My Life at iiitb Part 3

Continued from....... My Life at iiitb Part 2

21st July 2008, 9 AM. Officially, this was the first class in my Masters. I missed it as I got admissions only after the class. Anyhow, I was happy that I am in the institute, and I don’t have to return and wonder what to do now.

Its 11am. Discrete mathematics preparatory course, as always, I took a back bench. I was in the impression that the courses would be taught by professors, the lectures will be interesting, and not like they were in BE. The lectures in those days, were just a matter of attendance, and were also strictly optional. Here the scenario was very different, you don’t attend the classes, and as a result, management won't allow you to write the exams.

Prof. Srinath comes to class, and starts the class with the classic problem. What is one? How do you define it? Yeah, I remember the problem, but there is no solution for it. One is just an abstract number. The class was good, and interesting too; very much to my expectations of a good institute. Now lunch, and then comes the disappointment, introduction of video lectures by Prof. Rajaraman in the course of AIDS. Oops, I spelled it wrong, its ADIS. All the courses were of 2hr daily lectures, for 3 continuous weeks, with only 1 day weekend, and packed with almost every alternate day scheduled for test.

The night was fresher’s introduction; I missed out all fun (I was not in campus that night too :( ). Everybody told that it was fun, and it was pretty evident from the photos that it was actually fun.

The next day, I was travelling again, this time to Koramangala, to get my laptop. Easy friends, I didn’t miss any classes that day. It was really very hectic travelling on Hosur Road, especially in the evening on a weekday, though we all are so used to it now that it doesn't really matter to us.

The first test was scheduled for Thursday. And believe me, the test was the second most unpredictable thing. A. Being a theory subject, no one had done much of book reading, and b. The test was all multiple choice questions. Welcome to iiitb, our TAs said to us. And, then we had a test every other day, even late night programming tests. There are a lot to say, but I would like to cut short it by only saying that those were the busiest days of my life. I had never thought so much about studies. Plagiarism, Segmentation Faults, nightmarish ADIS test preparation, also the C test preparation, KSMs, there is a lot to talk, but if I go on writing all, it will be like 3-4 parts of the same section, and hence I’ll stop this by just giving you memories of all. The pre-semester ended on 9^th August 2008, leaving us with 1 full day, to go and enjoy the weekend. The 1^st semester was to start on 11^th August. I’ll update the next part – the one describing the adventures of 1^st semester – one with Algorithms, and Object Oriented Design, with Java, not to forget PDS, and DevSquare Assignments, most likely by tomorrow morning.