The first weeks...

Well, the first few days at college were entertaining.

I reached my hostel (or the home where I’m staying) on Sunday, the 21^st of August. Almost everybody was present there. I’ll give a brief introduction of my hostel mates. There are 9 students in my hostel. Actually there were 10 students, but Abhilash (from Trivandrum) left for CET on the 2^nd day! My hostel mates are Manu (from Kottayam), George (from TVM), Arun (from Thrissur), Abhay (from Thirunnavaaya), Sunju (from Thrissur), Jeswin (from Chalakkudy), Arjun (from Edappal) and Jovin (from Kozhanchery). Kiran (from Thrissur) is yet to come.

Of these, me, Sunju, Abhay and Arun have studied together and we together chose the hostel. The hostel is about a kilometer from my college and is located in a pleasant and silent colony of houses. This gave me the feeling of being at home and as a result, I did not feel any home-sickness. The most serious among my mates is Manu and the wittiest of them is George (comment if you have second thoughts).

Day 1:

Our class started on the 21^st. It was an orientation day. The senior students from 8^th semester explained to us about college life and how it is different from the school life that I have been accustomed. The most striking difference was the degree of freedom. In college you get a lot of free hours which can be used for either for languishing or some serious assignment. They discussed the matters in an open forum where the freshers and the parents could ask questions about any topic. The seniors encouraged the students and parents to ask questions. But only a few students asked questions as they were afraid of standing up in crowds (this group included me also!). The reason is that those who dare to stand up during the first few days will be victims of ragging by seniors!

There is a placement cell in our college and it is one of a kind. The members of this cell take part in training students from first year onwards to be fluent in communicating and developing skills. I’m not very much impressed by that. I hope to do an M.Tech or MS before taking up a job. I don’t know what I’ll think in future, but for the time being, I hate placement. They explained about how the college was different from the usual colleges. Model College is entirely maintained by the activities of students. Students take the leadership in organizing or conducting a fest or an event.

I liked the college. But I’ve not given up the ambition to study in NIT or IIT. So I’ve started preparing again for it from today onwards. I divided the previous syllabus into modules and began to study the modules. I intend to get at least past the screening test in IIT and in the top 1000 in AIEEE. Getting in top 1000 ensures a seat in NIT Calicut for Electronics and Communications Engineering. At the most extreme case where EC slips out of my hands, I’ll go for Mechanical Engineering at NIT. Those events will come later!

Day 2:

First day of real class. The first hour was Physics. Took Ray optics and explained the cause for the light of thin films. The class was highly entertaining and interesting. The derivation involved was world class and aroused my imagination. The class was of 2 hours. I acquainted with some of my class mates of whom one was from the Men’s hostel of the college. He told us about the rules of seniors. These rules are just part of ragging! They have asked him not to wear watches, belts or shoes. So as soon as I reached college, I took them off and kept them in my bag. I, Sunju, Jeswin and Manu were the first ones to be ragged. The seniors asked us not to wear watches and belts! Sunju and Jeswin were asked to shave off their moustache.

No classes were taken on that day and we were allowed to go home on noon. At noon, Arun was called on his mobile phone by seniors and was teased heavily. He was dumb struck! We visited Marine Drive at Ernakulam on that afternoon. The header included with this post was taken from Marine Drive, “the Rainbow walkway”. We spent some time there, ate an ice cream and returned home by 7.00 O’ clock in the night.

We spent the night playing ‘Uno’, an American card game. George is a great fan of the game and he brought it. We usually sleep by 12.00 or even 12.30. The playing goes well into the midnight!

Day 3:

Apart from Mathematics and basic Civil Engineering (which I strongly consider to be a waste of time, nothing was taken). Mathematics is divided into 2 parts for our convenience of study. The 2^nd part of mathematics started of with infinite series, test for convergence and divergence etc. I liked the topic and am presently head over heels over it! Civil Engineering started of with different types of Cement and other blah blah. My hostel mates unanimously voted against the subject. But in order to qualify the course, we are to study the topic.

I’m trying hard to study it, but still no luck. The subject is like Geography, never gets the mood to study it! And then it happened. SFI had hailed a nation wide strike on protest against the verdict of Supreme Court in favor of Private Self-Financing Colleges. So SFI had decided to visit colleges and ask the students to get out. In truth, SFI saved us from the hassle of studying Civil Engineering for that day!

We reached hostel and lo, Arjun and Arun were not there. About 2 hours later, they returned from college. They had been victims of ragging by seniors of the college. Ragging in our college means serious teasing, no physical contact or mental harassing. That is sort of nice, isn’t it? Ok, Arjun and Arun were teased heavily and as a result, they are now in company with the seniors. They were the first ones to get second hand books from seniors.

Day 4:

We were excited on the prospect of going home that afternoon, but sadly it was depressed heavily, due to 2 hours of Civil Engineering. Mathematics 1 was also taken. Just Rolle’s Theorem and LaGrange’s theorem which I am more than familiar! Our classes were let off at noon. We started from there at about 2.00 pm and reached here at about 5.00 pm.

That’s all for the first week at MEC. I have to be familiar with the Computer labs to post from there. This may take a while! By the way, all staff members are supporters of open source software and even Richard Stallman has visited our college. As a result of which almost all the computers run on Linux. There is also Windows XP (my preferred OS) and Solaris OS from Sun Microsystems.