Yr 1:LOAD

Endsems (November, last week)
There are a lot of things which can't be understood till they are experienced. Examination stress in IIT is something like that.Especially, end semester exam stress. This is different from all the other types of examination stresses in other universities... you wanna know why?...weirdos..thats why..
It is the first time that your mom isn't there to feed you as you burn some midnight oil, here, your neighbour is drinking his early morning spirits! Nobody plays any loud music at home because you have your exams and the family can bear one week of no TV. Here your wing mates are staying up watching a movie since they don't have an exam the following day like you. For the first time in your life, nobody cares that you stood first in your school, almost everyone else did too during their days as well, and those who didn't are putting in extra effort since they are used to it. The competition isn't a part of life here...it is what you breathe in every waking moment...in almost all things that you do, you are competing with some one better. Now you are on your own, the real test of whether all those years of parent-inflicted deprivation really meant something. If you want to beat the rest, you need to slog your ass off, if you want to take it easy, you will pay the price...
During those last few days of the semester, people really start discovering a place in the campus called the Central Library. You need to search for places to sit and study peacefully when such a huge edifice is filled with students hidden behind mounds of dusty books which are opened only on an annual basis!. That is an amazing fact, since this is Asia's largest library in any university, has more than 400,000 books and occupies the space needed to house at least a million more books!!
For almost all IITians this is training time for night-outs...a few years down the line and you will be able to stay awake indefinitely for long stretches and will crash on your bed after a week of no sleep. There are people who need to study just for 2 hours when you need to study for 7... there are people who have finished(gasp!) the syllabus, there are normal students and finally there are people who don't care! All this makes the examinations a melting pot for all sorts of academic capabilities. I still remember, having screwed up my ET paper in the mid-sems and doing fairly well in my endsems...got a bloody B finally, but that was much better than what i expected :)
This is repentance time for all the classes you bunked and all the you-can-have-my-finger thoughts you gave to your professors. Almost everynight, you can still hear some poor damned soul crying out, "Why? why fail me?... "