30/01/2010 The Windy Hostel, Indian Institute of Consultancy, Delhi: At 11.05 a.m. today morning a horrifying accident occurred because of gross negligence by engineers at Windy Hostel, IICd. The hostel had been undergoing renovation for over a year and work had recently started on a new block today. Students were still residing in the 4-story hostel on the top 2 floors while the bottom floors had been vacated.
In order to complete his work on time, the contractor had allegedly told the workers to demolish the lower portion of the building and start renovation work on it, without considering whether the already considerably weakened, 40 year old structure could take the weight. The inevitable occurred, with the top two floors crashing down and burying and damaging many laptops.
In the words of one of the surviving students (who has requested to remain unnamed) "They were destroying the doors beneath our room and the balcony start moving wildly, deflecting as much as 1 cm. We ran to stop them, but the [expletive deleted] workers refused to budge."
The maintenance secretary of the hostel was allegedly gallivanting somewhere in East Delhi during the incident, meeting some foreigner. On being contacted he replied that he had an urgent meeting with someone he could not name -- a fact that has been noted by the investigating authorities who have taken him into custody. We managed to get a statement from the Chief Investigator, Mr. M. Adi "We have not ruled out the involvement of the maintenance secretary, and are also considering the foreign angle", obliquely referring to the recent statement by the President of United States of Pakerica, Mr. Obama Bin Bush.
Being a holiday, most of the students were sitting in their rooms during the accident, apparently trying to block their internet access so as to be able to prepare for their upcoming examinations. A quote by one of the IICians from our archives: "Our professors believe that we can obtain everything we need to learn by surfing the internet -- in fact they maintain a check to see that all students download at least 100MB of data every day to ensure they are spending enough time on the internet. We have learnt a lot but it becomes difficult to adhere to this rule during our minor exams so trying to outsmart our professors and blocking our internet access is a favourite pass-time for IICians during the exam season."
Most of the students were taken by surprise as the building came crashing down on them, and more than 50 laptops have been reported missing and are assumed to still be buried under the rubble, while 10 damaged (2 critically) laptops have been recovered. One or 2 lucky laptops survived on their battery life and were discovered as they were playing heavy rock and could be heard through the concrete. Worried students at IIC have kept a candle light vigil outside the laptop repair shop, with the very best technicians of the top laptop manufacturers including Nosy Baio, Sell and Compact working tirelessly to save the laptops. More technicians are expected to arrive from around the world soon. Excavation work to locate the remaining laptops is also underway.
Many IICians are still in shock, with many roaming around in a daze. A particularly sad case is that of a few students, who, being deprived of access to their laptops and the Facebook live feed appear to have devolved to animals -- with one imitating a bull, another squealing in French like a pig and the worst affected keeps trying to fly off the top of the hostel and is constantly restrained by his friends. It is currently not clear whether he has delusions about being a bird or being the Man of Steel (both being able to fly).
What has made this accident even more unique is the fact that there have been various reports of the accident being a complete fabrication and fallacy as people have allegedly communicated with the missing residents of the hostel (using their own laptops). In the public interest, we reiterate that the accident has happened and any such rumours must be disregarded as utter nonsense.
There have been suspicions of paranormal activity at the site of the accident because of these apparent messages and the top investigative news channel in India -- IndiaTV -- has sent its best reporter to find out the truth. The initial findings of the reporter will be presented on tomorrow's primetime show at 8 p.m. -- "IIC ke khooni engineer". Insiders (who wish to remain unnamed) have said that such a tragic parting of nerds with their computers can cause their ghosts to linger on till they manage to complete their last wish: to update their status messages. Only then will they be able to pass on to the afterlife. As always, there are many skeptics who have denounced this theory, claiming that the ghosts need to play one last LAN game of AoE.
In a surprise turn of events, famed teen impersonator and actor Aamir K. and ex-IICian and MBA B. Chetan came together in support of the missing laptops. They said that they has put aside all differences to be able to garner even more publicity for their film/book as people had stopped discussing their recent disagreements.
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.
How to study like an IITian
A bit of background first: I joined Yahoo! Bangalore in May for a 10 weeks summer vacation internship. And my first industry experience.
So: what did I work on? Stuff that involved extensive use of a keyboard, monitor (2 in fact) and a touchpad (occasionally even a mouse). Apart from that, I'm not sure what I'm allowed to speak about, so to avoid any unnecessary complications, I'll leave it at that.
Let's start at the beginning, shall we. Day zero: Go and see the Y! building from outside. Getting into the business park was a bit difficult, so didn't try venturing into the building itself. Day one: Arrive at 8.30 in the morning, wondering what I'll be doing. Completely dressed up in formals, of course. I mean, which company doesn't expect shirts, trousers and black shoes? A lot of them, apparently. Including Y!.
9.30: My introduction to Y! . A 2 hour presentation followed by an intro to my team. I am completely amazed by the office -- themes for each floor; Cafe Coffee Day machines on every corner; neat and clean cubicles. Even better than what I'd expected after having seen the Adobe office in Delhi during India's first WordCamp. My computer wasn't quite ready yet, so I was given a quick introduction to search engines, the structure, etc. by my Team Leader and Manager. Which, in itself, was pretty cool. My computer was set up by the end of the day, but getting it to run was a pretty big problem without support.
Finally, near the end of the day -- it was working. I quickly set up/was helped in setting up my email, Cube No., etc etc. And customizing my desktop. So I was set to reading about a lot of stuff maintained by Y!, which I would be working on. And this kind of went on for the first week -- orientation, reading up a lot of stuff, presentations and clarifications by my team leader; and I click my way through to Friday, setting up a dev environment (customizing Vim, etc.) and so on.
Come Friday, and my team's changed. Which was a bit strange -- but there wasn't anything I could have managed to do wrong by then, so I wasn't that worried. And I probably shouldn't have been, from what I've seen of Y!. ( Y! is so much easier to type than any pronouns, or the company name.)
Week 2: I'm introduced to my new Manager and Team Leader -- my computer's still the same till now. And then I start reading up on new stuff that I'll be using/working on. Re-run 1st week, with a different context. Oh, and I also move to a laptop; as the desktop hasn't been removed yet, I start using both the Desktop's huge monitor and my laptop's average one together. The downside to a laptop -- I'm stuck with Windows; the up-side? I can carry it to conferences and all. And finally, near the end of the week, I'm told about what I'll be working on. Something or the other.
Week 3 onwards is kind of a blur -- I walk into office anywhere between 8 and 11, stay till anywhere between 1 and 3 (am), learn a lot -- both related to computers and pool -- annoy my team leader with strange questions related to the environment I'm working in. And have fun. Weekends are spent crawling around malls looking for books (Landmark being my favourite), having iced coffee at Gloria Jeans Coffee -- and wondering about the requirement of weekends in general for certain kinds of jobs. Occasionally I would be bored enough to walk into office, get some work done, play some pool. Also joined the gym during this time, and kept a goatee. And a moustache.
Somewhere around the middle, I gave my first presentation. I even spent half the night photoshopping 2 flickr images to make a nice image for my debugging tool. It was during this time that I started walking into office at around 10 and leaving anywhere between 1 and 3 am.
I distinctly remember the first night I spent at office. I had initially planned to leave at 11, as I needed some help from someone across timezones. By the time I was ready to catch a cab, it was pouring heavily; and the solitary cab that had managed to reach the office was already overcrowded -- I turned, went to the Cafe, bought a Red Bull (my first) and marched back to my cube. And worked till 3 am. Followed by 2 hours of pool with some other insomniacs (and people who had come back from home 'cause of power cuts). And then some more work till 7 am. After which I caught an auto home.
I spent 1 or 2 more nights at office after that day. There always used to be a few people around. The longest I stayed at office was some 30 hours or so -- during the hack day. I brought along a change of clothes, a towel and other toiletries -- stayed up throughout the night, worked on my hack (http://kunal-b.in/Tangent2) and had more concentrated doses of caffeine than I had probably ever had before. I'm sad to say that my hack bombed and didn't even reach the top 40, but it was an interesting experience.
Life went on, office, various malls et al. Landmark, novels and comics being my primary source of entertainment.
Perhaps too soon, I reached the end of my intern. I gave my final presentation -- which was well received (or I hope it was) -- and spent a week adding a bit more stuff to the final part of my project and handing over whatever I had done to a FTE Y!. And then, back.
After such a long, stream of consciousness typish post, a short summary: Went to Y!, set up camp in office, had fun, did some work, made quite a few friends, played pool and came back to college (but didn't want to).
Interning @ Yahoo!
36 hours. 1 hacker.
His objective: hack his way to saving the earth.
How? by improving IIT Delhi's internet connection.
Well, not really. Yahoo! held it's first Hack-U competition in India at IIT Delhi this year (at least we have some advantage of studying in IITD). We were given all the tools Yahoo! had to offer, some excellent talks by Rasmus (the creator of PHP for those of you who didn't know), Christian and various others on the API's, etc. on offer as well as T-Shirts, bad snacks and pen-drives.
How could I have not participated. I ended up working for around 30 of those alotted 36 hours, having managed to clear my schedule with great difficulty -- I'm still catching up with the back-load -- and finished my hack: Tangent. (Yeah, yeah, I know -- but I couldn't come up with a better name.) I also stayed up for 35 hours at a stretch -- the longest time I've gone without sleep.
I ended up with an honourable mention. I can't prove it, though. You'll have to take my word for it.
So -- the experience of hacking for hours non-stop? Exhilarating. Specially when you end up with something useful (more on tangent later). The guys at Yahoo? Very very helpful -- they stayed up all night with us to help solve our problems: Christian, Rasmus and Subram (in no particular order). I even learnt a lot: JSON, the BOSS API, Twitter Search API, Pipes, getting stuff across domains, etc. etc.: a lot of cool stuff that was available on the net and I didn't know about.
So, the winners? A cricket query natural language parser, an intern finder and an anti-recommendation engine. Descriptions should be up somewhere on the net. If they aren't, ping me and I'll add a few descriptions.
Hack U IIT Delhi
I attended an interesting talk today -- it was a combination of a technical presentation by Mr. Vipul Ahuja followed by a talk on what's closest to every IITian's heart from the day he steps into college: online gaming his (future) job.
He spoke about a lot of topics; why to be a civil engineer or not, etc. etc.
There were three things he said that I really liked:
- You will always be catching up with other people if you go outside your core competency.
- Being a Civil Engineer requires a very high standard of integrity. You cannot mess around with the laws of nature. Whatever bribe/incentive you're offered -- that building will break down if you don't make it properly.
and last, but also my favourite:
- Command a salary; don't demand it.
On being an engineer and other stuff
First off -- I'm guilty too -- not very - but still, guilty enough.
What am I talking about? The applications we are all sending these days to get that dream foreign intern. Have a look here: http://www.phdcomics.com/proceedings/viewtopic.php?t=7671&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0 .
A few key highlights from the 8 page long conversation:
Once to twice per week I get an application for an internship from an undergraduate student at the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai. I used to reply to them politely, then caustically, then I wrote to the bloody university asking them to pass something round the students telling them to stop, now I just delete them.Put simply...
(1) IIT in Mumbai is a much more highly rated university than mine so why on earth would they want to come here?
(2) We don't offer internships anyway
(3) Why would a student want to do an engineering internship in another university, surely they should be looking at engineering companies.
(4) The blighters never bother to actually read my personal webpage and tailor what they write to my actual research work anyway.
I get a few, fairly regularly, and my area is Physics. They ask for a summer internship (generally about 3 months) and they always begin "Dear Respected Sir". They include an attachment that purports to be their CV, but I have never opened one because I fear a virus. I delete them without replying.
Nice reading? Let's move on to advice to IIT Guwahati from an alumnus:
Dear current ______ students,
In past few weeks I was struck by a string of emails that motivated me to write back to you. If you are someone who is applying for internships/ research positions/ MS in various schools or companies (in India or abroad) , then hang on and listen to some important stuff that I have to say. I think, this will really help you in being more succesful in your search for whatever you are looking for, and will also help in maintaining reputation of the school that you are graduating from:
First some unarguable facts:
1) All of us have a stake in maintaining reputation of the Department of _________.If due to any reason, reputation of our school/program goes down, it means less opportunities for all of us (alumnis and current students combined).
2) When we send out "mails" the response rate is only 10-20%.
Each one of us have mastered the "Art" (you know what I mean). All of us come to IIT, learn from our seniors about how they got that cool internship in Europe or that coveted GA/TA/RA position in a US univ. Obedient and smart people we are, we formulate our own mails, "customized and tailormade for our situations", and the competition then is who sends out the most sucks in a night. Correct? The news is that every prof I know personally, knows about this process. Because guess what, this is the same prof who received a barrage of such emails every previous year. And over time, they too have gotten smarter, and a lot of them now ignore such emails. Ever wondered, why only 10-20% people reply to your "mails"? This is the reason why.3) Should we stop sending these mails out? Short answer is Yes. Well then how do I get those cool internships and GA/TA/RA positions? Start sending out real and genuine emails.
As the saying goes: "Practise what you Preach (and vice versa)". I too am guilty of the same. Maybe because no one told me the correct way. We were the second batch of the program, and there was just no precedance before us. No alumni ever told us that when ordinary people receive a standard IIT "Suck" they are left speechless, astonished and dumbfounded (Okay, maybe not all three together, but one at a time). But having grown wiser over all these years I feel that its my duty to tell the current students that the standard method of sending "sucks" is so 1990's. We are now in 2008. The rats (read profs) have learnt to skip our mousetraps (read sucks). We need a better designed mousetrap (do they still teach such stuff in DO* Wink.
So lets do a critical analysis of some sentences from standard sucks that I received (I won't tell who sent that to me. Ever. And it is not even my remotest intention to embarrass anyone. So don't get disheartened if I used your email. You can still count me as a friend.)
-----------------------------------Dear Sir,
I am a Pre-final Year undergraduate student (3rd year) pursuing Bachelor of ****** in ****** Department at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Guwahati - one of the premier institutes of technology in India and among the most prestigious undergraduate schools in the world.
.
.
I have a fervid desire to do my summer internship under your able guidance during the period May-July,2008.
.
.
I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere interest in pursuing my summer internship during the period May - July 2008, under your esteemed guidance. It would be a rewarding experience for me to expand my knowledge boundary under a person of your stature.
.
.
Sir, I am writing this mail in order to explore the possibility of doing a summer project/internship in your company during May-July 2008. I am inclined to do a summer internship in the field of "Human Computer Interaction, Usability Engineering, Interface Design" to acquire the skills and knowledge necessary for a future career as a professional. I am a highly motivated and hard-working student and am willing to take on any available project that would be relevant to my area of study.
.
.
I have been a hard working student right from my schooling days and I assure you the best effort from my side.I have an inherent curiosity which drives me to the fathom of the subject and has thereby helped me to develop a strong conceptual foundation.
.
.
I would be extremely fortunate to get an opportunity to work in a distinguished company as your's and gain practical knowledge in the field of design which will help me shaping my future.
.
.
Please give some time to evaluate my chances of getting an opportunity to do a project under your company as this would really play a significant role for shaping my future.---------------------------------
Dude and Dudettes, I'm embarrassed. I am not God. And I definitely don't have a "stature" of Abhraham Lincoln (if that's what you meant). I am sure you are a hard working person, but so is everyone else. And I absolutely do not care about your "fervid desires". And most of all, I don't have a "distinguished company" nor do I have any role whatsoever in defining "your future". You future entirely depends on you and you alone. When you send out an email, that is what defines your future. No-one I know in industry will give a call back to someone who sent such an email. Now when I think about my own history, maybe that's why I myself could never get an internship in Europe. You need to learn from your senior's experiences.
A professor from my grad school told me last year (and this is a fact too btw). He said "I think I am fed up with students from your undergrad college. They seem to have these illusions that by sending out such emails they will suddenly get a windfall of assistantship. It just don't happen that way. And what is it with everyone sending similar sounding emails? Do they have essay classes in India where they are taught to write in a specific way?"
Friends, this is killing the reputation of our school and reducing the chances of your future success. You and you alone can get this back on track. The season of sending out "sucks" is coming rapidly. This time (just for a change), write a simple, concise, short email.
-----------------Believe it or not, small emails will firstly ensure that your email is read. Secondly, It will leave the reader with the feeling that he received an email from an actual human being (and not a robot). Thirdly, it will leave a door open to ping back with minimum effort, if someone did not respond back. Address people by their name, not "Sir".
Think in this way. It is fair for you to think of your emails as something that is very important to you. Because your career is at stake. So you tend to fill up the email with details about your projects, past internships, profs with whom you have worked for. But for a second stop and think from the perspective of the reader. They don't care about any of the stuff you will write (unless of course you won a Nobel Prize). Your email is just another one in their busy inbox. Stand out by writing short email, and easy to read crisp resumes and portfolio websites. And as always, ask your alumni or seniors if you have any questions. Don't address your professor as Sir. We have not yet gotten that "Order of the British Empire".
Hope some of these things will make sense to you.
Good luck with your search.
Just going through the full thread would be best. Have a look. See our (alright - it's focussed more on IIT B, but they can replace B by D anyday) excellent reputation.
And just stop and think before clicking send. I know I will.
P.S. Also have a look here for another perspective.
Guys at IIT D – be careful about apps!
Throughout my life I have seen how a difference in a person's point of view can alter the situation. What I have realized recently is that changing how you look at the world is as good as changing the world itself.
Perspective may not be all that matters, but it does matter. A lot.
For me, a person's perspective is what defines him/her(/it). As evident from my blog's title, I consider myself a cynic. Or rather, perhaps a cynik - most of you would not consider it much of a difference, but I do not follow the original Greek cynics exactly. The modern notion of cynicism is a bit closer to home, but still, I interpret it in my own way.
Those old, horrendous cliches 'there's a silver lining in every dark cloud', ' 'tis an ill wind that blows none good' merely address this. Looking at an event/object/person with a different view changes the person.
Changing how you look at the world changes you.
Let me see look at it in another way. Imagine being stuck in traffic in a bus, or as a passenger. Either you could grumble about the conditions, or do what I do - go to sleep and use this time to relax.
My computer was recently formatted - for no apparent reason - but while I re-install all the software it had I have the time to write a lengthy post. Perhaps this was a bad example, as many readers would see it as two evils.
When there is a terrorist attack, the perspective of victims, the victims' families, the police/government - and those watching yet another spectacle unfold on television is completely different.
Watching and playing sports are two completely different ball games.
I will never say that one perspective is right and one is wrong. There are never any absolutes. Looking at terrorists from one point of view may show them as evil incarnate; seen from the other side you have noble revolutionaries.
Every person has his/her own perspective; based on experience, prejudice, life. Changing these changes the person - but we must never lose the ability to look at the world through someone else's eyes.
Empathy is one of our greatest powers. To understand a person completely, analyze the world in the way s/he does. To come to an understanding, to solve a dispute - all factions involved must be ready to see things from the opponent's point of view - and accept or reject them.
Of course, seeing the world through the eyes of the murderer who just butchered you - or the maniac whose blog entry drove you crazy - is completely different and unnecessary. It is a case of a random, abstract thought being applied to the real world. What else do you suppose could happen when a product of cool calculation & observation is applied to the illogical, warped world?
Note to self: I must resist from ending all posts with question marks. ?
My perspective on perspective.
I have been involved in a lot of new things these past few days: learning things on the computer, reading interesting books, listening to different types of music, watching films, trying to play the guitar, ad infinitum.
Here are some recommendations from me:
- Music: Try both Bach and Porcupine Tree. Before listening to Bach: understand the type of music you're listening to - what exactly is a canon or a fugue and you will appreciate the music even more.
- Books: Prisoners of Birth (Jeffery Archer) - a must read modern version of The Count of Monte Cristo. Moab is my washpot - an autobiography of Stephen Fry - an excellent read with splendid English and an frighteningly honest account of the author. Godel, Escher, Bach: An eternal golden braid: A look at "strange loops"; how logic, music, art all address the concept of self. How the thing being defined is defined by itself.
- Films: The animated Sinbad, Johnny English and of course, Iron Man.
Miscellany
There is a question I have been asking myself for a long time: are the past me, the present me and the future me the same person? Somehow, I don't think so.
In the past -- I knew some things, I was someone, I behaved in certain ways, had some specific tastes. Now, my tastes have changed, I know more and have forgotten much, behave and live differently. In the future, everything will have changed again. Physically too there are/will be many differences.
So is there anything to say that I am the same person? Apart from retaining material things, my name and relationships I seem to be changing completely!
Perhaps that is why we --specially me-- are able to procrastinate so easily. The work we leave for the future is for someone else and not me right now. That paper that is due tomorrow and has been dragging on for a week was left for me to do by a complete stranger (who is/was a @#$%^) who did not care for me at all.
The cigarettes/drinks someone consumes are health problems for some stranger in the future. The exercise I don't so today is an obesity problem for someone in the future; not for me. The aches, pains and problems will be reserved for him. I will be completely free because I will cease to exist in the next moment!
Following this line of reasoning, the me in the past is the cause of all my problems (that #$%^@) and I am going to dump almost all of those on the future me (and add some more of my own). Who will have to face them at one time or the other.
Is this life? Rectifying the someone else's mistakes and committing some more for another to solve?
Probably.
I, me and myself.
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.
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