How to study like an IITian

Look­ing through the hits on my blog from Search, I noticed a few based on “how to study like an IIT­ian”. Frankly speak­ing — I’m sure there are a lot of mis­con­cep­tions float­ing around out there about how IITians study (fur­ther spread by the infa­mous 5 point­ers) — so in the inter­ests of improv­ing the level of infor­ma­tion on the inter­net and in pub­lic inter­est, allow me to elaborate.

The Golden Rule, The First Com­mand­ment and the Code by which every IIT­ian must live by is never do any­thing before the last minute. If the pre­sen­ta­tion is due at 13.00, com­plet­ing it before 12.30 is blas­phemy and before 12.00 means that the con­cerned IIT­ian has been abducted by aliens and replaced by a dopple­ganger. Lab reports — even those involv­ing 30 pages of writ­ing, 10 pages of cal­cu­la­tions and 20 graphs each with atleast 50 points (all of which must be drawn exclu­sively by hand) must never be started before the night before it is due. You get my drift, I assume.

Those who actu­ally buy books are an endan­gered species — fast dying out. Books are arranged by jugaad, through seniors, not return­ing books to the insti library, from the hos­tel library, pho­to­copies, not buy­ing at all. And so on.

Class Notes are an alien con­cept con­ceived by the same alien dopple­gangers I men­tioned ear­lier. And are pho­to­copied and dis­trib­uted through­out. Repeatedly.

Read­ing room is a euphemism for some­thing else involv­ing social­iz­ing, ornithol­ogy, etc. Ex(hibition) Hall is often men­tioned with an extra s appended on the right word. The only way to actu­ally accom­plish any­thing is  to sit fac­ing the wall, with a pair of head­phones. And maybe blinkers.

Another phe­nom­e­non often observed is that group study is extremely pop­u­lar. I always doubt the effi­cacy of this method, though peo­ple I know are extremely suc­cess­ful in fol­low­ing this method. Includ­ing my room-mate and batch-mates. I have failed mis­er­ably in earn­ing marks through group study.

And of course — time devoted to study. If we did devote as much time to stud­ies as the 5(!?) point­ers did, we would’ve been 9 point­ers. With­out the (exces­sive) bless­ings of the Gods and daily devo­tion peri­ods. Self study is some­thing you fit in between extra-currics, video games, sleep (4 hours or so) and classes. If you do.

Hope that helps. Yours as always.

–Me.