were the people because of which Nitt life was not boring. I enjoyed their company and made sure that i spent as much time with them as possible.
Also before i forget, i would also like to mention about my days in Diamond hostel. I was staying in room number 50!! second floor in diamond. For everyone who stayed in diamond second floor, i am sure it would have been the best years of their collge life. For me, it was a big difference. My close group of friends, abhi, shyam, pam, ram, kums, dawals. sura, venky, puna, sab etc all lived in second floor (pls note that there were only 5 rooms in second floor and three huge balconies!!). This is where my group formed. I will forever be indebted to diamond!!
It was a year of learning different things for me. I had quit studies. Thanks to likes of rachit and sab, i would pass in my exams. My focus shifted to organizing fests in college. Together our group become THE organizing in our batch. My second year was probably the second fasted year in my life( fasted being my final year).
Festember 08 was a sort of eye opener for me. Till then i really dint understand the amount of effort that goes behind organizing a fest. That too in a government college like Nitt where the faculties are against anything new. There were so many teams, subteams etc. There were so many meeting happening in differnt places of the campus. No one person can keep track of whats happening. With a budget that runs into few millions, this was an event of very high standerds!! I am sure Just understanding how fests like festember, pragyan etc work will surely make any big organization learn a lesson or two about management!!
It was time for me to dream big. I consulted many seniors, many friends, faculties i knew etc and finally i stood for the election for the post of VP of students union of NITT. My good friends helped me make an election agenda, we printed posters, spoke to different people etc. All this was new to me. But i liked it. I along with my friends went door to door, spoke to all the people in my batch. We dint know many ppl's names, but we would speak to them as thou we were friends for years!!
I would both like to thank and apologies to my organizing team friends. Thou we worked as a group, all the time there was any work the senior would call me. If he wanted to thank us, he would call me. I would try my best to make sure that the credit goes to the right guy but many a time it never would. But my friends never complained!! I dont know why, i felt bad many a times but these things were unavoidable!! again sorry abhi shyam dawals pam kums venky and co!!
Soon the day of election came. We were desperate. we dint want only to win, we wanted to win by a big margin!! the election started at 5 in the evening. I would like to pay tribute to my friends here, you knw why. here is the reason. The election was held in SJB. A good 200-300mts from both beryl and jade. There were many lazy people who dint wantt come for voting. My frinds would go room by room, cycle them to the election arena and drop them back!!!! ya, people these people did this!! There was no compulsion for them to do this. I did not ask them to do it, but they DID!!!
The election got over and it was the time of counting. I had won!! it was a movement of joy for all of us. Abhi and shyam were in pragyan marketing interview then!! pam dawals were waiting for me outside SJB. they were the first people i talked to!!
This is where it all begins!!
I will be back with my blog about my third and fourth year in the very near future.
Sorry i couldn't include pics.
I agree with you that the diamond year was the most significant year for us in terms of team building. And like someone correctly pointed out, almost 100% of the second floor inhabitants ended up post bearers in final years (of fest/clubs/symposiums...) And the day when you became VP and abhi n i got into marketing team, that was a turning point too...
ReplyDeleteas I m reading this second yr section, the first drop of water falls down my eyes after a gap of atleast a decade (not even it did when i was leaving coll/my friends, when I departed for US - dont ask why).... wat an year it was? diamond second floor, till then known only as "The drug-hub" revolutionized in our year, thanks to Chidanand (Sappa), gen-sec, for allotting all of us rooms together there. And, Science, why would v complain? For us, if it hadnt been u, we wouldnt ve even come this far.... (I hope most of our ll ppl agree to this). From July 24th, 2007 - the first meeting with u when I joined in 'I' section, till date, we ve always been like that and ll be in the future
ReplyDelete