Elegy to a Sem (Almost) Gone By

It's almost over.

It really is almost over.

The sem to end all sems, the sem that almost killed us. It's almost over.

They told us this sem was "li8." (Yes, I used DCSpeak. Sue me.) 2-1, 17 credits? You'll sail right through it. Just make sure you enjoy it, because you're utterly fucked next sem. Utterly,totally, incontrovertibly fucked. But this sem's easy, no sweat.

It started out on a happy note, with me desperate to get back after a particularly long summer vacations. I was a sophomore now (definitely not a sophie, as put by someone who called himself a junie), and the co-ordinator of an awesome club. I was sufficiently popular, and had a decent number of friends. I was academically average, definitely not in any dire straits. I had put a relatively dark period in my life behind me, and was ready to actually enjoy life.

I guess the first sign that this sem was not going to be hunky dory (really?) was my first trip to the ATM, where I realised I had way too much money in my account. The campus had not collected my fees, which meant running around to fill forms and finally having to write a cheque, before being able to register for the semester. The significant amount of fungus that had accumulated in my room over the summer meant additional heartache, and a few days of sleeping on the floor.

One of the things I had particularly been looking forward to was being co-ordinator of the Literary and Debating Club. I was a man with a plan, though without a canal (anybody?). I knew that the job meant a lot of work, I was prepared for that. We started off with an introductory event for the freshers, and inductions. We planned for every contingency, had daily meetings, even assigned people for crowd control. Ha.

This was the sem we planned to freak out, and go around Goa, having adventures we'd recount to our grandchildren's best friends who just came over to play, and were unprepared for an old man insisting on telling them his life story. That first road trip in a rented car was epic, in the sense that we lost our way not less than 25 times, found the beach we were initially going to was crap, and ended up on a beach where we never expected or wanted to go, while hitting a stationary motorcycle and getting the car lodged in a drain. Over the sem, I made it a point to go out every weekend, a feat not to be scoffed at. (The rest of this post will follow the latest manifestation of a particularly bad stomachache)

The elections to the CSA were fun, especially in my new role as speechwriter and debate consultant (I made the title up, but that's pretty much what I was). Although my candidate won the elections for General Secretary in a landslide, Suramya getting screwed out of the presidency left a horrible taste in the mouth, especially due to my not casting what would have been the decisive vote. The removal of the 11:30 rule, on the other hand, was giddying. 

Life soon began to orient itself around Waves Winter '09, our cultural fest. Websites had to be made, colleges had to be called, events had to be prepared, volunteers had to be sought. At the same time, academics floated back to our collective consciousness, and a particularly brutal Test 1 jolted us back to reality.

It was during the tests that rumours started floating of a couple of people getting jaundice. Then again, there were also rumours of typhoid, black death and the ever-present threat of porcine influenza that floated about every time someone made his way to the medical centre. Then more people started getting it. And some more. Soon, my hostel was a cesspool of disease, with yellowing lepers clawing at the healthy, begging for medicines and food, or alternatively getting on the first flight out and going home to three weeks of pampering.

I was taking a dump when it happened. The announcement was widely acclaimed, and the cheers that emanated from the auditorium when they decided to close the campus for two weeks are unrivalled. The feeling of 'Oh crap, that ruins all my plans' did not sink in for a few days. My hunger for adventure made me convince my parents to let me go to Bangalore, a backpacking trip that got me a little more than the T-shirts I won at Unmaad.

The timing of the jaundice holidays, as they were called, threw more spanners in works than a monkey on amphetamines. Overnight, plans had to be relaid and re-relaid, with many members of the Waves CoCo contemplating the uncontemplatable. My world soon became an endless series of deadlines and events and meetings and late nights. To top it all, it suddenly grew hotter and hotter. My Bob Marley-esque hair became unsustainable, and a sudden haircut caused a lot of liquids to eject through a lot of noses.

Waves Winter '09 was the culmination of what seemed an eternity of work, and there was definitely no dearth of work to be done during the fest as well. Armed with a hundred pens and a couple of nametags, I launched into it with a fervour befitting one of my size. The heady feeling of six judges pulling out, participants showing up late, and missing event managers compounded with the extreme lack of sleep was enough to push the greatest of men over the edge. Still, with tremendous help from a number of people, and three alarm clocks, I survived, and even won a couple of prizes.

Sea Rock. Nah, it's too easy. Though watching Slain perform at 5:00 AM was definitely one of the highest points of this sem.

Post Waves depression hit me hard, but the feeling of 'What Next?' soon disappeared in a sea of exams that had been postponed due to yellow fever. November went from busy to insane, with all the backlog of the sem gushing down on us unsuspecting victims in one long waterboarding session. A number of lab tests and online assignments and presentations and a particularly pissing-off report later, I find myself facing the incredible hurdle of slogging through two weeks of compres to finish off this goddamned sem.

A lot of excrement has hit the fan this sem. A lot of it has been unavoidable and natural, though stupidity has played an ample part in many of the (mis)adventures. It's been hectic, bizarre, disappointing, depressing and sometimes even fun, but it's definitely not been boring.

And at least it's almost over.