Though, for the students of IIIT, who swear by proxies sand firewalls, the medium of expression must, but naturally, be ‘electronic’ and what better than blogs to say something and be sure that it’ll be read? A survey conducted amongst the students of IIIT revealed that over 40% have, at some point of time, blogged. Some left off, having let off their steam by publishing what they had in mind, while others continued to entertain their readers with humorous (or otherwise) accounts of their mundane activities. In fact, the regular bloggers formed a fair share of the surveyed junta (public).

So much so for the writing part, one does need to have a subject to write on. So what is it that these bloggers write about? Aakanksha, an active blogger, finds a way to inject her wit and sarcasm into her posts. She says, “I generally like to blog about the faux pas of others, things I can express my contempt for or things I feel for…”. Rini, who belongs to the category of ’sporadic bloggers’ offers, “Well, I blog when I have an observation to make and of course, when I’m bored and have nothing else to do!” The subjects of the posts, as the IIIT-Blogroll testifies, runs the entire gamut – from academics to commentaries on the latest scandal to erotica!

As is the case with any form of media, wherever there is mass readership or visibility involved, controversy must rear its head. The IIIT blogosphere is no exception. In the past one year itself, there have been quite a few blogs, which have raised such an uproar that for days after certain posts were published, the entire campus would be talking about them. Truly, with the blogging culture IIIT has, if one has a piece of gossip that one wants the whole world to know, there can be no faster way than to blog about it!

Anonymity is the biggest weapon in this virtual world and in this electronic warfare, the ’seekers’ always find a way to hunt down the authors of the ‘juicy’ posts, which are invariably posted anonymously. So, four days after a post was published anonymously on a certain blog (which incidentally received 700+ hits per day during its peak period), a screenshot was circulated, which had the author’s name circled in red under the post title. (Credit – Google Doc Reader)

Meanwhile, what do the readers make of these ‘controversial’ posts? While Anika believes, “Everyone has a right to express their opinions, no matter what the topic may be”. Divya usually scoffs at the (authors’) attempts to propel themselves into limelight by writing something controversial.

However, these ‘opinions’ don’t really bother the authors. After all, if the soaps are after TRP ratings, then bloggers want hits and whatever works with the readers works for them too!.

After all, that’s what freedom of expression is all about, right? and IIITians, whether it is babbling in computer-world jargon, or making a quirky observation about a professor’s attire, surely know how to express themselves!

This perception suffered a setback last year, when the pin of recession apparently burst the IT bubble. But we Indians are a tenacious people and with the 6.1% growth rate that India has recorded in the first fiscal quarter, Information Technology and its siblings are once again in demand. And so we come back to CSE and ECE.

IIIT, dedicated to furthering research in Information Technology, offers both courses. Again, like Computer Science Department, the EC department too offers both ECE as well as ECD (dual degree). However, as compared to CSE, the number of seats offered is much less with just 30 seats in ECE and 15 in ECD. The tuition fee cum hostel rent remains the same i.e. approximately Rs. 50,000 a semester.

The EC labs are smaller, being designed for fewer students and although some times students do complain of insufficient equipment. On the whole, the labs are pretty much at par with other colleges.

The department has some very learned, well-known researchers on its staff although, as Krishnapal puts it, “Some of them are better at guiding students in projects rather than formally teaching them”.  Rahul, another student feels that “There aren’t enough professors” although the courses offered, he agrees, “are very good”.

Admissions are solely on the basis of merit in AIEEE and with such a small number, the seats are taken soon. The opening and closing ranks of EC are not far behind CS with ECD closing at 2646 and ECE at 1921 in the year 2008 (2009 ranks are not included as IIIT has entered further rounds of AIEEE counseling and some students are yet to join – ranks are expected to be lower than last year).

The EC students are given freedom to choose their department and many a times, work in tandem with CS students on projects, where a joint effort is required. The EC students mainly work in CRC (Communications and Research Centre ), CVEST (Centre for VLSI and Embedded Systems ) and of course, the Robotics lab. The Robotics lab is fairly up-to-date and EC students are generally involved with robotics projects right from the beginning. In fact, Robocamp, the robotics fest of IIIT conducted by the EC students is one of the best of its kind in the country with 190 participants this year including huge participation from outstation colleges.

EC Lab. Credit-Seargent Arbit

In addition to aforementioned labs, NVIDIA Corporation, the worldwide leader in visual computing technologies has set up the NVIDIA Visual Computing Lab in IIIT Hyderabad, which provides the students with state of the art equipment and software licenses with the purpose of furthering research in the field of GPU engineering and visual computing.

If the CS students have taken the programming community by storm then the EC students are no less. This year, IIIT was the only team from India, which qualified for the last round of the NASA – sponsored CANSAT competition, which was organized to create an experience of the design life cycle of a typical aerospace system.

A great achievement indeed. But is the picture as rosy as it it appears to be? ‘Yes’ and ‘No’, say the students. When surveyed, the EC crowd was almost equally split into two sections – there were some, who wished to change their branch and switch to CS for ‘better placements’ and then there were those, who albeit wishful of better lab equipment, were fairly happy with the state of affairs.

After all, at the end of the day, it’s really the personal satisfaction that matters. As far as infrastructure et al go, IIIT is a fairly good choice. So if EC is where heart is, this might be just the place one ought to be.  Addhyan, a 3rd year student, sums it up when he says, “I like what I’m doing, where I’m doing, how I’m doing and that’s really what matters, right?” Touche!

Though Electronics and Communication has been introduced in the recent years, CSE remains the flagship course offered by the institute. The Computer Science department offers both the regular 4-year B.Tech course as well the research-oriented integrated dual degree course. The fee structure is pretty reasonable and the tuition fee cum hostel rent for a semester comes to about 50,000 with the mess charges accounting for another 9,000. The administration has a strict no-no policy for any sort of reservation or donation and the students are admitted solely on the basis of their merit. In 2008, the opening and closing ranks for CSE were 162 and 1729, and for CSD, 157 and 2613. This year, however, IIIT has made a change in its admission policy and has decided to enter further rounds of counseling as opposed to its policy of only 1 round of counseling till last year, and so the closing ranks are expected to be lower as compared to previous years.

The faculty believes that IIIT follows the international pattern of teaching and has a “cutting edge curriculum” modeled after stalwarts like MIT, etc. The administration feels that teaching the important subjects early on helps build a good foundation. Most students seem to agree with this. “I used to find it ridiculous that we had so many courses so soon but now I feel we’re ahead of many other colleges and that definitely gives an edge”, said Shantanu when asked for his views on the same.

The faculties’ credentials leave nothing to be desired with most of them being ex-IITians, usually with teaching experience in one of the IITs. Indeed, Prof Rajeev Sangal, the Director, is among the chief proponents of Artificial Intelligence and has world-wide acclaim. Krishnapal, a 3^rd year student adds, “the faculty is really good in the sense that they offer practical guidance when you do projects”.

At work in a lab. Credit - Seargent Arbit

If labs are all steaming chemicals and test-tubes to you, then think again, for in IIIT labs, you’ll find nothing but state-of-the-art computers, wired connections for round the clock connectivity and an air conditioned plush environment to help you unclutter your mind. There are several research departments, the more popular ones being CVIT ( Centre for Visual Information Technology), CDE ( Centre for Data Engineering) and LTRC( Language Technology Research Centre ) and when the time comes for the CSD students to take up research, they are absorbed into these departments. A CSE student can also opt for honours in which case he/she is obliged to work on a project in one such department.

This year, two new dual degree courses have been introduced- B.Tech in Computer Science and MS in Computational Natural Science, and B.Tech in Computer Science and MS in Computational Linguistics. Though it’s part of the plan to introduce more research-oriented courses in the institute, the announcement has met with less than favourable response from the students. “As if it wasn’t bad enough asking 17 year-olds to choose whether they wanted to take up CSD, now they are asking them to finalise the field of research as well, when we barely understand those terms ourselves”, says a disgruntled 3rd-year student.

Brickbats and bouquets don’t matter however; figures talk and IIIT- CS has managed to maintain its 100% placement rate even in the year of recession and indeed, was ranked 7^th overall by Dataquest in the 2008 ranking.

In the end, IIIT is at par with the best when it comes to quality education and the experts seem to agree.

]]> http://www.vidyouth.com/2009/08/21/computer-science-at-iiit/feed/ 0 http://www.vidyouth.com/2009/07/30/c-d-e-the-iiit-alphabet/ http://www.vidyouth.com/2009/07/30/c-d-e-the-iiit-alphabet/#comments Wed, 29 Jul 2009 22:39:16 +0000 Seargent Arbit http://www.vidyouth.com/?p=3550 D or E ? This has been a matter of contention for as long as dual degree courses have been in existence at IIIT. Dual degree course? What does that mean, one may ask. Well, to start from the beginning, as one says, IIIT has 2 departments – Computer Science and Electronics and Communication. Both these departments offer the regular 4-year B.Tech course as well an integrated dual degree course that gives a B.Tech degree in CSE as well as a MS degree in CSE at its completion.

IIIT is the country’s only college, which allows research at the undergraduate level and the dual degree programmes are a natural extension of the college’s prerogative to further research by allowing the students to start research as early as the 2^nd year itself. A dual degree student is required to choose a department and start research on a particular field under a guide after the end of the second year. It generally translates to a greater workload, as the student may be required to take up particular subjects, sometimes in addition to the prescribed number of subjects, to help with the chosen field of research. Moreover, while most B.tech students ( read carefree birds ) are lazing around in the summer sun, the D-students have to sacrifice the summers working in the labs. Of course, the air conditioned labs with their thickly cushioned chairs are a pleasure to work (?) in and many a times, one can see a ‘researcher’ with headphones on, legs on table and a movie running on the computer. A pleasure, as mentioned above, to work in.

Of course, there’s a flip side to every story and the biggest complaint that the D students have is the duration of the course which, simply said, is indefinite. The college website describes the dual degree programme as a “5-year course” but in reality, that is the minimum time required for its completion. The groundwork for the thesis and its writing take at least a year after the regular 4-year course is over and so 5 years is the minimum time in which, one can hope to get the degree. The D students are required to take up a few MS courses in the fifth year but classes are few and so the major part of their time is spent on research. In general, five and a half years seems a reasonably fair estimate of time in which, one can hope to get a degree. Moreover, with the increased intake of research students, resources have to be stretched to their limit to accommodate all. This year, when the time came for the 2K7 batch to choose their departments as 3^rd year students, many had to compromise on their choice of department as the seats in that particular department were already full.

Research Blocks. Credit- Seargent Arbit

Saurabh, a CSE student, feels that dual degree courses are “Unfair because a 12th grader doesn’t know if he or she wants to do research or not”. After all, “whether or not he wants to do MS is something he can decide only after he has a fair notion of the subjects and departments and that’s not after atleast a year of joining college. So why bind him in the beginning?” offers another student.

The opening and closing ranks say much about the first choice of students. While CSE and ECE opened at 162 and 344 and closed at 1729 and 1921 respectively, the opening and closing ranks for CSD in the year 2008 were 157 and 2613 respectively and for ECD, 2093 and 2646. Although there are students, who willingly take up the D programme to avail the benefits of an integrated course, a survey reveals that for over 85% of the D students, dual degree is a second choice, which they opt for only if they cannot get CSE/ECE.

Of course, there’s always the benefit that by joining an integrated MS programme, a student can start research early and finish off the thesis in less time as compared to two separate B.tech and MS degrees. Moreover, MS students don’t have to sit for placements and their names are directly referred to companies by their guides and the average placement package is higher for a MS student.

The college provides the provision of switching to a dual degree programme from CSE/ECE and some students have indeed changed to dual degree. According to Shraddha, who converted to CSD from CSE after the second year, “If you know you want to go for MS later on, then it makes sense to convert. After all, with such an opportunity in hand, why go to any other college?”

Like any other argument this one too has much to be said for both sides. Which side holds more weight is a relative choice. And so the question hangs in the balance – D or E ?

The decision to rename the buildings came after some of the faculty members felt that the college buildings did not have enough character. The previous names – Girls’ Hostel, IIIT Main and Guest House were apparently not good enough. So, on 19th November, 2008  the students woke up to general consternation at the announcement on their laptop screens – the renaming of buildings with the general instruction that “We will all use these names from now, while we are addressing the location“.

The day soon arrived, when Girls’ Hostel became Parijaat Niwas, NBH ( New Boys’ Hostel ) became Kadamba Niwas and IIIT Main took up the name of Nilgiris!

While most were furious at the ’seeming stupidity’ and used the choicest of words from the dictionary of 4-letter expletives, a few were content to use this opportunity to make jibes at the opposite sex and instead of expressing anger, settled for a laugh instead. One can’t really blame them, considering that the abode of the fairer sex came to be called ‘Pari’jaat Niwas or that the gentlemen of NBH had the monstrous sounding ‘Kadamba Niwas’ as the name of their worthy haven.

This issue was also discussed in the student Parliament, where the faculty said that if the students had a problem with the names, they could suggest alternatives but the student body was not done expressing anguish over the demise of the much loved ‘GH’, ‘NBH’, ‘OBH’  and lashed out at the idea of any name replacing the old ones.

The erstwhile Block B. Credit- Seargent Arbit

Most students continued using the old names in the hope that if no one used the new names, they might simply die out. But the administration was not to be outdone by such puny tactics and every time the announcement for an event came in the mailbox, it always referred to the venue as ‘Saranga Hall’ or the erstwhile Room 119 of the main building. Of course, the bracketed expression “(the old room 119)” added as an afterthought, made the whole thing pointless. This renaming has created some confusion considering that, earlier, the flag hoisting ground was unofficially referred to as the ‘Kalakshetra’ ground but post-renaming, the Felicity ground has become the new ‘Kalakshetra’ whereas the flag-hoisting ground now goes by the name of ‘Sindhu Kshetra’.

The latest update on this ongoing battle of names is that the new names of the buildings have been boldly painted in blue against white so that unless one chooses to walk with eyes shut, one cannot ignore the names. So what do the students have to say about this? Gaurav, a 4th year student unhesitatingly calls it ‘the biggest crap ever’  while Anika (UG3 ), who is not against the idea of renaming feels that , “If they had to rename the buildings, a better theme could have been chosen”. Mudit (UG3) on the other hand, feels that the decision to rename the buildings was not only unnecessary but goes against the grain of reason. After all, “By IIIT Main, you understand that one is talking about the Main Building of IIIT. What do you understand by Nilgiri 1?”

The main buildings ( i.e. the academic office, the research blocks and the upcoming main building are named after mountain ranges, whereas the lawns are named after poets- Tagore, Vemana, Ghalib. The hostels have been rechristened  Parijaat Niwas ( GH ), Palash Niwas ( OBH ) and Kadamba Niwas ( NBH ). The ‘most ridiculous’ feature though, as it appears to Rini (UG3 ) is the inclusion of ‘Rohtang Pass’ (in the ‘Himalayan Range’ ) and the Nathu-La Pass (which runs between IIIT’s Vindhyas and Himalayas ). “We might as well start organizing tours of the campus for those who can’t visit the country in reality. After all, we’ve got Vindhyas, Himalayas, Nilgiris – what more can you ask for? Touche!”

The current students have definitely taken a stand. Now it remains for us to see whether the new crop of students entering this college would abide by their seniors’ wishes and continue to call the buildings by their original names or would the sight of the names imprinted upon the buildings make an impact and Nilgiris and Vindhyas would become the order of the day?

What’s in a name? Ask the IIITians!

And this urge to keep fit is the reason why IIIT seems to be in a flurry of activity for the past few weeks, as people sweat it out in the Gym, or spend the wee hours of the morning jogging. Of course, there’s the athletic crowd that prefers to better their reflexes playing some sport. Swimming, soccer, basketball, badminton and even cricket, if one considers the handful of people on the road in front of Girls’ Hostel (newly christened Parijaat Niwas) with a ball and a makeshift bat – it seems almost all the major sports are represented here.

Then of course, there’s the alternative crowd, who choose to follow the less trodden path of Ayurveda. There’s a 10-day ‘Guaranteed Weight Loss’ camp on, open to non-students, from the 5th to the 14th of July and it promises (as the name suggests) to make you feel lighter and more energetic at the end of it. It does, however, require a staunch resolution and a strict control on oneself to follow it through.

The participants are kept on a special diet consisting of boiled vegetables, sprouts and fruits. Unpalatable as it may sound, the fact remains that most of us happily take in a lot more than what the body actually requires and the principle behind this camp, as Yogacharya Vinayak puts it, is that the body gets just sufficient energy, and nothing extra. And after a 2-hr daily session involving breathing exercises, yogasan, pranayam, all you’re required to do is rest for the remaining part of the day. In the camp, Shankh Prakhshalan (expelling food till clear water passes through) and Vaman Dhoti (regurgitation of water) techniques are used to expel the wastage out of the body. Of course, weakness may follow as a consequence and hence the participants are asked to rest.

Camp in progress. Credit: Seargent Arbit

Opinions however, on the success or otherwise, of this camp are varied. For instance, Shubhangi , a 3rd yr student, likes to play basketball to keep herself fit but feels that, “It is useful for people, who are interested and can follow it”. Among other things is the issue of timings as the daily session is held from 5-7 in the morning and given the sleeping habits of most of IIIT’s inhabitants, getting up at such an ungodly hour rules out the option for many of those, who are interested. Somya (UG3) echoes this thought and adds that, “It’s better to indulge in some physical activity rather than starving oneself and moreover, the results are temporary”. Padmini, who started out with the camp and lost 2 kgs in 3 days itself, believes that it is effective but chose to discontinue as she felt too weak and found she could not focus on anything else for the remainder of the day. This weakness  though, Yogacharya mentions, is not unhealthy as it’s simply a result of the wastage expulsion and goes away in 3-4 days as the food intake increases and the body becomes accustomed to the diet, as was vouched for by the participants.

Although the numbers have dwindled from 11 on the first day to 5 on the 7th, those who did continue with the camp feel immensely satisfied with the results. Archana, a Ph.D student at IIIT, who has been practicing yoga for several years, feels ‘fit and energetic’ and even the neophyte Chokka Reddy, who comes to attend the camp from 15 kms away, feels his efforts are all for a good cause, having lost 5 kgs in 7 days.

At the end, different methods lead to the same result and though opinions may conflict, if it’s the results that count for, as long as a person is happy following his choice of programme, it does not matter what others may say. After all, it’s your choice to do something. All’s well that ends well, they say, and as long as everyone is happy doing their own thing, there need be no recriminations.

Campus Placements better known just as ‘Placements’ or ‘Campus’ can be thought of as the single most important aspect of the college life of Engineer. Academicians may tend to disagree with the fact, stating that acquisition of knowledge should be the main aim of a student and things like placement and others do automatically follow from there on and should be treated with secondary importance. While nobody disagrees with the funda of acquiring proper and in-depth knowledge but the basic rule of Engineering life is, doing everything at just the last moment, that’s why you will only find 1 or 2 people in a batch who take subjects seriously while being taught. Rest of the batch studies the subjects just before the D-Day (or should I say days).

Like almost every college in India, IIIT-H also has the custom of having Campus placements where companies are invited to come to campus, from where they can select their prospective employees through a rigorous process. The placement process though may vary from company to company but generally all the IT companies follow a fixed pattern. The placement generally consists of two parts

1. A written screening test

• · The test may be either a subjective or an objective one, depending on the choice of the company and the type of candidates they are looking for. While the subjective ones generally deal with the subject matter (may sometimes consist of writing an essay or something similar) but the pattern and question type of Objective test offer quite some variety, ranging from purely technical to a test which just checks your mental aptitude.
• · Some companies can even prefer to have a mixture of both Subjective and Objective tests with objective being the first screening factor and Subjective portion only coming to play after that
• · Generally companies take only a single written test but there have been cases where companies have had another round of written for candidates who clear the first round.

2. Interview

• · Most of the companies generally do tend to also have a few rounds of interviews. The number of interviews has been observed to range from 1(very rare) to 4-5 (quite rare). On an average a company has 2-3 rounds of interview and on the basis of the performance of the candidate in the interviews; he/she is either selected or rejected.
• · The placement being for a job of technical nature generally mean that they only look at your technical knowledge and not things like your communication skill and smartness, a certain amount of which you generally acquire by the time you reach your 4^th year. Even when the HR rounds are conducted by the companies, they are more of a formality and it is very rare that you will be kicked out, until and unless you do something outrageous like swearing in the interview (which fortunately has never been observed )

The companies are generally ranked on the basis of their package and name, both the factors bearing almost same weight, that’s why a few companies with less package got slotted earlier and vice versa. General protocol is to have a maximum of two companies slotted for a day so that things can be managed in an orderly fashion without too much burden being placed on the students with too many written tests and interviews on a single day also the fact to be considered is that more the number of companies, more will be the common candidates between the companies. Also the idea of having just one company a day may seem preposterous as it will make the process go on for like forever.

One more thing, which generally comes as quite disturbing to the students is the compulsion to dress in formal attire with the plainest or bore’st’ of shirts and trousers you can find in the market all being displayed in full glory on the bodies which never ever sported anything save a rock tee and cargos. All this concept of formal attire with clean shaven looks couldn’t have been more undesired, all this combining to make the students even more uncomfortable when trying to face an interviewer, but at times you need to go by the protocols of the world and this being one of them, you can’t complain too much about the issue.

As can be quite safely assumed, with all the talks of global recession and companies going into their shell when it came to hiring college recruits this time round, the placement scenario in all the colleges (which had placements after September) has been severely hit, with even the IIM-A, supposedly the best management institute in the nation delaying its placement hoping for a revival in the economy. The same effect was observed in IIIT-H, while last year saw a boom in placements with almost everybody getting packages to the tune of 7-8 lpa, this year has been quite hard on the students with the avg salary figures expected to drop quite a few notches as compared to the last year.

As can be expected, with such high stakes involved, this was not a very good time to be in for the 4^th year people, with disappointment, anger, tears abounding during the period (which is still not over as the placements are still going on) and things like optimism, happiness and laughter being very scarce to find. Laughter also whenever heard was the sound of an empty laughter with people trying to keep the mood normal by ridiculing their luck. Statements like

“We are prostitutes being lined up in front of the companies, each hoping that the price paid for himself/herself is high enough”

Being the flavor of the day, people coming up with newer and better forms of such statements just going on to prove whatever be the tensions surrounding, you just can’t take the wit out of some people.

All in all, you can safely say that though this may be the toughest time (tougher this year than previous years) but the fact remains that the more the stones are pelted at you, more stronger you get with each stone thrown at you and you learn to come back after every such setback. Some people may start getting disappointed with the fact that they didn’t as many bucks as they would have wanted or the optimist in the situation can look at the situation in another light and think that if I can get a job in this situation, this means that whatever happens in the future I am never gonna be fighting for money all my life and will be able to lead a respectful life, whatever and whenever I endeavor to do.

Similarly people of my college also tend to have the same feelings about the college and the hostel, you see all the familiar people day in and out, some are your juniors, some seniors, some friends, some foes and some are the people whom you just know by face but couldn’t ever get the chance to interact due to some or the other reason. IIIT being a small college there is much chance that you would be knowing almost all the people you see (specially from B.Tech ), after all the combined strength of 4 years of B.Tech in IIIT is 700 and colleges like IIT-Kgp take 700 students every year which gives people a very good chance to interact with almost whole of the college.

In the last 1 year, though IIIT is fast becoming a sort of anomaly to this and most of the people you see when you decide to stroll around in the campus are the unfamiliar faces which you haven’t had the chance to see before. Specially in the summer vacations with the first year students and people from the passing out batch leave the campus and many people from the 2nd and the 3rd year also leave and also because of the arrival of people from other colleges to do projects in the college, it generally happens that you can always find people whom you haven’t seen earlier in IIIT, but this summer has been the most strange summer for the people of IIIT….

The people of Gurukulam* have already been defying the strength of IIITians as you can see a lot of gurukulam people in the campus, but this summer I don’t know what happened to the college. I think a huge number of people must have come for summer projects in the college but every other face you saw in the campus was unrecognizable. All the common hang out places were filled by people who were not from IIIT. You go to canteen, you see a horde of new faces, coffee shop the scene is same and if ever you decided to visit the T.V. Room, it was already fill with those people.

I am not against people from other places coming to the college to do projects and stuff, this is a good college so people will surely come and do projects under the Profs here but I am concerned about the place. Each college has a culture of its own and our seniors after years of hard work have established a culture of the college and we also have done our best to try and preserve this culture. These people coming seems like an intrusion of our privacy to me. This is a home for all the students and if some unwanted people come who are not their guests but forced by somebody else to live in their home, they are bound to be upset.

Hoping that this ordeal finishes off fast, with the return of the current first years as the 2nd year seniors and the arrival of a fresh blood of young kids who will also become a part of this IIIT family, I am hoping that all these effects will diminish and we will be able to see more and more of IIITians in IIIT.

* Gurukulam – Its a scheme started by A.P. Govt under which financially backwards people are allowed to study in IIIT and use the resources at a very miniumum price. This has become almost a separate system with diff building for classes and different teachers too

There is construction going on left and right and wherever you can see in the campus for last few months. This all started with the construction of a new hostel block now known as OBHEB aka Old BOys HOstel Extension Block and since then it must be fucking raining funds on IIIT coz even after our desperate cries for the construction of a hostel in our first year when two of us had to be accomodated in pigeon hole of a room, and we had to suffer this for 2 whole years after which we finally got single rooms but after that the administration has been on a construction spree.

We have had two new hostel blocks, a new stage and now the baap of all, a new HUGE main building is being constructed, its gonna hev two wings and six floors quite large when compared with the current main building with a measly three floors. The Main building has seen its days of glory and fun. No student who has had a year in IIIT will ever be able to forget the legendary rooms like 104, 302 & 305 where all the formal and informal discussions generally used to happen. Whether it be the student parliament meeting or some FELICITY related meeting and even the student disciplinary committes also had their hearings in these rooms. Ofcourse the main purpose of these rooms (of having classes) was also served in the meanwhile. One of the best memory of this building is the photo shown below showing the geeky effect on the minds of IIITians. This has been one of the LOLest thing which has happened during my stay at IIIT.

There are a hell lot of rumours doing round about the future prospects of the building once the new building is completed. Some say that it is gonna be a hostel for the married Ph.D student, some say that this is gonna be a main building for the Gurukulam students. Whatever it is but I am sure gonna miss the labs 204 & 210 where every IIITian has understood the basic fundas of C Programming converting them from nobodies to programming gurus ready to take on the world.

Here’s looking forward to the day and hoping that it will also bring so many beautiful memories to the future generations of this college, some of whom will be joining on 1st August. In the end would just like to add this in dedication to our very dear “OLD” Main Building

There are places I remember
All my life, though some have changed
Some forever not for better
Some have gone and some remain
All these places had their moments