For all of those of you who read my blog and don't know, I am an IITian. (If you don't know, you have flagrantly disobeyed my orders and not read Read this first!. But then, people will be people- never doing what is right for them.)

The purpose of re-informing (I'm not sure if this is a word) you all is that apart from being one, I come in daily contact with people who spend hours studying, working, running and rarely sleeping. Also people who rarely study, but have fun all the time but again, rarely sleep.

This is perhaps the first attempt by an IITian to analyze the frustration of- and strange activities indulged in by- IITians during exam time. Something like a bee looking at a bee-hive to find out why bees make honey.

It is during the exams that we mutate into, er, something else. (Notice my careful avoidance of the word someone.) Majors, minors all affect our brains in extraordinary ways, modifying eating, sleeping, behavioural patterns. Always extremely tense - psyched - we live through 2-3 weeks of torture. And our response is frightening. (And if documented properly- will provide lots of new patients for all mental institutions.)

IITians are a strange breed. Specially me.

It starts 1-2 weeks before the exams. The Reading Room and Examination Hall - areas generally considered useful for other activities (known to all college students) are havens for serious study. Cutting down already minimal hours of sleep, caffeine becomes a common component of the bloodstream, and sleeping in class becomes even more common than normal.

Everyone lives in a complete state of tension, heightened senses, and extreme exhaustion. Certain people enjoy quizzing others on their level of preparation -- and narrowly escape death by a blunt instrument (generally a very thick book; a desk in some rare cases).

The real inner students/geeks/nerds/madmen are revealed late at night -- when there are still hundreds of pages to be read, two hours to learn them in (with assorted, interesting, unsolved questions) and the poor chap who has to wade through the book is half dead already (having gone through thousands of pages of dull, highly involved and extremely boring material.) The icing on the cake: his partner doesn't care and is sleeping soundly. In rare, and extremely unfortunate cases- the man's partner finished all that stuff the week before and has already revised it twice and is sleeping soundly in the same room.

The unfortunate guy then has only a few options: go to sleep and leave it all on the gods -- or rely on the (non-existent) mercy of the professors; carry out a hurried brain transplant on the resident genius (a risky procedure: there are very few qualified brain surgeons in engineering colleges who can work on such short notice using only a pocket knife); study like mad while cursing his past self for not studying (generally not done) or leak the paper.

So now you have a general idea of the cause of the effect.

And now for the effect itself: sitting staring blankly at a mountain of books- not moving to eat/drink/etc.; not bathing/eating/changing clothes/sleeping/breathing (occasionally leads to zombification); discussing efficient ways of breaking just the right amount of bones to skip the exams; fighting / mock-fighting / murdering; even stealing (I believe some students get a touch of kleptomania under stress); finding ways to leak the papers while drawing up extensively detailed plans to achieve the same; locking others in their rooms; taking strange photographs using the ubiquitous cell phone cameras; prophesying killer/simple/average papers/cataclysms/the end of the world/questions that will come in the papers; wearing strange clothes and parading around. In general, weird behaviour. (To be precise: more weird than is normal in college.)

As the exams arrive, we progress from the outer circles of Dante's Hell to the inner ones (where the interesting -- and highly painful -- stuff really starts). Going bald by tearing our own hair out, we arrive to give papers, write some scribbles and gratefully -- if not gracefully -- depart (from the examination hall -- not the world).

Returning, we let off steam in highly imaginative --and unimaginative-- ways: TT, carrom, basketball, various sports, sleeping, simply chatting, orkutting, facebooking... you know the drill. (If you don't, you better learn it from someone.)

And then we return to studies. Again.

And then; the final exam has passed. IIT turns from a morgue to one big party. Everyone cools down in his/its own way. Which is generally even weirder than behaviour displayed during the exams. And which I consider unprintable. Atleast for now. Perhaps I will speak (metaphorically) of it in detail later.

And then we receive our results. Which is even more frustrating. Especially for those poor guys who studied hard- but got useless grades. Case in point: me.

Anyone who has come in contact with IITians during this period must realize that this is not the standard behaviour of the IITian in question and must be ignored. It will probably not be repeated during his lifetime outside of IIT. To quote Matchbox 20:

Unwell, Matchbox 20

All day
Staring at the ceiling
Making friends with shadows on my wall
All night
Hearing voices telling me
That I should get some sleep
Because tomorrow might be good for something
Hold on
I'm feeling like I'm headed for a
Breakdown
I don't know why
I'm not crazy, I'm just a little unwell
I know, right now you can't tell
But stay awhile and maybe then you'll see
A different side of me
I'm not crazy, I'm just a little impaired
I know, right now you don't care
But soon enough you're gonna think of me
And how I used to be
Me
Talking to myself in public
Dodging glances on the train
I know
I know they've all been talking 'bout me
I can hear them whisper
And it makes me think there must be something wrong
With me
Out of all the hours thinking
Somehow
I've lost my mind
I'm not crazy, I'm just a little unwell
I know, right now you can't tell
But stay awhile and maybe then you'll see
A different side of me
I'm not crazy, I'm just a little impaired
I know right now you don't care
But soon enough you're gonna think of me
And how I used to be
I been talking in my sleep
Pretty soon they'll come to get me
Yeah, they're taking me away
I'm not crazy, I'm just a little unwell
I know, right now you can't tell
But stay awhile and maybe then you'll see
A different side of me
I'm not crazy I'm just a little impaired
I know, right now you don't care
But soon enough you're gonna think of me
And how I used to be
Hey, how I used to be
How I used to be, yeah
Well I'm just a little unwell
How I used to be
How I used to be

Disclaimer
I have written from 1 semester's experience at Vindhyachal hostel, IIT Delhi, ED floor. The generalization doesn't apply to everyone in my floor, let alone all IITs or even the full Vindy hostel. I am not a qualified psychologist. Please do not send us to mental institutions based solely on this report. The photographs have not been doctored in any way and represent students caught doing what they generally do. (They may have occasionally posed for the camera too, though.)

P.S. I'm not crazy. Most probably.