Back to college

College life after the holidays has not been too good. As expected my life after the winter break has been difficult. Quite a number of factors have contributed to this, in fact everything has been dull and gloomy since my very first step in Chandigarh. As soon as I got out of the train at 8:20 in the evening the cold weather of Chandigarh welcomed me. Chandigarh in winters has always been chilly. And it was the first time I was facing it. The ride from the station to the hostel in an auto-rickshaw was a blood-freezing one. The first week was full of anxiety and tension, specially because the Ist Semester results were declared. Maths was really bad and the rest, except Solid Mechanics (which I have not received yet), was pretty good.

I received another blow when I met Rishabh Dara. He is a nice soft-spoken guy with long hair and a cool look who likes to instruct people (atleast me). He is one of those kind who either perpetually chews gum or smiles or does both simultaneously. Dara (this is how I refer him) is the co-ordinator of Technical Commitee (and a IIIrd yr Student of Telecom And Information Technlogy). In our very first meeting after the holidays he bombarded me with tonnes of work. That was expected. He wanted us to stay behind during the winter break. And I on the other hand spent my winter break in Delhi and on top of that I also bunked the whole first week. These days our committee is under a lot of work-load, esp because our college fest Goonj is coming up. Also it is organising a symposium on the latest trends in communication and computing. I was given 3 tasks. Firstly to make a notice on CSI membership. CSI is not Crime Scene Investigation. It is the Computer Society Of India. Secondly to make announcement about the symposium. And finally to make questions of two events to be held in Goonj. Now that is a lot of work.

My subjects in this semester are too tough. Maths, Chemistry, Electrical, Thermodynamics, Applied Mechanics, Humanities and finally the most feared one- Engineering Drawing(ED). ED I believe is a subject created by demons. In the first class of ED we were taught how to write English alphabets and numbers!! They want characters of exact dimensions, exact ratio, exact shape… I mean… it seemed to us that we never passed the Nursery class. Next it has so many strict rules that you have to follow. 4 kinds of pencils, a mini-drafter, sheets of A2 sizes, soft erasers and all the components of a geometry set are required. So many rules and instruments not only makes this subject difficult, but also time consuming and confusing. Last Saturday I went to the ED hall to complete 2 assignments. I spent three and a half hours only to draw margins of one sheet, a title box and one sentence- “A QUICK BROWN FOX….” in CAPS. Maths is another subject that bamboozes you. It was my first class and at that time I did not know my time-table. A teacher walked in and taught us for an hour. After the class I got up and asked one of my friends “Which subject was this? Phisics?”. “No” he replied, “Maths”. Whole of last hour I could only hear words like Vectorial Mechanics, forces, vectors etc. If you do not believe me refer our maths book- Vectorial Mechanics by J.S. Bindra and K.S. Gill. This is what the book consists of - Vector Algebra, Multiplication of Vectors, Resultant and Equilibrium of Forces, Moments and Couples, Friction, Graphic Statics, Funicular Polygons, Centre of Gravity & Pappus Theorem, Moment of Inertia, Velocity and Acceleration, Force Projectiles & Circular Motion, Work, Power, Energy & Impulses & Momentum, Angular Momentum & Energy of Rotation, Virtual Work, Mechanical Vibrations. Now in this whole syllabus only two words seem to be related to maths- Algebra and Centre (from Centre of gravity)!! The rest is all Physics!! And mind you, this is not a physics book. It is a proper Maths book. The former author was Head Applied Mathematics and the latter is a lecturer in applied mathematics.

Although I have been facing plenty of lows, there were a few bright specs. Two major festivals were celebrated last week. Ed on the 11th Jan and Lohri on 13th Jan. Muslim population hardly exists in this part of India. As a result Ed was no special day except for an off day. Ed was celebrated by us at a Chinese Dhaba where we all had dinner. This Chinese Dhaba (as we all call it) has become very popular among our friends recently. It is located in Sector 15, about 5 mins walk from Gate No-2 of PU. Although it is not a very clean eatery, it is definitely cheap and tasty. Lohri on the other hand is much more popular. All the departments (except ours, i.e. UIET) were closed in the second half. We all bunked the post-lunch session unofficially. A DJ was set up in stu-cee during the lunch hour and everyone was rocking to the tunes of bhangra. Pieces of wood, logs, broken wooden furnitures etc were stacked up in every Department, Hostels, Stu-cee etc. ready to be ignited in the evening. Some of the departments also arranged for big speakers and DJs. Even our hostel celebrated Lohri and all of us were given a pack of peanuts. Since the mess was closed at night we again had dinner at the same Chinese Dhaba. But the celebrations were very short-lived and we are back to a usual college life. My struggle with the difficult subjects has resumed. Even the weather grows gloomier and it has started raining in Chandigarh. But there is one thing that I have been truely enjoying. “LOST”. Thanks to Rungta who has sparked a craze in me.
Hopefully this phase will soon be over and I will be back with a blog entry describing how good life is @ MyWorld.