This part is never easy. I don't speak from experience, because this is the first time I've ever had to review and evaluate four years that went by too fast for my taste. But I've heard it's never easy. I can now see why.

On one hand, there's the hostel life angle - it's difficult because it's emotionally difficult to come to terms with the fact that those years are over and it's time to do that darn evaluation. You may have been unusually nice to the guy who lived next to the bogs who everyone else teased about his lifestyle of alternating mugging and clothes-washing-drying. Or you might have been the reason everyone started to notice how long he washed his face; and consequently, how the water tank emptied by 7:00 am. But either way, those years in the hostel will seem like one hell of a time and you wouldn't tire of living it again. Unless you had to be that guy living next to the bogs. And had to sit through ME105 and AM110 again.

And then there's that dreaded other hand - the academic angle; an evaluation of the time you spent in the classrooms, laboratories, and even xerox shops. I could try and avoid the exercise altogether. I have a CGPA of about 7.2. I'm apping in CS. I have a software job. The greatest extent to which I belong to the Chemical Engineering Department is in that I'm System Administrator of the DCF, and I can imitate at least two professors bang on. That's only good enough for a few laughs. I'm the guy who people use as an anti-example, for their advice-seeking juniors, to illustrate the inescapable importance of acads - "CGPA matters! Look at him. For all those extra-curricular credentials, McKinsey ditched him in the final stages because of his CGPA." Even that is only good enough for a few laughs.

For all this, really, why should I even bother thinking about my life in the MSB, the fact that it houses my beloved DCF notwithstanding? Isn't it the least relevant part of my education? Why should anyone care to read what I have to say about life in this department? Am I not the most braindead, numbskulled chemical engineer to have ever rolled out of this place?

Perhaps not. And that's why I find some reason to look back even upon my academic life and smile. And that's why my academic life here seems only one step short of a complete waste of time and taxpayers' money.

I'm a rotten chemical engineer. Perry's Handbook means nothing to me. But I graduate with the satisfaction that I'm a very good engineer. In a few years, I will specifically be a very good CS engineer. And in some way my four years here have something to do with that. They have something to do with my running around my wing in a towel, looking for a 15cm ruler which I could use to determine the ratio of weights of my NiMH and Li-ion batteries by the inverse ratio of their moment-arms, while everyone else with a higher CGPA calls me stupid for it. They have something to do with my soldering my CDROM drive back into working condition with a burnt left hand covered in inappropriate ointment, again, while everyone else with a higher CGPA (and with Devraj's number close at hand) calls me stupid for it.

Summer Training in a refinery is the one best experience I have had that I owe entirely to my being a chemical engineer. I don't care so much about giant reactors because they're reactors and are describable by that fifth semester equation. I care about them because they're giant and are among the greatest examples of general engineering ingenuity in the industry. And I've scarcely had those highs again in my life - those highs of pride at being an engineer who understood most of what he saw.

Very well, so I was just in the wrong department in the right institute. But something won't let me dismiss it as that simple. I know I've learnt a lot from our professors - their methods, their patience, their flexibility, and their understanding of my other technical interests. I've learnt a lot from everyone with a higher CGPA who thought I'm stupid. I owe the Chemical Engineering Department a great deal for the freedom and latitude without which I couldn't chase my true academic dreams. I know I was far luckier than I would ever have been if I was imprisoned in that large white building opposite ours.

It's a funny thing to be grateful for - that for a person determined to migrate, this was the best waiting-room department of the lot. But even objectively, I think I gathered enough Chemical Engineering perspective to be able to say with authority - everyone@che.iitm.ac.in rocks! With a lot more authority, I will add - especially Benzene!