Akshat Chandanam, a student at IIT Kharagpur, talks about the challenges that Chemistry holds for him.
It was one of the most regretted moments of my so called first year campus life. It all started with the start of the ‘chem-sem’. As usual it started with people taking resolutions of studying the whole semester and not keeping everything the last moment, but there I was without regrets, ready to enjoy the remaining year.
Some of my well-wishers warned me about the danger named ‘Electrical’ which awaited me. On the other hand, for Chemistry they all used to say, “Chemistry toh peace hai, ek din me ho jayega.” But we all knew that all this was going to last only for a few days and then we would again start to live our motto “LIFE, PEACE@KGP”.
So time passed and mid-semester exams arrived. An interesting thing about KGP is that you don’t need to see the calendar to know about exams, it can be observed in the campus, just like changing seasons. And so just like an unwanted visitor, exams arrived. We were not at all ready for the exams but anyhow were preparing ourselves to face them.
After two papers it was the turn for Chemistry, for which I was a bit
relaxed. When I finally decided to start my prep for the test it was already
evening, which meant snacks time. This snacks time was accompanied by a
two-hour baker with some friends.
Around 9 pm I finally decided to study and to my horror I
wasn’t able to understand anything. For once I thought it must be out of
syllabus and thus rechecked the syllabus but it was of no help. After
struggling for 4 hours, I was on the 21st slide of about 250
slides; and that was the time I felt hopeless. After another 2 hours I knew
something for sure: that I was worthless; and after another hour I finally
felt that I was aware of the ultimate truth, and thus changed my resolution for
the next time: to study Chemistry in advance.
And here I am in the next semester, again, at the same point, with the same
sorrow, and the same truth.