The Sequence of Night-Outs...How Long?

Its that time of the semester again when I am forced to make some plans for each and every day for the coming week. As it appears, the duration of about two months after the midsem has been one of the fastest to pass. And when the endsem ends on 25th, I would have completed what I can surely call one of the most occupied two-month period in recent times.

As soon as the midsem got over, we had the illumination work started. Then there was the Puja Vacation in between and once we came back, the illu work was on with full swing. I was present for almost whole of the time the work was going on and spent more continuous night-outs than ever. And then there was the important business of attending classes in the morning. (Refer to my previous two posts as to why I was so resolved to be present at both the places.) Eventually, there was hardly anytime left to relax. What were there were some free afternoons, which were mostly spent in concluding the night's unfinished sleep.

Once the event ended with all the possible extravagance and the unexpected drama, one would have thought of being at ease for the next few days. But sadly in my case, there was a presentation to be made in that very week for the soft-computing course. So the sequence of night-outs kept on increasing. So much so that we somehow managed to complete the work just minutes before the presentation. We actually wrote the CD to be submitted in the classroom itself!

Once the soft-comp work was done, I was then primarily occupied with the Product Design work. That too was an exhausting job, with all the perfection required in our product and its presentation. And in the midst of that, there were at least three class-tests to deal with in that week. And one of them was on Heat Transfer which required a thorough studying and understanding of the subject. In simple terms it required a lot of time to cover. And as you know one can produce everything but time! So I had no choice but to continue the above-mentioned sequence.

And finally when things got over, I find that I am left with not more than 12 days for the all-important end-semester exams and there are five big subjects to be prepared. Oh God please I need some time to breathe at least...

Why do I attend so many classes?

Some of the profs at IIT Kharagpur have a peculiar habit of taking attendance everyday. They don't mind that it takes up quite a considerable portion of the time alloted to them for the lecture. At the same time there are others who come to class and teach with same energy and liveliness, irrespective of the number of students sitting in front of them. Thus ultimately it comes down to the students to decide whether to attend the classes or not.

I am still to figure out why I feel a lot satisfied with myself when I attend all the classes in the day. Since coming to IIT, I have bunked not more than 4-5% of the classes. That should be considered quite a remarkable achievement if you look at the dismal attendance record of many students here. On many occasions, I have even made it to the class after night-outs.(Whether I kept awake in the class or not is a different issue however.)

The main inspiration behind this is the fact that most of the profs do teach something in the class. And one thing is for sure that for most of the engineering subjects its not easy to grasp everything just by reading the books. By attending the classes, even if you don't understand everything there, a mere recapitulation later on makes things clear. In a way I feel, it takes lesser time to cover the subjects by attending the classes than reading by yourself. (The ones who taught us KKM and CGSM are the prominent exceptions, whose classes I missed gracefully).

Another reason might be that I really don't find myself very comfortable sitting inside my rooms for hours. Attending the classes does give me some fresh air and if they are in Vikramshila, then some cool air. And seriously apart from attending classes, I don't spend my full day in mugging. Going through the topics a week or two before the exams serves the purpose very well.