Blue blooded

Every engineering graduate goes through the two-credit (read: do kaudi ka) trauma at the fag end of his (am not a sexist, but 'hers' please don't take offence on my persistent usage of the male pronouns .. as it is, 'hers' is a rare species in engineering campuses) undergraduation. As soon as the GV dates are announced, a distinct buzz can be noted among the final years. No one gives a damn for a two-credit lab, but everyone around feels the pinch of the Grand Viva. Strangely, it's found that practically no one ever flunks the GV (if you're one of those who did, I have no words for you) and still, every one is more worried than they ever were.

Interestingly, students see this as the one opportunity professors have to get on their nerves. I feel, attendance is a much more potent weapon than a GV :P

Anyway, like any other hapless engineering student, I too had to go through the torture today. Four precious days, which could have been spent far more productively on tv series, ipl, facebooking and cricket were wasted in preparing on subjects many of which I never liked. Though, even at the face of such great impediment, I managed to carve out time for innumerable rounds of mindjolt games ;)

Kum-akal-alert: Here on, I'll speak in a language more conducive for Chemical Engineering students. Though, there's nothing which should discourage you to read further since I have successfully (almost) managed to scrape through the four years despite of this language being alien to me till now.

Time: 1345 hours

Date: 7th April, 2010

Location: Room 311, Department of Chemical Engineering

Scapegoats: Moi, Damz, Maddys, Sneho, Bansax, Ghosh, Bholam

The GV scheduled to begin at 1400 hours and we, (well, most of us) who have never had reached a class on time, had reached for the GV before time .. situations.

Each student pitted against each of the three professors. The first three students went in and I was called in after a tantalizing 45 minutes. Imagine what could be running through the mind of a guy who knows he has to enter a den of man-eating (I don't think women would want a woman-eating lion :P ) lions and has to wait for 45 minutes before that. Now go further and imagine another guy waiting with you to go in and keeping on telling you, "yaar kum se kum ek-do haath toh bach hi jayega" (and that guy being the ring-master of the lions :| .. umm, since this could be a far-fetched analogy, read the endnotes for clarification). And if this was still not enough, how about this den being in Libya - home to the hottest place on Earth.

Thankfully, the 45 minutes ended. And then, I met one of the most coolest professors I've ever come across. Unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity to be in his class, but I never thought that I'd regret that within just 10 minutes of interaction with him. Anyway, he went on catching me on some basic fluid mechanics' concepts and was soon over with me when he found that I knew nothing :P

And then, suddenly, as soon as I changed over to the next professor, I was hit by a Agni-III missile. He handed me a piece of paper, encoded in that alien language I told you about with nothing decipherable (later, even the ring-master told me he could not fathom what was written .. so, I did not do that bad :P). Thankfully, I only had to answer in True/False without giving any explanation :D Who'd miss that chance :D

Next, a barrage of questions on IPC, which I had no clue about. Not that I had not prepared IPC, but come on, IPC is IPC. One is not supposed to ask difficult questions on that. And that too questions with terms I had not even obscurely heard of :O

Somehow, I extricated myself giving answers which went nowhere. God save me!

The next professor gave a answer-as-I-ask-or-you-don't-know type round. Rapid fire questions with some rapid-fire answering (yay!) and some rapid-fire blanks (yay! again :D).

Sooner than not, it was over. Am pretty sure that my group's viva did not last for 45 minutes which was a clear indication that by the first group's viva itself, the professors had understood it's useless to grill them much :P

All the while this happened, the three earlier scapegoats (from the first group which entered), were made to sit in the viva-room itself (so that they do not go out and spill the questions to the people waiting outside for the next round). AND, they were giggling :x :x

So, there ended my viva. Eh, GRAND VIVA. Hope I don't get the dreaded "Re-viva". :)

PS1: I scored my highest score in Qilox in Mindjolt which overshadowed the guy second in my list by more than 3 times his score :D yay!! and this, yesterday, ie, night before the viva :)

PS2: That ring-master would be the guy who is DR 1 and the one who's almost absolutely sure to get an Ex grade. Imagine him continuously ranting - "B toh lag hi jayega" while waiting for your turn in viva :|

PS3: No more of those ugly subjects .. yay!

PS4: Beginning of the end of my 4-year stay ..

PS5: Played volley for a couple of hours .. :)

PS6: Do see the cartoon I made on GV posted in one of the earlier posts :)