My Five Years at IIT Kanpur

“Life is like a painting and you are a painter. Paint it with passion, emotions, goals, and especially in your own unique style.” — Shivam Pal

I am sitting in front of my laptop but confused, what to write and what not from an incredible 5 years of journey at IITK. This journey, which was full of adventure and uncertainty, that transformed an immature child who wanted to be a mathematician just coz he didn’t like to interact much with people into a mature, bold and courageous man who aims to create a better society for others and doesn’t fear to take risks.

In my first attempt in JEE, I was offered Engineering Physics at IIT Delhi. All my friends and teachers suggested me to go ahead with it because to get a seat in IIT is also sometimes a matter of luck. Instead, I took a risk and decided to take another shot as I wasn’t satisfied with it. In my 2nd attempt, I managed to get Electrical Engineering at IIT Kanpur, which thus became my second home for the next 5 years. Without a hinge of doubt or regret, I am proud of making this correct decision.

My life at IIT Kanpur wasn’t quite conventional. While others followed the well-established norm of joining clubs, working for PORs, aiming to get internships or placements, I took the path full of life, long term goals, hard work, and towards building a better version of myself. I see my journey as a sequence of phases, where each phase taught me different lessons.

Hitting the Bottom

I precisely remember it was July 22nd, 2015, when I entered gates of IITK with lots of dreams and enthusiasm. I was curious to start a new chapter of my life. As time passed, I made amazing friends, tried my hand in sports, joined fine arts club, most of which was entirely new to me. There even came a time when I started feeling mild depression as a result of the difficulty in adjusting to this unfamiliar culture. It affected my academics and I lost my focus. At the end of the 1st semester, sick of all the anxiety and confusion, I decided to meet with a psychiatrist, who gave me medication along with advice on how to remedy this situation. I was in a low state, lost all my self-confidence and my belief system was fallen apart. It resulted in self-doubt. It took me a while to get back up and fight again.

Building Myself up

During my first end semester break, I joined the electronics club’s winter school’15. Winter camp was a good experience. It helped me build a new dimension to think of technology. I even learned a lot about game development and recreated a few games like Super Mario and car racing. After a few months, my focus shifted to web development. I created a few websites, of which one was for first-year IITK courses. I kept myself involved in various new technologies and coding and did as much as I could to make up for the loss in my first semester. Then during summers, I did one project in P-Club, one in E-Club and even a paid internship for 2 months under Mr. Ankur Pathak. He is an entrepreneur and a book writer. During the internship, I had to develop a full-stack website from scratch for an educational organization where their alums connected and discussed policies aimed towards the betterment of society.

All these achievements helped me get back up, rebuild self-confidence, and revive my previously shattered belief system.

Year of Epiphany

My first year was really challenging and full of life lessons. From the start of 2nd year, I despised the thought of applying for PORs or following the traditional route which most of my seniors followed. I wished to learn new professional skills and aspired to get some financial independence. I decided to take paid projects which require those skills that I wanted to learn. I developed those skills while working and by the end of each project, I mastered those skills and started earned good money out of them. So much so, that after some time I stopped asking for money from my parents. Along with all this, I worked on a few projects with Ankur Sir also. He taught me various business and life lessons, gave me another perspective to think and dream. Above all, he was the one to inspire me to start something of my own. I ended my 2nd year summers with an internship in a startup “Garuda Prakashan”.

Time to take Risk

By the start of the 3rd year, my desires and ambitions were rising. I wanted a bit more from life. Along with 2 friends, I ventured into developing our own startup. We worked on solving the supply chain logistics problem with telematics device and its software solution. My role was to develop both hardware and software technology. We won many prizes for our work by participating in various IITK competitions. Along the way, I started to have feelings for a batch mate of mine (who also accepted me by god’s grace! :P). The beginning of this relationship experience was feeling awesome and lovely, and this euphoria continues for a few months.
Because of these involvements, my academics suffered and I didn’t spend much time with my wingies. A major part of my day was all cropped up. I realized that starting something may be easy, but continuing them is not at all easy. I was a bit frustrated and longed for some peace in my life.

Need of Stabilisation

By the 6th semester, my life became very unstable. My relationship was not working out and my startup colleagues were also not showing interest as both of them had been placed. Apart from all this, my academics performance was questionable. Unable to handle all at once, I decided to break up with my partner, which was really painful for us both. Our product for the startup was almost developed, I tried to proceed further, but other team members stopped showing interest. As a result, my first startup couldn’t succeed. By this time, I had learned how to accept failure and all this definitely help me become emotionally strong. I didn’t lose hope. Life’s gonna hand you all kinds of things. You learn your lessons and hopefully, you grow. Our job is to just give our best.

Taking things further

After stabilizing myself, I started working on another venture, Waysals, along with my friend. We aim to develop a social media platform that can help solve the emotional wellness issues of people. Instead of going for the summer internship, I decided to hire interns for the development of the platform. We got a few interns from campus and a few from P-Club.

Starting from the summer vacations, with a team of 10 people, we started working on developing the platform. It was really an excellent experience to build something. Since we had a low budget, I truly learned the concept of “jugaad”. At many places, I used manipulation and persuasion skills to get things done. But these things taught me a lot. Meanwhile, I also decided not to sit for placements and continue to work on my venture of Waysals. My parents did not agree with my decision initially, but I assured them whatever be the consequences I will take full responsibility. And if things didn’t work out as planned then I’ll go for a job. They were concerned for me, and I can understand why. They’re my parents after all.

The next semester (7th sem), we worked on team building, refining our idea and market research. During winter vacations, we (team of three) used to code 16–20 hrs. on a daily basis, wrote almost 15000 lines of code distributed in 80 files, and complete the social media platform. By the 8th semester, our platform was completed and my application for Dual Degree was also accepted. It was also the time to say good-bye to my wingmates, with whom I spent 4 years.

We launched our platform, Waysals to solve students’ career and job awareness issues. We tried to achieve product-market fit and reiterate in various markets. However, things didn’t seem to work out and we decided to put a hold on it and take a break. It concluded about 4 years of my journey where I worked a lot (on an average 8–10 hrs. per day), learned a lot, experienced a lot, gain a lot but also sacrificed my social life and academics a lot. As the end of this journey seemed close to me, I decided to explore all that I hadn’t so far and go for another adventure of living life and self-improvement.

Moment of Ultimate Bliss

I was in my 9th semester, I had the load of thesis alone, and a few courses. I was not interested in preparing for placements. Having some time to spare, I started exploring new things. I began spending time with my friends, dating girls, improving my health, reading books and exploring spirituality.

Remaining time, I worked on my thesis. For placements, although I applied for companies, I didn’t give any of their tests (because I have other plans for the future). I was a bit confident that if I applied for any walk-ins, I’d easily secure an offer letter. I just prepared my resume and spent 1 day in preparing for interviews. I was confident about my resume and every skill I mastered during my 4 years of stay here. On 3rd day, I went to the walk-in interview and secured a job at Couture.ai.

Time to Wrap Up

During my last semester (current), I went for trekking with Adventure club to challenge my physical limits and also managed to get a summer intern in the US which later got cancelled because of the pandemic situation of COVID-19. Currently, I am spending my best time in quarantine and planning for another adventure of life. I would take this moment to thanks all my friends and every person who helped me during peaks and valleys of this journey.

Final Words

I believe life is for living, enjoying, and working for your goals. Be courageous, be strong, be emotionally stable, keep on learning new skills, and focus on increasing your knowledge level because, in the end, only these things will count. I will not tell you to follow your interest, but I will say run after your goals. Pay the cost whatever it takes, do hard work and give your best. If you pursue something with strong determination, you will have no regrets even should you fail. And if you succeed, you will achieve truly great things. Be confident in whatever you are and enjoy life to its fullest. Life is like a painting and you are a painter. Paint it with passion, emotions, goals, and especially in your own unique style.