Skyward Fire

Now Playing: The Ramones – Street Fighting Man

The thing about living away from friends and family is weird. For me, it has been a decision that has eventually changed my complete lifestyle. Quieter evenings, boring afternoons, and depressingly laid-back weekends is now the story of my life. What used to be numerous lovely night-outs and charming classy evenings is now limited to staring blankly at the computer screen in the college hostel or sleeping. I speak to my friends back in India who’re in their second and first year college, have told me of similar stories of their own very similar college lives.

Frequent dining with friends is now limited to sitting on the hot cornice all by myself eating the cheapest food available. Watching movies with a wild, screaming bunch of friends is now limited to watching it alone. Sitting and talking with friends for hours without counting them is now limited to chatting online. I can’t take a stroll outside in the terrible humidity and heat outside. I can’t drive thanks to the lack of a driving license. Even if I had one, it wouldn’t make much of a difference because the way I drive would just make the Department of Traffic Fines really rich. The daredevilry will only get me into a whole lot of trouble.

Not to blow my own trumpet or anything, but the free-spirit I used to be back home is now shrunken to a blur.

So that’s it. The third one is down too. Nothing worked out, and it all fell apart in the end.

My third cycle test for the second semester have just begun, and with not much of a promising start. As much of a terrible excuse as it might sound, I blame the teachers. Partiality and bias towards a few is dooming the rest of us. And in some cases, teachers taking frequent ego trips are dooming us. Today, the class had it’s Data Structures Lab exam. The process is simple (not so much, really). You have submit a hand-written lab record (with over 20 long C programs and algorithms) which we’re asked to right not that long before the exams get close. And another handwritten assignment on one of the 19 programs. And you must also have 75% attendance in the lab if you want to write the lab internals. If your attendance is below that even if it is the fault of the person who takes the attendance who probably didn’t hear you on your roll call, you’ll eventually be the person to be blamed.

If you do not satisfy those conditions, you can’t write the exams. If you’re lucky enough to get through the first great wall, here comes the beamer. You choose from amongst 19 of those programs as a question for your exam. Whatever you get, you have to first write the algorithm of the program on paper, then write the code on the paper. Once the invigilator approves your code which you wrote on a piece of paper, only then will you able to log in to the machine and type and compile that code. That too if you’re in luck and Turbo C++ 4.5 isn’t corrupt on the machine you’re sitting in front of. This particular scenario comes up due to the fact that many students use USB drives to copy programs to the exam machine and cheat. A step rather well needed.

But really? This is a lab exam. From my past experiences, writing code on a piece of paper and then copying it on the computer is the most disastrous thing a computer science engineering student would ever have to do. Coding on C should be done on a hit-and-trial mode directly on the machine specially when students are doing it. But then again, we know how outrageously vulgar the Indian education system is. The discussion to this topic has no end and I’m no expert on it so I’d rather not say much.

Procrastination is a massive monster that will always eat up productivity in college life. My first semester was a disaster academia-wise, and I had promised myself that my second semester will be better. But my first cycle test series in the second semester ended up being disastrous like the first three cycle tests and finals in the first semester of the course. History repeats itself, and as a clear example, I delayed my assignments, I delayed class-work, I avoided attending classes, and everything else I shouldn’t have done, I did.

I was delusional all this while. At no point of time did I ever positively realize how important college life really is, or that these are the most important years of anyone’s lives. I want to be a game developer eventually, and I’ve wanted to make a career in video-games since junior high, but I haven’t exactly done much about the same. This is a field that has tremendous competition and one needs to be completely active doing something or the other to build up an impressive resume. As far as the Indian syllabus for Computer Science Engineering goes, there isn’t much hope for those who want to make a career in making videogames. There has to be a 110% effort from the enthusiast itself. I’ll personally be getting serious about the same once my first year in college ends properly.

Right now, the only focus has to be clearing all the subjects in the first semester, because I don’t want to waste time fighting summer exams any more. Honestly, there isn’t a plan for that in my mind right now. With too many things going on in college, I’ve hardly had time to concentrate on my studies. And there can’t be any delaying in the same. I have to cut down on my TV consumption, I must waste less time on the computer watching shit-listed movies and going over to Facebook. What’s even shameful is the fact that I know what is to be done, but I still don’t do it. For now, I have one aim in mind. I need to clear all the first year subjects and apply for a transfer to any Indian campus of BIT. Rest all can wait until that happens. Even if it doesn’t happen this particular year, I’ll go for it again in the next semester, or at the end of second year.

I’ve been wasting time, and sleeping way too much for my own good. I’m so lazy to even get some caffeine into my system. And the UAE weather doesn’t help much either. I absolutely loathe summer and the heat, and that bugs me like crazy.