Eight Point Someone (by Praharsh Sharma, B.Tech. Part-III Electronics Engineering student)
@ Nov 27, 2008
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(Chronicle note: This story is written by Praharsh Sharma based on his experience about the grades received in 2nd year. He describes the events and emotions prevalent at the time of announcement of Grade Point Average during each semester with a sense of humour. All views expressed are his own. He can be contacted at praharshsharmaster@gmail.com)

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With the good morning of the new semester, starts a series of resolutions in a few minds. Quite a number of the ‘7 pointers’ take immense pleasure to state and disclose that their ‘new-semester-resolution’ is to crack an 8 point SGPA in that very semester. A majority of them are laughed at. The quiet ones amongst those though, often make it to the esteemed class of the ‘8 pointers’. At the end of my second semester, I was carrying J an YGPA of ‘7.26’ but at that point of time, the point of being a ‘7 pointer’ seemed pointless. On the other hand, I was told by my seniors that the third semester was the easiest one among all those eight, which I would have to manage to clear to attain the long awaited Bachelor of Technology from IT-BHU.
The spirit of ‘Jugaad Technology’ has always flourished in me, ever since I began my journey here in IT-BHU, about 27 months ago. It perhaps is the most consistent tool that never malfunctions but performs just enough not to be reported failed, and one always ends up on the other side of the crossbar, may be touching it, though not hard enough to make it fall. My mind felt, rather thought and very soon decided that the third semester was perhaps the best time to creep into the esteemed class of ‘8 pointers’, though at ‘7.26’ I was quite far behind. I never had an intention of intruding into the community of ‘consistent 8 pointers’, but just to experience the delight of being one among the ‘8 pointers’, seemed a lot more than exciting. Resolving the goal finally, I decided not to take the risk of disclosing the resolution, though it never meant that I was not confident of scoring it. My version of ‘Jugaad Technology’ has never let me down in any of my endeavours and this gift of God has always helped me clinch anything and everything I have dreamed of and desired during my life at IT – by hook or by crook . This perhaps, is the unique thing which I have always fondly cherished about my happening life here in the ‘now-storm-prone’ IT campus.
The journey of an odd semester is though less eventful than the one of an even semester, but my personality has never allowed me to stay inside my room amongst books even in the odd one. The huge amount of extra-curricular activities (which I consider as a little inappropriate) in IT (though it seems to be no longer the case  ) has always discouraged those enthusiastic identities, whose minds dream of being a big part of events at IT and being an ‘8 pointer’ at the same time. Firmly, I decided that the odd semester therefore, was the best time to commit this weird task of jumping from something like a ‘7.12’ (Second Semester SGPA) grade point to ‘8.00’ or better. The first thing which I did towards my efforts for this task was taking a look up of the grading system and the credits involved in the semester. Here, I emphasize that, the Batch of 2011 and the Batch of 2012 may not be able to appreciate very well, the ecstasy involved in attaining an ‘8.00’ or better grade point, because of their luckily modified grading system. Nevertheless, I preserve full faith in the Batch of 2009 and the Batch of 2010 and believe that the majority of them understands the delight of being an ‘8 pointer’ and the ones like me (who could never actually take up studies at IT seriously ), feel pleased to realise that we all are the ones responsible, creditable and the souls behind all the respect and ‘bhaav’, these ‘8 pointer and above (good for nothing but studies) guys’ get at IT, especially during the end-semester for their (to be Xeroxed) notes and their pseudo-tuition-lectures in the hostel rooms.
The evaluation of the grading system for the third semester revealed that the semester carried 26 credits (incidentally the maximum among those carried by the eight semesters) and calculations proved that the minimum grade point required to be an ‘8 pointer’ in the third semester was a bit above the exact '8.00’ mark. I felt guilty that this urged me to step further inside into the ‘8 pointers’ arena’ but at the same time, I was sure that my ‘Jugaad Technology’ would never push me too much deep inside into it, though I desperately wanted it to succeed in order to let me manage something just above the ‘8.00’ mark.
A single year of experience at IT is sufficient to realize and understand that the ‘8 pointers’ are no heavenly creature and almost all the entrants into this world of IT possess the intellect and ability required to manage the ‘8.00’ point mark. Hence, the different classes of ‘6 pointers’, ‘7 pointers’ and ‘8 pointers’ are all a matter of choice and not a matter of chance. As one goes up higher into the class of grade points, he/she does not gain everything, rather ends up losing some. The ‘8 pointer commoners’ are personally dull, introvert and reserved. The decision of being an extrovert and to get largely into every extra-curricular activity going around in the campus seems to be wise at the first glance, but many a less appreciate that it costs most of the people a sizeable chunk of their grade points. I was ready to give up this loaf of my grade points, in the very first place since I could not bear to think of spending my four years inside my hostel room in a way, even the least alike to the one, in which an introvert bookworm does. The thought simply killed me. So, I decided to let time and fate decide my grade points for the first year. The results proved out to be more or less as expected and the resultant grade points further cemented my chances of being a throughout ‘7 pointer’.
The dawn of third semester came up with a diverging and diverting thought – a thought of getting serious about grade points. But, I had to make sure that the thought did not scale good heights, since even a decent height attained, could urge the intellect to proliferate the reasons in favour of studies/grade points and this entire introspection could prove out to be fatal to any and all of my extra-curricular endeavours. In the third semester, I decided to give everything, a shot simultaneously and had absolutely no idea of what the next 5 months had in store for me. The mind understood that the semester and the time then needed to be taken as it came. To an excitement and a good degree of contentment, the months proved out to be the best times I had spent at IT till then and the semester gifted a good deal of elation apart from some memories which I cannot ever shake. On the consideration at that moment, were most importantly the two spells of Class Tests and the end-semester.
At this juncture, you might be probably thinking of what actually, happened to the resolution. It seems to be left way behind and it is justified on your part to be curious about what occurred to that exercise of the so called ‘trustable technology’. To service your curiosities, I must confess that that the two CTs did not make up to any promising results. As always happens with me in life, they neither instilled confidence into my resolution, nor they managed to shatter my dreams of creeping into the esteemed class of ‘8 pointers’. They did not lead to any promising forecast, rather left the decision to the end-semester examinations. The only thing I was chilling out about, at that moment was that, though the semester had not by then shaped up any probable outcomes of the ‘grade-points-thing’, but it had passed off extremely eventful and showcased some of life’s most beautiful times. And to add to the joy, I did not feel guilty about the entire thing as a whole, as my lust for being always into everything going on around (the degree of stupidity of any event being immaterial) had not perished. It was rather growing ‘technically cultural’ sporting an opulent rate .
The zeal and enthusiasm for everything was intact but a bigger excitement then, was the last thing that needed satisfaction...The excitement of the results for the ever (during the four semester months) forgotten resolution...To a hell of tradition at our own institute, the administration takes respectable degree of pleasure in disclosing the results of a semester, some ages after the end-semester examinations. And we are now habitual of not getting surprised, when we are, at occasions asked to write the first spell of CTs of the subsequent semester without being declared successful in the previous one. May be, the authorities want us to further realise that grades do not matter!  Although my lust for something big has always paid off, but thinking about the resolution’s probable outcome was never a pleasant experience.
As the date closed by, my adrenal gland usually found itself in a state of overwork and adding to the workload of my already overworked adrenal, the ‘heavenly’ decided to pass the control of the situation to ‘hell’…And there looked no chances of the ‘heaven’ being asked to bear the office again...The declaration of results was finally decided to a date and the department authorities had pretty innocently put up a notice on the board reading,
                      “Attn: All B. Tech. Part-II students are required to assemble in the Seminar Hall on 21-01-2008 at 15:30 hours for the declaration of results of the third semester . . .”     
I was almost shocked, while the adrenal probably went unconscious, secreting out everything it had in bank, altogether, once and for all. When I could manage to recollect myself, I found that I had gathered the courage to think something and what came to my mind at first, was the thought of reasoning - whether there actually existed any point of doing something, as trivial and as personal as declaration of results, ceremonially in a seminar hall? I personally have never advocated the importance of grades, and to hold the declaration of results ceremonially, seemed quite unnecessary and weird than uninteresting. I wondered what was it that, the administration wanted to celebrate ceremonially. The notice also read further,
               “The Head of Department would address the students prior to declaration of results”  
Here was thus, the answer. I was astonished thinking of the kind of an opportunity, the HOD had bagged for himself that time. Probably, he was confident of himself, that he would be unable to successfully gather all the students for some announcement, solely for his cause. Perhaps, for the better, he understood the students well  May be, he had guessed that, the declaration of results and the issue of grade-cards could be a suitable bait for the trap. He wanted us together and until we could not survive without it, we were never in the least mood to listen to him. The whole thing seemed to be quite a fair deal of blackmailing. And, was the HOD’s address going to affect/change/improve/manipulate the grade points in any way? I doubted.
‘We did not need this favour from them’...A seminar hall was far more inferior a celebration venue, than our two evergreen perpendicular hostel lobbies for the cause. We were quite content with our place and were in no mood to change, but it seemed like the administration had different plan(s). Although, this aroused in me, no spark of excitement but a sense of possible public insult/disrespect was an obvious fear among all of the ‘not-very-sure-of-good-grade-point’ type students. Majority never knew, what was going to be unpacked and stamped on their character as their third semester grades, in that seminar hall on the stipulated date. I had no option but to get mentally prepared for the day...
Finally, the day arrived…In the morning hours, while the employees at the department office were just about to finish packing of grade-cards in sealed envelopes, some of the B. Tech. Part-II students (all IT students are more or less such or for that matter, all engineering undergraduates are the same  ) managed to have a glance at some of the ‘in-process-to-be-packed’ grade-cards…Half a dozen of them ended up more than elated, since they had, on this another occasion of life, successfully managed something still more weird than what the ‘heavenly’ (in this case, the administration) had in plan for them, where as the administration could take down no notice of the same. Fortunately, I was not among those half a dozen identities, whose fate had by then, already trickled down from the leaking (till then unpacked and open) seal of some of the envelopes. I consider it fortunate because, when the adrenal gets overloaded and adrenaline starts constantly leaking, one desperately needs to be relaxed and at such moments, it mostly proves best if the ‘being-expected-stormy-climax’ gets delayed by a few more hours. I found myself in a similar situation then and felt happy to realise that, the storm had not yet, finally arrived.
(In the course of our four years at IT, we engineering undergraduates should be proud of one thing to which I am sure, all of us agree unanimously. The ability that gets perhaps, best incorporated in us during these quadruple of years, is to manage anything (that is desperately needed) out of nothing, as and when required. We all manage to learn and exercise this well in due course of our time and efforts here. In the sort of situation we are made to live, the most beautiful part is undoubtedly that, this life teaches us how to keep our cool on, when we are right about to fall into the middle of nowhere but hell. This is only because, just when we are living on the last edge and are about to be busted, life subjects us to an experience where in, a pseudo helping hand just saves us from falling into the hell. Thus, when we are in any situation of almost death, we always assume that there would be a way out and this illogical confidence is the best thing, which engineering undergraduates learn to have during their four years. We here call it the engineering preamble, truly stated by someone – “We, the unwilling, lead by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much for so long, with so little knowledge that we will one day qualify to do anything with knowing nothing”…)
Some similar sort of thing had been done by those half a dozen undergraduates. Where else could students imagine and dream of such a weird way to get to know the results? On the other hand, this whole thing did not bring me the slightest bit of relief, and what I was concentrating on at the moment was a completely different thing. I needed to draw some conclusions or statistical probability about my soon to be known grades from the six sets of data (results) and their respective the then past statistics. I had in actual a sample space then with six elements, though I have always been pretty lazy with statistics and probability. But the matter at stake was worth the trouble to employ these couple of mathematical tools. To another workload of the adrenal, the evaluation proved out to be discouraging, triggering the gland hard, yet again. But this time the bang was hard and the gland could have crashed any moment. Actually, a couple of the six had been ‘above-me-7-pointers’ in the then past, but they had secured something only slightly above the initial ‘7.00’ point mark. The other four were equally discouraging on the whole. This perhaps could have been the worst way, for my dream to get almost shattered without even knowing the actual results...
Still then, I kept the cool to enter the seminar hall with all others at the stipulated time as I had no option/reason to arrive late at something this important, where no risks could be undertaken. It was finally revealed that the department administration wanted a feedback about the faculty from its students (and that was the prime reason for this not very comfortable gathering to have taken place). The sequence of day’s surprises was perhaps going to grow endless. The feedback had to be given by the students keeping their identity confidential, as ordered. A sequence of weird occurrences was the cake of the day and I imagined the climax of the ‘months-long-journey’ to be still weirder . It was explained that each member of the faculty had to be judged/marked under different abilities by the students on a scale of 10 and when a student sealed his/her feedback form with his/her identity kept undisclosed, he/she would be allowed his grade-card. Two obvious questions to intrude my clever mind were, one - who the hell in the administration was going to pay the least heed to these feedbacks and two - who the hell among the students cared if anyone did or did not look into these feedbacks? At that moment, I was not sure of any answers to both the questions, but I for sure knew that I was not among the students who (if any) were the answers to my second question. I smartly decided to fill the form up with a random array of ‘7’, ‘8’ and ‘9’ in the table that had intersecting rows (for qualities) and columns (for faculty members’ name) to get away with the job as soon as possible. In probably 60 seconds, I was the first one ready and done with my ‘sealed-feedback-envelope’, all set to grab my grades  .
As the grade-card emerged from the envelope, I had only one thing impounding my clever mind. I had no intention to bear any interest in, or to try to know the individual course wise performance. My eyes just simply wanted to get up to that magic figure groping up all those numbers on the grade-card that seemed to be grade points. I just wanted to see which side had I landed? Had I successfully broken into the esteemed ‘8 pointer villa’? Or was I seen getting in and kicked back without even stepping in? The grade-card was quite dense and finally my pair of eyes finished hunting the magic figure. It read…
                                                   *.**  
 I had no courage to read the three digits and the desperation to get inside that ‘8 pointers arena’ was digging deep into the heart and mind. This probably kept a ray of hope alive in me even after realising the fact that those half a dozen grade-card data were not at all encouraging and promising. To end everything in a go (and more importantly keeping in mind the risk of impending adrenal attack and eventually adrenal failure), I decided to give it a shot. It read…   
                                                   8.**                           
And then, who cared after the decimal?  The first integer carried my life  . To the hell of an excitement, I was later reported to have gone eventually hysterical at the moment there and then. I had been berserk for long and the feeling of conquering the world and getting over it had started blooming inside. The ‘Jugaad Technology’ had once again laid another milestone, in its glorious history of success and performance. Concentrating on the two after-decimal-digits later, I realized that the first one read 0 and this was exactly in accordance and agreement with the expected. The last digit read 8. When all the other grade-cards were taken and a statistical compilation was completed by me in the evening, another interesting and agreeing fact came up. ‘8.08’ was soon found to be the lowest score obtained by any ‘8 pointer’ and this was what triggered a still bigger celebration  . The new born fact brought in a sense of familiarity and security, while the delight of becoming a new member of the ‘8 pointer’ community was certainly visible and obvious...  
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Epilogue:
To an excitement, I could never sustain to be a permanent member of the ‘8 pointer’ group. It was never a permanent residence for me. The fourth semester somehow almost dragged me back to where I had jumped/leaped a ‘0.96’ chunk of grade from. The fourth semester ended it up all forever perhaps, with a grade point of ‘7.29’ and the subsequent ones may have other surprises in store. But I would not mind much, missing a few surprises if they bring with them, grades like six-point something . I would though definitely mind missing them, if they bring with them, grades like nine-point something  ...
An ‘8 pointer’ may seem to be a very happy species instead, and at a great advantage as compared to those with low-profile grade points, but many a less realise there is a good deal of plight involved and hidden inside in being an ‘8 pointer’. In the backdrop of his/her grades promising him a good career, he/she also has to carry forward and accelerate a good deal of labour and hard luck at times. He/she has to refrain from indulging much into the ever attracting extra-curricular activities and leisure timeouts…
Though, it’s a trade off among priorities that slide on a ruler, life at IT is just a collection of different students setting their sliders at different points on the ruler (where they think is just appropriate for them). The position of the slider is what makes all the difference…
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Statutory Warning:
In the common interest of the Batch of 2012, it is hereby stated that, no confusion regarding the importance of grades should be sheltered in mind. During your four years of stay at IT, you will get to listen from different people, that studies are quite unimportant at an institute like IT-BHU and this can most probably lead to your insincerity in studies and grade points, but in the due course of time (somewhere in your fourth or fifth semester) you will eventually realise the true fact. It is highly recommended that you may involve yourself into all extra-curricular activities you desire, but never at the cost of your studies. At the same time, you are advised to retain your very obvious prime objective and motive intact. There have been registered, cases of parallel expertise and excellence in curricular and extra–curricular activities. Though rare and tough to crack, they are definitely inspiring and encouraging. All the very best!

 

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May 14, 2009 12:49 AM
 Praharsh Sharma said:

Seems like someone has put up Spam Comments... Kindly refrain..

March 12, 2009 10:10 AM
 Praharsh Sharma said:

Thanks Vaibhav and Himanshu ! :)

January 14, 2009 6:04 PM
 vaibhav sharma said:

your write up is quite an interesting one,otherwise i used to leave these type of articles in between,congrats for keeping it live...

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 himnshu said:

It is really an honest and hilarious opinion on serious matter of grades.Praharsh,you have a keen eye for minute details and art of story telling a awesome.Keep it up...

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