Probably Approximately Correct

 By now, you should have had an idea about my mental state by the end of 4 semester. I think for some (undue) reasons, my fellow students rated me high and also gave me credits for many things which are incomprehensible to me (even now). I was neither a jack of all trades nor a master of one. I knew I was not worth the ticket to Germany, neither was I confident nor prepared. Also, my presence would be only a burden for Yaso (who was already facing pressures from various fronts) and also (for obvious reasons) steal the limelight from Yaso; who was solely responsible for any credit that can possibly be out from that work. And last but not the least, I was sure that I would not be continuing for Rescue after the trip. So, there were various kinds of demons floating around in my head. I would say a superposition of all these events along with setbacks on family front drove me in to a state of utter madness and unexplainable burdens. Hence, I never  relished going on that trip or being a part of the team. However, I was able to clear at least some of my indecisiveness when I went up to Prof. Kamal and told him, “My heart was not here and I need to get a move on.” To his credit, Prof. Kamal was open to my wishes. We made the trip, but did not perform as well as everyone expected us to do.

Discrete Maths gives me scares even now. During my latest visit to MIT, an interaction with Prof. Nancy Lynch goes like this - “Prasant, There appears to be two phases in your B.tech. The first two years are, I would say,  below par;  and then there are  a sudden upsurge in the later years. Specifically, I was wondering how could you arrive at ‘C’ in a basic, fundamental course like Discrete Maths?” What should tell her? Should I tell her that, just moments before the examination when me and Ravi were looking through the page which had all the Greek symbols (refer part 2) and their interpretations; the Satan of my life (Yaso :P) appears from nowhere and gloats “Dudes! These two pages are not in the syllabus for endsem! Chill down and have a look at what I am going through, this is a sure shot topic (btw…he was going through probability and ironically nothing appeared from that topic).”  At the end, I did convey to Nancy that it was a self inflicted damage.

 From this sem, I did very little in deciding which courses to enroll for. Almost all the background work was done by sandeep, Bhaskara, Satty, Ravi and sometimes GN. All that I had to do was to be in the group. It was such a wonderful group to be with. A group which takes down notes, does assignments independently and also offer tutorials before exams.  The best part of working as a group is that - Your effort/contribution may be as little as waking up the members for the classes/breakfast. And you need not worry about the rest. Each person needs to play his role and the job will be done.  I think it will not be an understatement to say, “My B.tech was also more of a group and less of me.” We cracked courses like Network communications(as per my rating it is the toughest course I have done at IIIT), Human Desires, Graph Theory, Science technology and Society, topics in Information Security, Sanskrit, Numerical Analysis and the other core courses.

 In my fifth semester, things did not start briskly. They were pretty slow and sluggish to start. It was the year in which most of our batch has shifted to OBH(Old Boys Hostel). The lethargy went to such an extent that - the group decided to Cryptography and I did not dare to join them because of my sore experiences with Prof. V ’s courses. In those days, it was mostly taken for granted that an honors student needed to do 26 credits of course work in this semester. And it was at this point, Prof. Prosenjit Guptasuggested me to take up an independent study with Dr. K. Srinathan. This was the first time when I went up to him and asked for an independent study. He was very tentative for signing on the project form (As I understand now, Srinathan, apparently, was shocked by the attitude of the students after they have taken the signature from him.) But, somehow on that day, I was able to convince him. Our interactions were pretty normal and nothing significant seemed to be happening. More often than not, we would run into discussions about on cricket, stellar families and his experiences during PhD. Those were arbit discussions during which (sometimes) I would vent out my frustrations about life. He would calmly listen to me and try to give me better views/interpretations on how one may view things.

There was still nothing serious I was aiming at. However, all of this changed one day in a compilers class when on an usual note Prof. Govindarajulu was giving his usual words of wisdom and was trying to awaken students in his own style and in a fist of a moment he said the following, “Did you ever open an ACM site? Do you understand what a research article  is? Does any one of you have it in you to write an article in an ACM conference or the best conference of your area?” Frankly, speaking till that date I was vexed of his talks in compilers class. I was even disgusted with some of the comparisions/examples being given by him. However on this particular, I decided the following, “Enough of this clown! Lets put an end to his challenges!” It happened in a moment. From that day on, I was on a single mission. The urge for that single article which will shut the old man was what drove me mad. For some reason, I went out at full throttle at him. In one of the mid sem question papers, it so happened that a majority of the questions were from the previous year’s paper. In the class after that mid sem, he was seeking opinions and I could not resist myself and had a swipe at him. I was relishing that and hence went ahead and asked him for justifications. He announced in class the following, “Those students who take up projects with me, need not give the midsems and the endsem examinations and will be graded based on their projects. “Out shear anxiety to skip an exam, I made a deal with him. The anxiety was probably due to the fact that I wanted to experience the feel of skipping an exam and also that from my childhood (for most of the time, if not all the time) I was a sincere student following the teacher carefully, going by the rules; in a single word ‘Student No 1′.

As I was an honors student, I was already doing an honors project with Prof. Prosenjit Gupta. At that time, I had a lot of misconceptions about projects (as already mentioned in Part 2). In a theoritical project, getting a move on is relatively tough and it took me all my B.tech to understand that fact. The project became stagnant because of obvious reasons from myside like lack of interest and also proper direction. However, the urge to write an article in an top forum kept haunting me. I gave up all the other wishes and in a way started living for the that one thing.  I, also, realized one important thing: In order to write an article at a top forum, you need to be working in an area/field which you are passionate about. Otherwise, the task is nearly an impossible one. As the 5 semester dawned to an end; the urge had only increased multifolds. The exploration to find an area/problem  became more rigorous.

I had to use the 6 semester to find out my area of interest and do it quickly as time is already upon me.  In an attempt to find out the flavours of more topics, I felt one way was to work with as many people as plausible and hence, get a feel of the area. So far, I have worked with Prof. Kamal, Prof. Govindarajulu and Prof. Prosenjit; unfortunately I did not get passionate on any of these things. Obviously, there is something wrong with me, for I never saw a student switching so many professors and places (let me come back to this point later).  All I saw was an article to put a lid on the challenges of the old man. Now, in hindsight I realize that my inability to spend/concentrate for a sufficient amount of time led me to this  point of desperation. Most of the times if we can spend some insignificant amount of time on any topic, it is more than enough to make that topic interesting. As someone rightly said (from Pranav’s signature) — “There are no uninteresing things, there are only uninterested people.” The lack of immersion is what that creates the mirage of disinterest for us.

Moving on, in my quests to maximize the oppurtunity to find a suitable area for me, I opened on all fronts.  I didn’t continue with Prof. Prosenjit Gupta (who was my honors mentor) and instead,  chose to do a BTP under Dr. Kishore Kothapalli. I also wanted to use my TAShip in assisting me. Based on my experiences in the 5 sem as a TA for DLD and Electrical Sciences, I felt in order to do something significant as a TA I needed some flexibility. And what better course than ToC (Theory of Computation) which is considered a timepass course and given least attention both by the institute and students. These qualities are necessary as if I either take up a course which is considered serious either by the institute (say, like DS) or by students (say like, DBMS, Graphics, OS);  I would be answerable to many and in the first place and may be, I also need the consent of various people before I took up any decision. 

The biggest gain for me in that semester was the sheer oppurtunity to interact with a great many number of people. There were a lot of things tried out which were out of the box(at least in IIIT’s settings). The problem, however, was the fact that even I was new to ToC and let me make myself clear by saying, “Even I didn’t know ToC when I was TA nor I did I know the answers to the questions I gave!”  More bluntly– I didn’t come out of my mother’s womb with a ToC textbook in my hands.  All I did was to spend a considerable amount of time in preparing for the classes and other things. On average I used to spend at least 4-5 hrs on preparing for the tutorials. And by the sheer amounts of time I spent on ToC, I fell in love with the subject. Rather, I should say I was made to fall in love. The course, I would say, did not go great guns the first time I was the TA. It was ok, the intent was well received by the students. But there were important lessons for me as a TA. One key aspect when you experiment is that you should also carefully take down the observations. For me, when someone conducts an experiment, it is his duty to analyse the results and learn from them. One point which I would like to make here is the following — “At IIIT, lots of experiments are being conducted by the administration and as far as my understanding goes, there are no observations made nor at least the recordings of the experiments. This is utterly disgusting to see such pointless experiments being conducted.” (wait for an independent post on this topic)

A major part of my 6 semester went towards the ToC TAShip. Other things like BTP, courses like  SE were completely off my mind. BTP, however luckily, was mangeable as it was a topic closer to ToC and hence went on well for most part — We were even planning to write an article to a journal. I was happy as I thought I  made some good progress towards my  goal of writing at a top forum. My BTP problem involved a lot of definitions and most of the time was spent in explaining the definitions and the problem to the committee. My viva usually went on  for about 50-60 mins but I performed well and from what I hear I got an A in both the viva’s. After the viva, me, prof. Kishore, Prof. Venkaiah and another Prof. from Chennai Maths Institute submitted an article to a conference and things were truly amazing. It was a dream turn true for me. I was so close to meeting my set target of writing to a top forum. 

And then this happens — a week after the second viva,  I turn up in Prof. Kishore’s cabin and tell him, “Respected Sir, I will be quitting BTP.”  Prof. Kishore says,” How can you? You have registered for a 4 credit project and you have not done work worthy of 4 credits (you are not worth more than 2 credits); this is madness. There is no other way but to finish the other 2 credits as well. You cannot skip those two credits.  there are no free lunches, I wont give them for free!” And I say, “Dear Prof.,  Leave about the 2 credits which are pending, I do not want to collect the 2 credits for which I have performed as well!” And bid adieu to him. What made be take such a horrendous call? Am I a manic? Do I hate orderiliness ? Am I ‘the joker’ in disguise? To know more wait till the next post.

Up next summers ‘07,  7th and 8th sems……