A Semester Deep

There’s no denying the fact that the end of finals week was like a breath of fresh air in a toxic landfill (I believe I’m borrowing that eloquent simile from Family Guy, my new TV online video streaming obsession). And yet, it was tinged with a tone of “Wow, I’m done with one of my eight semesters already? It doesn’t seem like it’s been that long.” However ironic as it may seem, I also reminisce about how chronologically distant orientation week seems to be. It’s like a bunch of neural synapses playing silly buggers with me. I’m also certain that this first paragraph resonates with quite a few of my fellow freshmen and freshwomen (Yes, I came up with that term just to make people question its legitimacy).

It’s the middle of winter break, and I’m on campus in Pittsburgh. Not because I don’t want to go home. But because of a number of other reasons:

• I like it here. As I mentioned before, CMU’s a nice home away from home.
• I had some “unfinished” business in the ECE lab…
• I’ve been slacking on some research I’d taken up halfway through the semester and need some time to work on that.
• A round trip home and back isn’t exactly cheap.
• I’ll have to return a week early anyway to help with Build Week for Fringe buggy (More on what exactly buggy is later – otherwise just look up www.cmubuggy.org).
• Free tickets by Megabus means I’m going on a quick getaway to Washington DC and New York City in the first week of January.
• I was planning on exploring a lot more of this city, but haven’t really gotten as much done as I’d originally planned.

However, despite this list of things which should be keeping me busy, there’s a large Blackboard shaped hole in my head. FYI, Blackboard is CMU’s online course management thingamajig. As absurd as it may sound, but after several weeks of relentless hard work, the complete and utter lack of course readings, assignments, tests, homework and exams is getting to me! It’s a dangerous drug…

First, a little more CMU-plugging. I’m not being paid to do this, it’s just that I do, honestly, from the bottom of my heart, feel this way about this place. First, it’s impossible for me to consider alternate universes where Vivek Nair didn’t accept his admission offer to CMU. Why? Because I have no idea how this place compares to other universities. I’ll be honest, after being at this university for a couple of months, I’ve realised that ratings, blogs, online guides can only tell you so much about a place. You need to be there to experience it all. And I don’t just mean a quick campus tour. Besides, accepting a college offer based on a campus tour is like marrying someone after a date. Not that I’m one to speak – I didn’t even do the whole campus tour deal before I accepted my offer – which essentially makes me someone who just married someone off an online matchmaking website without even meeting said person(ified university). That said, it’s really difficult to imagine myself at another college. I’m sure the other Viveks in all the alternate universes are equally happy in their universities of choice. (Note to all juniors: Do not let college acceptance/rejection letters get to you. In all likelihood, after a few months, you won’t be able to imagine it any other way (Now if only I had a time machine to send this back an year to myself… (parentheseception))). On the other hand, I’m pretty sure a few Viveks have dropped out simply because they felt like it…

Getting back to CMU: it’s like a black hole of talent. It naturally pulls bright high school students towards it and sucks them into this small campus to create dangerously high levels of talent density. What gives me the authority to say this? Nearly every person, every…single…individual, I’ve met at CMU has one or more talents that makes me go – “Wow, that person is really amazing. I wish I could do something like that” (Yes, I am fully aware that that was the third time I used the word “Wow” in this post, and no, it does not bother me in the very least). It’s true – I’ve met people with incredibly high levels of intelligence, creativity, leadership skills and a host of other talents. I could be more specific, name people, embarrass them but they all know who they are. Another one of the other things I love about the people I’ve met here is the way I can simply bounce ideas off people. I’ve ended up forming a host of friendships that do end up going a level deeper – people I can talk ideas and issues over with – technical, philosophical, anything – not necessarily limited to any curriculum – with absolute certainty that I’m not boring anyone to death. It’s that kind of intellectual freedom that CMU and the people I’ve met here afford me.

I feel that this post would be incomplete without a brief description of some of the instructors I’ve met here. I won’t be specific, and at the risk of overly generalising, will say that most, if not all, of the faculty I’ve met here are incredibly knowledgeable, extremely supportive, absolutely approachable and I think I’ve run out of superlatives at this point. It’s here that I was introduced to the concept of “Office Hours” – an alien concept for me before I got to CMU. The idea that an instructor would set aside time exclusively to answer questions that students might have was definitely something new to me. It’s not just the professors and TAs really, even Supplemental Instruction (student-led extra sessions) were immensely helpful (special shoutout to a certain SI leader – you know who you are if you’re reading this). And I’m really glad I made the most of all the opportunities I had available to me as a student – not because I got to clear my doubts or anything, but along the way, I got to know just a little bit about how some of these fascinating minds worked, or as a friend put it, “It’s like osmosis, you just sit there and soak in all of it like a sponge”. Even though these are just freshmen-level courses – essentially mindless work for most of the faculty – you do get the feeling that they are completely involved in the whole teaching process and want you to learn. Looking back, without that level of enthusiasm exuding from the faculty, I probably wouldn’t have been interested in lectures either.

And that brings me to the work itself. No, I won’t go into specifics, but I’ll be honest – there was a lot of it. So I was lucky enough not to put myself in a position where an all-nighter was of the essence, but I came close a few times. It’s as if orientation week was a frolic filled few (say the last three words over and over, really really fast) days of laughter, food and activities at the beach, followed immediately by the academic equivalent of a tsunami. I’m pretty sure that most people were caught off guard, like me. It was like trying to drink out of a fire hydrant. Traction was hard to find at first, but eventually, most of the people I know got the hang of it. I don’t know about others, but I for one, take my work very seriously, no matter how banal it might seem at first sight. Probably has a lot to do with my insatiable thirst to know more and do better – which, hopefully, is not really a bad thing. The seemingly never-ending homework assignments, the papers, the exams – it all seemed like a huge burden at the time, but in retrospect, I’m proud I survived my first semester. This is essentially the cue for upperclassmen to be rolling about in splits, telling me I have no idea what’s going to hit me in the not so distant future: “Pfssh, silly overly idealistic freshman, he’ll wish he was never born by the end of junior year.” They may very well have a point – CMU is well known for its academic rigour. However, I’ll take things one step at a time. That said, the first step has put me in an interesting dilemma. CMU’s grading scale goes up to a maximum CGPA of 4.0. I’ve started off with a 4.0. Now that’s a good thing and a bad thing. Good thing because, well…doing well doesn’t really need a proper justification now, does it? And it’s a bad thing because when that first B or C does eventually wind up on the transcript, it’s going to be just that little bit more painful. But anyway, that’s definitely a first world problem and also one I won’t have to deal with till May.

I feel that this is also a good point of time to reflect on what’s changed over this past semester. Not a curriculum overview, mind you – that’s the last thing you should expect on this blog. More like a “Wow, things have changed and I didn’t even have time to notice.” For starters, I’ve had to radically change my work ethic over the past few months. The transition from having literally no homework in the last two years of school to having weekly assignments was a bit jarring at first, but thankfully, not a huge adjustment. Also, in many ways, college was a fresh start. That’s because since I was in a completely new environment, where no one had any preconceptions of what I could or couldn’t do, it allowed me to try new things without having to worry about what people would think of me. Not that it ever stopped me before, but the collective sense of liberty with respect to action and thought that the first few weeks of college injects into the minds of freshmen really does let an individual develop in unimaginable ways. I saw it not only in myself, but others around me. For instance, before I got to CMU, I was convinced of the fact that I was born with two left feet. A semester down the line, not only have friends commended me on my moves (which, in all honesty, are still rather pathetic), but I’m motivated to try out for the university wide Dancers’ Symposium next semester – just a singular example of what the combination of letting oneself loose and positive peer pressure can do.

The development didn’t really stop there – I enjoy pursuing intricacies of topics that professors choose to leave for higher-level classes. The nitty-grittys of why things are the way they are motivate me to look beyond the course. And for once, my questions are no longer met with the frustrating refrain from school: “Beta, it’s out of the syllabus” – faculty appreciate these questions and do not mind going out of their way to satisfy the intellectual curiosity of students in this university. I spent hours agonising over something as elementary as the precise manner in which a capacitor reacts to square waves, and I always had someone to talk to it about. And that’s not all – after going to a few events and talking to a few people – it was actually surprisingly easy to find a small time research assistantship at the university. Again, even when I’m working with people far far more experienced in the field than I am, I don’t detect any trace of condescension or any form of negativity at all when I ask questions that seem elementary, even to me as I ask them.

Moreover, even the infrastructure CMU has to offer does speak volumes about the university’s commitment to its students. It’s winter break – and I asked for access to the ECE labs over break, which was promptly granted once I explained what I wanted to do. When I got locked out of the lab, possibly by the cleaning staff, the lab manager popped by the next day and unlocked the door – this was the day after Christmas. It’s little things like this that give me the feeling that innovation and personal projects are not merely tolerated, but enthused over.  And speaking of infrastructure, the fact that I also get access to some really serious video recording equipment is only a small perk in the context of a bigger picture. Not an arts major? No problem – just activate your ID card. It doesn’t matter what you signed up for when you accepted your admission offer, you can do what you want once you get here. Although these 2 instances might not seem to be related, but they’ve let me explore my technical and creative sides in ways that I couldn’t predict before I got here.

Honestly, I am capable of going on and on, but it’s safe to draw a line here and say that despite CMU being among the most expensive universities for higher education in the world, at this moment in time, it seems like an investment that has the potential to yield benefits far into the future, both tangible and intangible. It all depends on whether you’re looking to reach out and grab each opportunity and milk it for all its worth. Hopefully, I manage to do that over the next 7 semesters I’ve got lined up in Pittsburgh.