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Posts Tagged ‘college’

  1. Wrapping up the 4th semester

    April 13, 2014 by Sunit Nandi

    The 4th semester has been more of staying at home due to illness rather than going to college. And that also meant spending more time with experiments.

    However, the time at college is not unaccounted either and college felt unbearable. I was unable to understand what was being taught in class and half-slept during the lectures and practicals. I felt extremely bad about myself and felt like I was wasting time. On top of that a girl buddy’s boyfriend decided that making my life hell was his top priority because he suffers from insecurity and keeps getting into fights for all sorts of trivial things. Ahh!

    Coming to the tech front, many new things have happened. My BeagleBone Black setup is ready for use and I’ve even got the board housed in an enclosure.

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    Very soon, I’ll be getting to active ARM development and also see if I can make interesting electronic circuits.

    On the web, things have been bittersweet. On one hand, my CloudFlare account now has the option of using Railgun to speed up delivery of uncacheable content (all thanks to my webhost). On the other hand, my AdSense account got finally approved after 6 months of wait, only to get click-bombed and disabled a week later (for reasons I’m unsure about). Now, I’m just trying my luck with other ad networks to see if anything else can be done.

    My friend Manohar started his new personal blog very recently where he promises to write about his life and his thoughts. Do follow it at: http://manoharofficial.wordpress.com

    Right now, Rongali Bihu holidays are on. I’m here at home trying to study whatever I can for the upcoming end semester exams from 6th of May so that I don’t perform poorly. 6th of May? Oh well… birthday ruined.

    The 4th semester is finally wrapping up in this manner.

    I will be writing again soon. Till then, take care.


  2. 3rd semester over

    December 15, 2013 by Sunit Nandi

    After a long 1 month streak of end-semester exams, the wave seems to have finally calmed down. Its holiday time now, and I have devoted myself to learning Python with the book Learn Python the Hard Way. I’ve managed to reach chapter 26, and I have another 26 more :notbad: :D.

    In the meantime, our 3rd semester CSE batch had mini-project submission. Well, that was just yesterday. I had coded a very simple PHP web interface for the GNU Compiler Collection that lets anyone test the output of their C and C++ on a web browser, nothing fancy. I and Kirtiman Mishra submitted it as a mini-project. I am working on adding more features, while my friend Akshit Tripathi is working on improving the UI. The source is now on GitHub. ๐Ÿ™‚

    Maybe, in the later half of this month we will be going to our hometown for giving our relatives a visit.

    Hopefully, by the end of this month, I will be proficient in Python and Java and develop something nicer and cooler. ๐Ÿ™‚


  3. Two minutes of sunshine

    November 27, 2013 by Sunit Nandi

    Before I begin, I’d love to thank my friend Akshit Tripathi for suggesting names of the characters in the story.

    The usual disclaimer applies here. The characters and events in this story are purely fictional. Any resemblance to real life people or events is just a mere coincidence.
    ___________________________________

    My college life so far had never been exciting. They say that college life is the most memorable time in a person’s life, but there was nothing about mine that made it memorable. Having a riff with a friend in the first semester, and then losing contact with the girl you always loved since your schooldays in the second semester, made it more sad than memorable. Yet, I was still hoping something nice would happen sooner or later.

    Then as luck would have had it, mom and dad began fighting over monetary problems. The household became a verbal warzone. In the midst of this, began the third semester.

    On reaching college the first day, I found out that I was now attending classes in my department along with the Electronics department. This was a big change, as in the first year, I was in a common classroom with the Electrical department students. In case, you are wondering, I’m in the Computer Science and Engineering Department. The classroom seemed silent and my classmates rather tame. This was rather contradictory, as engineering college students are rowdy and fun-loving. My first year with the Electrical guys supported that statement. However, the current scenario expressed the contrary.

    I was sitting alone on a bench, when a guy came along and sat next to me saying, “So you’re Kevinย  of CSE dept, right? I’m Rishav and I switched branches from Electronics to CSE. Nice to meet you.” I replied, “Nice to see you bro. What made you switch?” He goes on, “I always wanted to study CSE.” I affirm, “Same with me. Computing is life.” We become friends instantly.

    We started to sit together, attend classes together and eat in the canteen together. Very soon, we started getting loads of assignments, which we used to tackle together.

    One day I found him very upset in class. I asked him what went wrong. For a few moments he hesitated saying anything. But ultimately he spoke, “You see Aisha?”, pointing to a girl at the back yawning with her mouth wide open. Seeing us look at her, the yawn halted midway, and she blinked at us surprised. We turned forward and pretended as if nothing had happened. He continued, “She is my girlfriend and it seems the relationship won’t continue any further. I’m trying to save it but cannot.” I patted Rishav in the back saying, “Shit happens bro, you gotta deal with it.”

    After this, we became even deeper friends. We talked about our past. School days, parties, fights, crushes, love, etc. He went on to tell me about his first love back in school days, and how she parted. He was dejected and even went into depression. Then he went on to say how he met Aisha in the first semester, and how much she annoyed him daily. He tried to push Aisha away often, but as fate would have had it, they both fell for each other. I listened to the whole thing and found it rather incredulous.

    The following days, he told me stories about dating Aisha, going trekking with her, tour trips and the occasional love-making episodes. I also told him about my past, but things weren’t as exciting as his was. He continued to tell me how his dad and aunt found out about the relationship, and since he and Aisha were of different communities they were enraged. Aisha’s parents also came to know of the same, and despite they were happy with Rishav, they weren’t impressed with Rishav’s family members. I listened to the whole thing with a pinch of salt and disbelief.

    By then, the load of assignments being given increased. I somehow worked day and night to deal with it. I managed to solve the programming assignments swiftly as I did have a knowledge of coding beforehand. My classmates, however, started to lag. They could not meet deadlines and got late submission tags in every possible place. All of a sudden, I started to look like an ace, and everyone began approaching me for homework help, especially programming. Its was during this time I befriended almost everyone in this classroom.

    One fine day, Aisha comes up and sits next to me saying, “Hey Kevin! You’re a programming expert right? Could you help me with this question, pretty please?” I helped her out. She was happy, so she hugged me and left. Next day, Rishav didn’t turn up. She came in to class and sat right next to me. We did our usual introductory talk, about hobbies and activities and all. From then on, we became good friends and she often sat nearby. Rishav was probably wary of her presence, and he left every time heย  saw her nearby. During off-periods, we often had long chats and used to hang out a lot together. She often expressed her concern about Rishav, “He is a good guy but is over-emotional and has a big mouth. He doesn’t even keep secrets. I don’t know where we’re heading.”

    It was just a matter of days for their break-up. It was rather painful, as I saw Rishav run away even he just caught a glimpse of her.

    In the meanwhile, me and Aisha became even closer friends. Every morning she used to greet me. She sat with me and told me stories. She was an awesome author. I began to like her presence. As days passed, everything started to feel magical. My eyes just followed her instinctively wherever she went. And as long as she sat next to me, I felt on top of the world.

    The mid-term exams came, and once we both were sitting quietly in a classroom revising for the upcoming exam. Then we decided to take a break. At this point, I decided to tell her, “Aisha, I am beginning to like you. I can’t explain how it feels. But you are special to me.” Her face curved into a smile and moments later she cuddled me exclaiming “Thank you!” excitedly. I hugged her back and we spent this awesome moment quietly. I was the happiest man in the world that day. It felt like my life just came back and my problems were going away.

    All the while this went on, Rishav didn’t come to college and started bunking labs just to avoid seeing her. No amount of convincing worked. Our classmates even mocked him, yet nothing changed his mind. He knowingly started to build backlogs for himself.

    Aisha then fell ill. She didn’t turn up at college. Not surprisingly, she did miss field trips too. I began to miss her.

    Oddly enough, Aisha created a hullabaloo about obtaining my phone number. She asked each and every person in class my number. My classmates were rather surprised at this, and wondered if she had begun to fancy me. Very soon, I contacted her myself and we exchanged our phone numbers. We often had long talks in the phone, and long chats on WhatsApp.

    Soon enough, end-term exams were near we were having study leave. I reduced communication with my classmates. I needed to score well in my exams, as my first year results were a disaster.

    Then came up our electrical circuits lab examination. We all were waiting for our turn, when Anurag from the Electrical department came into the waiting room. Being good friends, we greeted each other. He then went straight upto Aisha and gave her a paper slip saying, “I have paid your exam fees and also planned something for the evening.” Aisha just looked at him coyly. For the rest of my waiting time I saw both of them seeing each other and shying. I could feel there was definitely something amiss seeing their awkward antics.

    Days passed, my Maths exam was near. Getting tired of the preparation, I decided to browse Facebook. The first picture I saw on my timeline was Aisha wearing Anurag’s pullover and it was rather amusing. The picture below that was of Anurag wearing Aisha’s jacket and it was equally amusing. However the picture below that was Aisha and Anurag holding hands. Aisha had a ring on one finger too. Before I could realize anything, I was already full of tears in my eyes. I could already feel her holding MY hands. Some of the pictures in that same series had both of them hug each other. I felt she was hugging ME. As I started to flip through more pictures, I realized they both went into a relationship lately. It felt like a someone was strangling my neck while thrusting a knife in my tummy. I could do nothing but cry. That night I went to sleep. I had a vision of having my head on her lap crying. She was patting me saying, “Kevin, I won’t leave you dear. Please don’t cry.” Suddenly, I woke up finding my pillow wet with tears and mom yelling, “Useless kid, its already 9 AM. If you wake up late tomorrow, I won’t provide you meals.”

    A whole day passed with me feeling morose all the time. Up came the Maths exam the next day, and I cried all the time giving the exam. As I was quietly leaving the hall and going home, I found them holding hands and walking along the corridor. It started to feel worse and I was almost about to collapse.

    Finally I reached home. Tired and exhausted with all the stress, I straightaway fell asleep. When I woke up, I decided to contact Deveshi, who stayed in the same dorm as Aisha.

    “Hello Deveshi!”
    “Yes Kevin, anything you need?”
    “Is Aisha in a relationship?”
    “Yes. She just paired up a few days ago.”
    “With whom?”
    “Some guy named Anurag. They have known each other for a long time now and finally its good to know they are in a relationship.”
    “I see.”
    “Why did you ask me this question?”
    “Nah, nothing, just wanted to know.”

    A few minutes later I saw Aisha online on WhatsApp. I texted her.

    “Hi!”
    “Aye Kevin, kya bolna chahte ho dear?” (Aye Kevin, what do you want to say dear?)
    “Tum aur Anurag paired up hue ho kya?” (You and Anurag paired up or what?)
    “Haan. Kyu?” (Yes. Why?)
    “Treat kab doge mujhe?” (When are you giving me the treats?)

    After that, I wasn’t sure if I could carry on the conversation. I exited WhatsApp and switched off the data connection. My parents downstairs were busy arguing on some topic. I opened the gallery, navigated to a photo of me and Aisha sitting side by side and smiling at the camera. Her eyes were beautiful, her smile was brilliant and I could feel her sitting next to me once again. I could feel her embrace. My eyes were wet again.

    My mind was going for a feel trip down the memory lane for just two minutes of sunshine.
    __________________________________

    The end.
    Hope you liked it. Feel free to leave your comments below.


  4. Third semester goes on at full steam

    August 11, 2013 by Sunit Nandi

    College has reopened. Now I’m in my third semester. Things have got rough from now on.

    I didn’t quite expect so much workload right at the beginning of the session. The advanced computing assignment required us to write 30 programs in C. To add to the misery, I had friends calling me up on the phone asking me to explain how to write the code. Want to hear something worse? Some even tried to compile some of my codes on Turbo C++ when they were actually meant for GCC. Call it laziness or reluctance to install Linux on their part, I had to find ways to rewrite some of the code. So much for a home assignment.

    Adding to my woes is the mini-project. That leaves no time for self-study, group activities and hobbies.

    I did make a new friends with people who study now in my classroom. But I still miss my friends who are in Electrical Department. I hardly get to see them.

    I tried to complete my work for today and then tried to write a post about my holiday in detail. But to my horror, my site wasn’t loading. My web host notified me that their datacenter provider SingleHop was going through a major outage in their Chicago base. So the server was unreachable ever since morning. It only seems to be back now. I was also planning to test my code for mini project on the server, but no.

    Bored, I idled. Then me and a friend set up a torrent seedbox, then another friend asked for assistance with his blog. The server wasn’t back up until 5 PM.

    I got off the computer. Studied discrete mathematics for a while. Then went out for grocery shopping. Right now I am sitting on a bench and typing this out on WordPress for Android (a handy app it is, indeed!).

    Tomorrow begins another tiring week, another Monday.

    “Do you mean Moan-day?” –Tushar Gulati.

    Sigh.


  5. First year at college over

    July 20, 2013 by Sunit Nandi

    AEC

    Time flies swifter then you can imagine. The Techno FAQ website and the forums are finally ready as expected.

    Then came the second semester exams at college, with two months of gruelling theory and practical exams. And as luck would have it, IIT-JEE advanced exams also came in between.

    The college exams went fair. But I fared poorly in JEE advanced. So no IIT for me this year too. Funnily enough, I got NIT Silchar again this year in JEE mains (formerly AIEEE). My parents are in two minds, whether to send me to study there or whether to continue studying in AEC. I personally don’t feel like going, as I am not really interested about wasting another year for nothing.

    Only time will tell what my parents finally decide.

    Coming back to the topic, after exams, there was a one-and-a-half month long vacation. We all went to our hometown in West Bengal to spend time with family and get refreshed. My upcoming post will be about our trip in full detail.

    Today, I renovated my blog with a new theme called Liquorice. Its beautiful. I rearranged the pages and posts of the blog to make it look like a personal diary. From now on, I will be writing on serious topics and life stories and try my best to be a better writer.

    On the techie side: I changed my Linux distro on my tablet PC to Manjaro. I wrote about it too at Techno FAQ blog. The computer is running faster than ever, and management is easier from what I have noticed so far. Soon I’ll be getting my new camcorder and a workstation so that I am able to edit videos properly. The workstation will also be no doubt handy for experiments. I’ve also sent my old laptop (bought in 2001) for dust cleaning, and have plans of reviving it with Crunchbang Linux.

    Life has been like this so far. I’ll be writing my next post very soon.


  6. Life rolls on, as it always did

    July 26, 2012 by Sunit Nandi

    So finally the boards result and results of various competitive exams were out. I got opportunities to study in three places, namely, NIT Silchar, Assam Engineering College in Guwahati and Institute of Engineering and Management in Kolkata.

    For a while dad was confused about what to do as I did not have my permanent resident certificate for Assam state. Then rounds for WBJEE got stuck. That meant I was forced to leave for NITS.

    On the final few days before Assam CEE counselling, dad managed to get my PRC. So getting admission in AEC was a moonwalk cakewalk. ๐Ÿ˜€

    Then choices remained were NITS and IEM. Mom was really fixed on her decision to put me in an NIT. So IEM was dumped and we all went to Silchar.

    On reaching NIT Silchar, we had a long discussion and debate on whether to join or not. Finally, it did come to light that if I stayed there, I wouldn’t be able to study for the upcoming JEEs. Add to that, 3 students in each hostel room and travel facilities to Silchar are extremely limited. Getting airline seats is a lottery. And road and rail transport can be erratic because of landslides.

    Putting all those into consideration, I decided to abandon Silchar. I’m back in Guwahati. Classes in AEC will be starting on 4 November. Also, I’m continuing my IIT JEE coaching at Concept Educations, Maligaon, Guwahati.

    So its like that.

    Apart from that, me and a couple of my friends are working on the Techno FAQ blog. It will soon be released at http://technofaq.us.to/ . We are working on the theme and Facebook integration and hope to be fully functional soon along with the page and the group. The great news is that the Facebook group is reaching 4000 members soon, and time for celebration is not far away. You can speed it up by joining here.

    So far so good.

    Will write again soon after some major events. ๐Ÿ˜›