It was indeed Xtremeeeee!!

{

This post of mine is inspired from seniors!
}

First semester had just started. First few days was about knowing teachers and learning rules of an engineering college. A w eek or two into the semester seniors started flooding our class. They came to sell every possible thing they bought in their first year. Lunch breaks didn't seem like breaks. 

It was a market where two seniors are fighting amongst each other-"Maine isko pehle dhunda tha, Mein hi isko book bechunga." While the junior slowly comes and tells- "Mere pass toh already book hai. Maine woh wale senior se li! Saste mein!" And then the 3 seniors start fighting.

After seniors got exhausted of their stock, then came the committees. Not just one. Plenty of them. All wasted our lunch breaks proving how good they were. ( FACE gave us samosas! No grudges against FACE! :D)
FACE was a college committee,
CSI was a national committee

but,
IEEE was an international committee!
Though most expensive of all, the way they portrayed it was awesome!
So I became an IEEE member.
I remember during the 'committee festive week' each one asking the other, "Tu kaunsi committee join kar raha hai? " I would reply, "All of them" . They would still ask, "IEEE bhi join kar raha hai?" (Yeah, compared to others IEEE was expensive :P )
Then came IEEE's main event - IEEE Extreme- A 24 hour coding event. You get a chance to stay a full day in college! That was the most attractive thing. Coding and all was okay! :P
Suhani, Nirav and me teamed up! Team name  : CodersA  (Dont ask where that came from! )
IEEE informed us to assemble at 5:30 a.m. on October 23rd! First expression- LOL!
But then as first years, full of excitement I did manage to reach at about 6 am, to find that only half the crowd had come !  The full crowd comprised of a very few first years, many S.E's and T.E's and a handful of B.E.'s. We were introduced to Mooshak. An interface used to display questions and submit codes. Java, C++ and many more programming languages were allowed. Being F.E.'s we barely knew C++ :P.
First few questions were already out! Every problem seemed as difficult as the previous one!
We read each question a couple of times hoping to understand it! Unsuccessful! A first few hours were absolute bore! With me just staring at the blue screen of Turbo C++. Only lines of code written in it were:

#include<iostream.h>
#include<conio.h>
void main()
{
}

All the other time I was wondering what would they give for lunch :P
Well it was lunch time and we were given coupons to the SP JAIN mess!
Lunch over and it was back to room 606 where we started coding again!
Then a particular code got our attention! It was about calculating the area of polygon whose angles are given (Never mind!). CodersA started working on it!  We took great amount of time to actually start typing something! A few other classmates got their codes accepted. We weren't that dumb also! :P
After lot of efforts we did manage to submit it. Code not accepted! It was the first time! Okay a few changes! and resubmitted . Still not accepted! Then we looked for help!
Took help from all B.E.'s. Thanks to Priyank, Sumiran and Preeti for helping us out! :D
Still the code wasn't accepted.
Frustrated from coding and the code not being accepted,
I decided to do the ultimate, write a suicide letter!
Nirav and me, depressed from the code not being accepted started writing one!

Yeah that's us, writing and talking to our parents! 

And after a while I completed writing one! Venting out all the anger against Mooshak for not accepting our code... 

Here it is!

Yeah That was the suicide note! 

I showed it to some seniors and IEEE committee members!
They all had a laugh!
But Still :@ The code wasn't accepted. Post sunset....we continued trying. Did manage to shift attention to other problems! There were 17 problems. We were stuck with one for hours!
Dinner time, we had pav bhaji (Yes I remember all the food we had! :D ). Followed by some guitar session and ice cream with seniors! We were already a bit tired. Still kept on trying. Called every possible senior....googled everything..Still that Mooshak didnt accept it! :@ We were going crazyyyy!!!!

Played Counter Strike in between. Checked out others progress which was far better than us! :|

Finally at around two, It got accepted !!!!!!!!!

Relief! I started dancing and so did my team mates! I went out shouting crazilyy!!! Hugged everyone that came in my way+! Energy levels shot infinity! Jumping and dancing all around!

We still had three hours to go! Thought we could solve another one! But no! We were tooo  happy to solve another one! Played CS ....watched seniors play Charades! And left Suhani to solve problems alone! :P
At around 4:30, completely sleepy and exhausted, we decided to leave! But couldn't go anywhere beyond  SPIT entrance! We slept on the stairs! Woke up suddenly at some unknown time! And started walking towards the Andheri station! Seemed like the longest walk ever!

10 days later results were announced!
560th worldwide
50th India
5th college

That's not bad for first years I believe  :P

All in all, it was an awesome experience!
Thanks to IEEE. (We didn't get the goodies yet! :P)

#WaitingForTheNextYear!

 

How It All Began!

                       All started with the CET!  Though after appearing for it I thought it ended all! Appearing for the toughest CET in a decade was horrible!  But fortunately I sailed through! Results were out, and with only 169 I thought I will end up in D.J.Sanghavi  ( making use of the Gujarati quota :P ). But hearing other people score less was comforting and increased my hopes of getting into a better college!
The only colleges I knew which had a name were,
1. VJTI
2. SP College
3. DJ Sanghavi
Surely didn't want admission in VJTI or DJ Sanghavi, So it was! 

Sardar Patel Institute Of Technology!

Heard about institutional round forms! 20% of the total seats are up for grabs!  Filled it up... Merit list was out. I was 27th on the list!
With only 12 seats on offer in the Computer stream and Computers being the most elite branch in SPIT, it seemed difficult to get a seat!
D-Day arrived and it was raining heavily! Every certificate, xerox, photos and demand draft was ready!  Mom and me caught a rick from Parle East, traffic and water logging didn't allow us to move any further than Andheri Station! That moment I realized, it is a herculean task to get  a rickshaw from Andheri station to Bhavans... Mid way to college, I met my friend who was in his car...So gave us a lift till college!
I reached SPIT! Saw it for the first time .. Nice Entrance, huge campus ...Everything a student would need!
We were told to assemble in room 101. Little I knew this would become my class for the next one year!
Numbers 1-30 were called in the conference room! One year gone and  that is the only time I have seen the conference room!
The process started after a small speech from the principal.
And then the drama started!
Ranks 1,2 and 3 all take computers! 9 seats left, 24 more people to go! I certainly lost all hopes of getting a seat! . I tried ways and means to convince people! I still remember Akshay and Rajvi also helping me to get a seat! We had met a few days before, that is a different story though! So the process continues with fewer computer seats going! A few absent people were like angels to me! They pushed my rank and chances of getting a seat a bit up! Now it was all equal....Not many computer seats going....EXTC IT and ETRX being equally distributed! It was three seats left at rank 22! The next takes computers! 2 seats rank 23..Heart beats increasing ...Prospects of getting a seat decreasing! The next one also takes computers! its rank 24 and just one seat is left!
But the next two people take I.T and EXTC and I am dancing with joy!
Principal calls for number 27....and she asks what do you want! I say "Computers". She announces last seat of computers left anyone before number 27 still wants it? There is no reply! I have Computers written on my application form!!! :D :D
And it ends a morning of drama...with me successfully getting a Computers seat!
Didn't bother about filling any forms later...
So here I am in S.P.I.T. and after a year I can say I would have never got into a better college!
SP rocks! :D