UNINVITED 2.0 : Pradyot

Fresh off the JEE conveyor belt, I had high expectations from college. Alas, I was part of the infamous COVID batch, a fact that subtly altered the course of my college life. It didn’t help loosen up my introverted personality that my interaction with the students in my year was limited to one screen. In a college like IITD, your strongest currency is its network. But owing to the online semester, my senior interaction was limited to the BSW seniors. The online classes hadn’t helped in building interest either. Despite that, I managed to pull an 8.1 at the end of semester 1, the highest my CGPA had ever been. Regardless of all of my other qualms about the first semester, at least I had guidance from my parents; I still had motivation to study. 

The second semester, however, was my first time being away from home, with no one to check on me. That took a toll on my motivation. At home, I still had some sort of structure, some semblance of discipline. Without my parents by my side, telling me that everything will be fine, I started feeling a bit anxious as well. I remember not feeling happy in the subsequent semesters. The biggest downfall of the online semester was that I didn’t feel close enough to seniors to seek their mentorship when we did finally switch to offline classes in my second semester. I was in the dark then; I did not know what to do, how to study, or where to go. I would only follow what my friends were doing. I felt like a ship without any sense of direction, without an anchor.

All of this reflected on my CGPA at the end of the second semester.

It had dropped to 7.5.

My second year followed suit. It was my first time studying courses specific to just Chemical engineering, and to say they didn’t interest me would be an understatement. Like many others, I was studying only because I had to. Again, I had very little mentorship. I didn’t know what courses to take, what not to do. Consequently, my CGPA by the end of sem 3 was 7.2.

My CGPA had started dropping since sem two. I’d started losing interest in everything else and somehow developed this contradictory sense of anxiety that just wouldn’t leave me alone. I could have sought help from seniors. I could have talked about it. But I didn’t, not until it was too late.

I was also the literary club representative of Karakoram hostel, which meant I had to stay proactive in club activities, regardless of whatever was going on in my academic life. College doesn’t give you a second to breathe. If you’re not packed with acads, you’ll be busy with extracurriculars, PORs, social commitments, fests or any of the thousand other things going on in the campus at any random time. It gets a lot sometimes.

My academics and extracurriculars had all started to pile up.

I tried to pull through; I tried to be the guy who could manage everything without breaking a sweat. I tried so hard to be “machau”, but I just couldn’t. In sem 4, I ran for the secretary of the Literary Club. My anxiety was at an all time high. Running for elections transforms you, and not always for the best. I didn’t just simply lose; I lost by a huge margin. That had a significant impact on my self-esteem and on my life’s future plans because, for some reason at IIT at that time, having a good position of responsibility in the third year guaranteed a consulting career. I was devastated. It was my first time grappling with the reality of something not completely in my control. My friends stood by me then. They always did.

With so much of myself spent on the elections, low self-esteem and an even lower CGPA, I began my third year of college. It was a hectic period. The first time I started feeling like things were taking a turn for the better was around the time I got my first shortlist in the internship season. I did not have a lot of time to think in the midst of preparing for interviews and interns.  As a cruel domino effect, the elections took a hit on my internships as well. I had a shortlist in HUL but did not end up securing an internship. Again, that was another huge blow for me. At this point, I had started to question what exactly it was that I was doing wrong. When you see people around you getting internships and achieving everything you’re struggling to achieve, you start to spiral.

My second year had ended on a terrible note, and my third started on a terrible note.

No internship.

Dubious prospects.

Disoriented.  

Around this time, I started having some pretty bad anxiety attacks. There was a point where I had even thought of taking a sabbatical or dropping out of college, or even switching colleges. My stubbornness to refrain from asking for help or talking to people made the situation worse. It was much later that I got over my stubbornness and just went to my seniors for help. Two or three of my friends knew what I was going through. They would talk me through my fears and treat my problems as their own. My family, too, was extremely supportive throughout all of this. They never questioned my decisions, never pressured me either. They always gave me all the necessary resources.

But again, I think those battles were my own to fight. My friends didn’t have to fight them alongside me, but they still did. They used to check on me every day. I would always be with them or with my seniors. My seniors were very helpful. They were some of the best people I’d met in college - people whom I could actually rely on- a fact I found out later in my second year. They used to always try to help, be it during my placement time or during my CV-making time. I would always be in their room and just talk about things, talk about how to proceed further. I still think I should have approached them a little earlier.

In the field in which I am, there were not a lot of seniors who had gotten placement before me. Say, if you're preparing for a DS or a consulting role, there are thousands of resources and thousands of people to advise you, but I did not have that because even though I was preparing for consulting roles, my main target was getting into a financial role: a VC role or a PE role. My preparation for that started from scratch, so it took me 10X more effort to figure out the resources and to figure out how to prepare for an interview. It took me about 6 to 7 months to actually read about things and prepare. I wasn’t very disciplined either. I think if I had a more structured routine, I could have dealt with things better.

Later on, eventually, I got off-campus internships, which I did during my summer and my winter.

The third year for me was a very transitional period. Finally, I knew what I was preparing for. I knew what I wanted to do. I was seeking support when needed. This time, my ship had an anchor and a north star.

I finally started to recover from the mistakes I’d made in my second year. My GPA was at a point where it wouldn’t affect me either way, even if it got better or worse. And again, I did not want to study chemical engineering. My GPA during my fifth and sixth semesters were the lowest in my IIT journey. But I was not even surprised, and I did not even care at that point.

I had stopped caring about that. I started focusing on other things. That was about the time when things actually started to change, that is, when I came back from my internship. At the beginning of the fourth year, I had a fresh positive outlook on college. It was a very busy time, at least till December, because people were preparing; people were doing things. My mindset had changed. I’d stopped worrying about things beyond my control and started focusing on the ones within my control. If I wasn’t selected for something, I told myself there must be someone better and started thinking about how to improve myself to get the next thing. I started talking about my problems with my friends instead of keeping them all bottled up. Whenever I was in self-doubt, whenever the going got tough, I would talk to the friends I trusted, seek their perspective and advice on things. I think I’d attribute a lot of my growth to my friends and to staying optimistic. I’d learnt to approach people with my problems, take second opinions, analyze situations and work through the anxiety.

The only thing that was a barrier between myself and the job role that I wanted was my GPA. My extracurriculars, my positions of responsibility, my internships, and even for that matter, my scholastic achievements were all up there. I analysed my chances and focused on the things that I could control. I got good off-campus VC interns. I even had research experience. My fluid particle mechanics professor, Professor Vikram, was working on a project, and I wanted to work with him. It was about revamping the AQI system and the GRAP system of Delhi. So when I approached him, he told me that this project is in collaboration with professors of the economics Department of Cambridge Judge Business School. I got an interview; the professor interviewed me and found me all right because I had basic knowledge of machine learning and stats. So I got an internship at the Cambridge Judge Business School. I admit I hated the courses of my branch, but I actively took courses that I’d enjoy studying whenever I could. I took courses in machine learning, data structures and mathematics. Even though I didn’t put much effort into the rest of my curriculum, what I did study paid off. Maybe if I’d focused on studying, I could have improved my GPA by 0.4 or 0.5. But that would have a much lesser impact on my overall development as compared to the impact the last two years of college had on me.

I'm not sure where it all turned around, but I know when I felt that it did. And that was when I got my first placement shortlist. It was the first company that had released a shortlist, and to my immense surprise and relief, my name was in there. The company was Strat&. Then the shortlists kept rolling in. I had around five day 1 shortlists and eight day 2 shortlists. I finally felt that I had things under control. Obviously, life had something else in store for me. I did not get placed in any of the shortlists on Day 1. But I had learnt to keep my head up. I didn’t let the failures of day 1 follow me into day 2. I couldn’t afford to do that. And finally, I did get placed on 2.1. Every step of the way, things never worked out exactly as I had planned or hoped. They never do. The way I see it, it’s a blessing for me because I got placed into the role, which I really wanted to do. If I were placed in a role on Day 1, maybe I might not have enjoyed it as much as I'm enjoying my job right now. I had to detach myself from the outcomes. If I could give one piece of advice to people who feel lost during their college years, it would be to talk to people you trust. Instead of overthinking about what could have been, think about what you can do better now.

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Story by: Rashi Singh Designed by: Agrim Verma Edited by: Rishit Srivastava