externals...

Externals- The force applied by VTU to shake us from our comfort level and make life as tensed as possible. Jokes apart, our first external exams were a different experience and living in a hostel and studying in Ramaiah was cherry on the top. Managing the 3rd internals, trying hard to reach the required attendance level, buttering the teachers to maximize the internal marks, getting notes photocopied, asking each other which chapters to chuck and which to do properly, bunking classes for studying and ending up watching a movie or playing cards and then lamenting when the day is about to end... all these things will remain close to our heart and will be fondly remembered. The instructions by mom and dad(better not be shared) and mom acting as alarm by calling up early in the morning and me getting up for 10 seconds to receive the call and again dozing off also forms an important part of the examination time. The tension one gets after knowing that someone has completed the syllabus while he himself is yet to start is uncomparable. The group discussions and the exchange of notes saved us a lot of individual work and will hopefully fetch us marks. I still remember the challenges before the exam to score well and the immense gusto with which everyone started studies(although it faded after some time). During the study leave most of the time was spent on the phone- smsing and talking and asking each other how much syllabus has been completed. The discman and speakers were a loyal friend during these 'testing' times. Whether we learnt the subject or not is still unclear but we atleast learnt a whole lot of new songs. One common phenomena was going out after dinner to get refreshments for the night(yes the hostel canteen man betrayed us and ran away to his village during the exams). A good amount of time was wasted on that and we used to get a whole lot of things to last the whole night which reflected itself in some of us extending our tummy line(not again...). The unwashed clothes were an added pain. We also ended up taking a survey on the number of hours we sleep and surprisingly we found out that our sleeping time increases during the exam time. And yes how can an exam be complete without paper leaks. Every night before the exam we used to get a whole set of question papers and the person giving it claiming that 90% of the question will be from that set but als we finiding out the next day that not even 0.9% clashed. Many fell for these tricks and ultimately screwed their exams(royally screwed i must say). Anyway the first semester exams were enough to shake us from our comfort level and hopefully next time we will be better prepared to face the VTU wars.