Counselling session at DCE:

Sitting at the counselling session, it was close to 9:30pm, a vague thought struck my mind and I decided to share it with my dad. I asked dad, “Papa, I won’t get a course of my choice here since my rank is too low whereas I already have a course of my choice back there in that college.”

Dad sighed and said, “Please don’t give me a heart attack right now. Just take what you get here. We’ll discuss later.” Being the obedient girl, I complied without any further questioning. Later on, when I was thinking about what I said, I realized, it is DCE that we are talking about. You just can’t miss the opportunity. No matter how dearly you love CSE. Moreover, wasn’t I trying to run away from those girls? What was I thinking?! And that is when my senses came back to me.
So the wait for my turn starts. Finally around 2200hrs on 22nd Aug’09, my name is called and after a 20 minutes long procedure, I finally get an admit to one of the good colleges in India! Happiness was what I felt and it was beyond me to contain it.

The drive back home from college was filled with excitement and a lot of phone calls and messages and……….. a challan. The challan, sigh, epic timing it had and it wasn’t even our fault. Bleh! Anyway we managed to cover 40kms in 45mins. That was something!

Moving on…

First Day at DCE:

For a student who had just passed out from school, looking at the tall buildings and beautiful architecture of DCE was a welcome change. When I entered the DCE campus, stating that the view took my breath away, would be an understatement. I always appreciated architecture but this was awesome! Little did I realise that these oh so brilliant reviews about this college would be shattered pretty soon, but we’ll get there later. Anyway, I entered the college campus, hoping to find a familiar face. I remember a specific name during the counselling session and I hoped that she would be there too. The walk to the department was long! Really long! It came as a shock because I was used to my small school. Oh! now was the time to grow up, yeah. So still searching, I come across so many faces. Anxious mothers, impatient students, students with this silly grin, students with their school friends, and students who had already made new friends. Finally, I recognized few students from the counselling. I went and stood next to them. The chit chat begins, and we find out the procedure and all and end up in the class assigned to us. When we entered the class, we went silent for several moments. The reason being, the class was already brimming with students and we had no idea where we’d fit in and most importantly, how we’d fit in. We ended up ‘adjusting’ in the class somehow, struggling to fit in. The next shock came when we were told that this was a class of another department and that we were supposed to spend our first semester with them. The angry mutters were unanimous. First we joined in 15 days late, we end up getting clubbed with an already ongoing class, and they expected us to catch up with all the studies and be prepared for the first set of exams scheduled from the 15th of next month. I mean wow; that is when all the wow moments got macerated.

With this started the hell of a time in the most prestigious institute of our time. Every day was a battle, a new complaint, a new dislike for the institution that we were supposed to love and like and spend the most important four years of our lives.

Enter Mansi Ghai:

Few weeks into college and I’d made a few friends and I was a little annoyed with my schedule. Yes, travelling 40 km one way daily, just so that you could reach college and ‘think’ of attending classes was extremely annoying for me. Passing time in college was becoming difficult. People were making friends at a rapid rate, getting close to people and stuff that happens at college. I on the other hand, was very apprehensive about letting people come close to me, both physically and emotionally. I was too much of a personal bubble person. I was more of a person who likes to be alone and happy with themselves, too much of interference from strangers wasn’t appreciated, I just liked to be independent and happy.

In this turmoil of getting a hold of myself and trying to be sociable, I noticed a face, which stood out from the crowd. I don’t know how I knew it, but I just knew that I had to talk to this female. The perfect opportunity to go and talk to her came while we were in this chemistry lab, performing titrations. I took a good few minutes and looked at this girl and tried to reason with myself as to why talking to her would be a bad idea. Yes, people scared me and girls were never my favourite people to talk to. But like I said, there was something about her. So I gathered the courage and walked up to her. Yes I know I sound like a wimpy guy who’s planning on asking a girl out but hey I’m just telling you what I felt at that moment.

Ah! So walking up to her, I greet her and began talking to her….