It's been over an year since I posted in this blog, and a lot has happened since. It can be roughly categorized into three phases- The boards, JEE, and College.

The Boards: We wrote a bunch of Pre-Board exams before the real ones. Question setters are not a very active people; they usually repeat previous year questions. The pre-boards are obviously set in the same fashion, so every student would be acquainted with most questions during the finals.
The physics paper was the only unexpected one, with a  bunch of 'high-level' questions, and so little time to answer them. A few people left the hall in tears, and later that day we heard of an online leak of the paper only the day before. This infuriated quite a lot of people, and there were some demands to have a re-exam. Thankfully, we didn't have one.

JEE: After we were done with the boards, we had JEE Mains in 15 days. FIITJEE classes were held; but there wasn't much attendance. Most of the students travelled to Coimbatore as they were writing the offline version. By the end of April, everyone had finished with Mains and moved on to Advanced preparation.
Meanwhile, there were the other admission tests: BITSAT, VITEE (Supposed to be pronounced 'Witty'), and the SRM, Amrita ones. All of them were boring, as expected. I slept for over an hour during VITEE.
Then came May, the JEE month. Students all over the country were preparing hard. Some were casually going through their textbooks; some were attending last minute Crash-courses; and the rest were doing their 2nd/3rd/4th revision.
A little diversion here: I somehow got selected for the IOITC, the Informatics Training Camp, and it was 20 days before JEE. I didn't give a damn to the JEE, as I had my priorities. My math teacher called me and asked if I really wanted to go -- considering we had JEE coming up so soon-- but I said I was prepared well enough. (Well, enough as in I couldn't prepare more). I enjoyed the camp, except for the day our Mains marks came. My mother was disappointed, and I tried to change her mind saying I'd prepare a lot for Advanced as soon as I came back.
The day before JEE came, and I wondered what everyone was doing. I had printed online cheatsheets for Physics, and made a futile attempt at mugging them, but failed. I started reading HP7 instead. Didn't make my mom too happy.
We wrote JEE, and everyone was generally happy with it. Then came the keys. I shall not go into further details.
We had a month of 'freedom' before we got our results. Not everyone was happy with them. I had made a rather pessimistic prediction a few months before about the results, but we had done far worse than that.

College: A lot of F1-ers opted for the IITs --Mechanical, Computer Science, Naval etc.-- and the rest mostly for SRM/VIT/NITs. And one student went to IIIT-Hyderabad.
The third phase of this year -- college -- I can't speak for all. The 'F1' part of this blog ends here. Now that I said it, I have the liberty to write about different things. A bit more about myself now.
I found IIIT-H to be an amazing place. The pace of things perfectly suited me. We had this awesome course where we started with defining NAND and NOR gates, and ended with processor design and assembly language. There was only one course I hated. Electrical Science. I didn't see how analysing circuits was in any way related to analysing code, or how it would help at all in anything I do in the future. I started learning some other things by my own (like Python, Android Dev, and stuff) and slept in classes. Our Midsems weren't so hard (which was disappointing, as I like hard papers). I want to point out an exception --Electrical Science-- but that subject doesn't deserve any more space in my blog.
Endsems were pretty much the same. This was followed by 4 days of Jeevan Vidya, a shivir about Human Values. No comments about that.

3 weeks later, and 2 days before I leave for college, I sit in front of my computer, publishing this blogpost.

Some advice to juniors: Prepare for the olympiads, kids.

Board Exams vs JEE

Ah. Freedom.
It's been months since I last posted here. To my defence, for the last 4 months, I was thrown into a whirlpool of revision tests, pre-boards, cluster exams, and mock practicals. Not to mention we had FIITJEE classes too in between. Yesterday's physics practicals were a grand culmination of the wake-up-daily-at-3 routine.
In fact, Pandit sir even warned us back then.

Yep, I'm cocky too.

Problem is, even when we were given holidays to study (ya know, Sundays and all), I wasted them. I'm not the hard-working type. Not even half of it. So, while my friends used all that time to perfect their NCERT marks, I was preparing for the coding counterpart of INMO , and the GMPs and all those things. Anything but boring NCERT. We had our first Full Test (AITS) recently, and I was one of the only few who wrote it.

 Of course, we no longer had the comfort of having our FIITJEE teachers correcting the papers, so naturally, one could only get a 70+ mark with a lot of cramming. I was forced to wake up at 3 in the morning (on the day of the exam) to study. That worked, since I'm 300% more efficient at that time (really... no TV, Computer etc. etc.) for a few exams, but as time progressed, I started to sleep again at 4.

Then, as lazy guys do, I found the ultimate solution to getting good marks in exams with only 2-3 hours of study. The method I employed was a 100% success. The chemistry HOD even wrote 'Good' on my paper. Pandit sir had given us this method.

The secret? I mugged the answers to last year's sample papers. There were 3 for chemistry. My pre-board 2 questions were a linear combination of those questions. My evaluator was obviously impressed by the elegant solutions I had written. Obviously, this is valid for the other subjects too- but they are less theoretical. I don't claim that you can ace any exam by mugging the past-year-questions. I've not done enough research. But PanditJi seems to have done so, and he says the same. They recycle questions from the last 10 years.

Okay, I'll leave all that school stuff, and get to the real deal. Remember I said we had classes too in the last 4 months? Well, almost no one attended them. There were a couple of classes with a record attendances of 8 and 7, that too from both F1 and F2 sections put together. My inner heart told me that I'd rather go to school, than sit at home and laze around, so I did. And I did a good thing, too. Whoever attended wrote a bunch of mock-AITses and a thorough, almost personal, test analysis (Low attendance, yay).

My ranks slowly, gradually started improving in the AITS. On the other hand, that doesn't mean anything, because the number of people writing it became one fourth (12k to 3k) in 4 exams. I can't tell how my performance is relative to my peers, because almost none of them are writing it.

I have one question. Dumping NCERT (I mean getting 470ish out of 500, instead of 485) for JEE Advanced preps is understandable, but the other way around? I don't get it. If you do, please enlighten me.

Why I would vote for 'The Captain'

Disclaimer: This is a very long blog post and contains political views which might influence your political views.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Last time I posted, I seem to have mentioned the then upcoming Internal Tests. Kids around here were studying pretty hard for them, because the tests would determine what batch they would land up in, for the revision classes: The Alpha Batch, Beta Batch and the Gamma Batch. Our results were horrible, to say the least-- The top mark from our class wouldn't have crossed 45%. The top 3 in the tests were from the F2 section. Apparently, the overall topper had scored 45/180 in the first paper and 170/180 in the second. A real shocker.

Well, to some students' relief, the teachers had decided that due to our poor performance, there would be no segregation at all. All that preparation hadn't gone to waste, though; we had our first AIiTS soon after.

Also, in the past week, we created some sort of record in class. We managed to annoy 3 teachers (Yes, 3 teachers- Eng, CSc and Pandit) successively without getting Chandrasekhar sir angry. Annoying our English teacher wasn't too difficult-- we all collectively started moaning 'K-R' at the beginning of class; and voila!

Just after Pandit's class, we were copying a ray diagram from the board when our CS sir walked in. He wasn't very amused, and although the next day was the computer exam, he gave his period to Pandit. Pandit apparently 'promised' to let us home by 3, and a small misunderstanding led to him becoming angry. He made us study for the exam in that period.

That done, let me shift to the main topic... Politics. Yes, politics. I spend more than 20 minutes every day reading the newspaper (no sports) and after the number of biased political articles I've read, I felt the need to write one and spread awareness of politics--at the state level, to begin with--to my peers.

I find it a bit saddening that most students today don't like the state India is in, and don't want to change it either. Every other student I meet says "I don't care about politics; I'm not going to vote". 

In Tamil Nadu, there are 3 major leaders we get to choose between during elections. Voting for anyone else is equivalent to a NULL vote, at least in the bigger picture. The three biggies are:

1. A grand old guy (not Shubham) who writes Tamil poems,
2. A lady who thinks she's got everything under control,and
3. Captain.

Namma Captain

I shall be explaining, one by one, why you should elect Captain to power in the next state elections. I'm not talking about Dhoni, but a captain with far, far greater powers. Most of you might laugh at what I'm saying right now; but trust me, by the end of this article, you'll... probably still laugh. *sigh*

Anyway, here goes.

1. Courage: You'd expect a good leader to be a person of bravery and strength. Captain casually strolled into the political arena at a time when there were only two players. Takes guts, fellas. The fact that Captain managed to gather 3 million people at the time only indicates the fearlessness and popularity that Captain enjoys.
2. Powers: As you might have observed, Captain boasts of an arsenal of powers. I'm not talking about the powers that come with leadership, nor eye power. Captain can do anything he wants; including flying across buildings, making others think of him as a 20-year old, and doing his detective work on Windows Media Player. There, I gave you some proof too.
3. Kindness: Once, there was this car driver who had this story to tell me:
   "A week ago, I visited Captain's party office, at lunch time, and the moment I went in, they asked: Did you eat, sir? Obviously, I said No, of course not. Then, immediately, they gave me a plate of chicken biriyani. My vote goes to Captain!!"
   I don't know why the driver went to the office, but what would you prefer, 1Kg rice for 10 Rupees or a plate of Chicken Biriyani for free? 
4. Mass Leader: Although he does possess a lot of mass, he's also a leader of the masses. See, he turns up for most of his speeches drunk (doesn't make a big difference, anyway) and yet, manages to deliver. Manages to convince people. Manages to talk like a leader. Clearly, there is something that differentiates him from the rest. He's not human.

I hope that we all agree now on who our best leader is.
See you all next time.
Auro

JEE Journey: The Andhra Factor

Two years ago, I made a decision.

I would get admission into one of the top-rated Andhra coaching centers, and reap the benefits 4 years later. I'd go with determination, and come back a hero.

You want to take on me? Seriously? Stupid mortal.

Luckily, my grandfather stopped me from going there, and I joined FIITJEE in Chennai instead. But then, how could I possibly handle the Andhra competition? I barely study for 3 hours a day...4  if I have an exam the next day. Compare this to 7 or 8 hours a day.
Yes, we all know it-- they treat children like prisoners, but I only realized now, to what extent they are willing to agonize poor students to get ranks. If you can, take a moment to read this.

My physics sir told us that day why we should sympathize with AP-Students rather than be scared of them.

According to that blog post, students are given 15 minutes in the morning to do their duties, and the rest of the day is scheduled for classes and study hours, with limited breaks here and there. The food isn't exactly appreciated either: rice and curry for 362 days a year, and nothing else. A student gets two trips to home per year, and one visit from his/her parents on his birthday. Students are allowed to go out of the campus only once a month- for 45 minutes, to get a haircut.

Some centers even leak exam papers beforehand. They give the question papers to their students, along with the solutions, and make them memorize the answers. This happens especially for the state board exams. With the JEE Mains having a 40% 12th score as a factor, aren't the honest aspirants cheated of their hard work? The most corrupt coaching center wins. 

And the worst part is: The students who come out of those factories don't repent about it either. The intense cruelty they face probably becomes routine to them-- and when they do go to college, they become free birds, and implode.

JEE is not the only insanely competitive test that students fry their brains for-- they face the same amount of competition even for local engineering colleges and even medical seats. Some coaching centers boast of armies in all three. Those students who don't take coaching are, well-- forced to. So we can't blame the students, nor their parents. They all will probably realize one day that not all kids will/want to become engineers and doctors.

If you're a JEE aspirant and you're not from Andhra, don't be scared about your rank. As a famous Pandit once said, studying in a cramped environment only hampers the learning process; it makes your brain mechanical. Studying in a free environment improves you all-round thinking/learning skills, and you'll probably notice that once you join college.

Still pessimistic? Let me tell you how to actually gain the upper hand over them:

• Study for 7+ hours a day. The topper in my centre has a schedule like this: Study from 5pm to 11 pm, and wake up at 3 in the morning to have an extra 3 hours of study. That makes 9 hours.... it makes me feel kinda stupid right now, writing about it...
• Follow our math(s) sir's advice: Study for 10 hours a day. Oh, wait. Have I already mentioned that? My bad. 
• Stop all distractions: Yeah, you guessed it. If you're really that passionate to beat the AP-dudes, just click once on the little red cross at the top-right corner of this page and open your book. Also, no TV, no Music, no Hanging out with friends, no Phone, no Junk food. And if you're a XII F1 guy, NO HAND CRICKET.

If you're not able to do those, then just stop worrying about it and relax. Watch this. And anyway, 500 students from Andhra were sent back from counselling because they failed to come in the top 20% of their board. So there'd be much less competition.

P.S: I urgently need an editor. Yes, I understand this blog is small and pathetic and that I'm overly pessimistic and sarcastic, but I've been driving up an excellent revenue (About 7 rupees so far) from this website, and having an editor would surely drive up the cash. Email me if you want to sign up!

P.P.S: Also, all the best for the PDT tomorrow. It's our first Reshuffling test!

A Day in the life of a Careless Schoolboy

Morning, 6:00am
I wake up, groggy eyed. As I brush my teeth, I wonder: Why can't they give us a day off, at least to prepare for the math exam? The quarterly exam's tomorrow, and I haven't studied a bit yesterday, so that leaves a lot to prepare today. Since only the FIITJEE section is working, I decide to wear sandals to school- nobody's gonna care anyway, right?

7:15am
I wait in the auto (which takes me to school,along with Saiduth and Rohit) and whistle to myself. Saiduth comes out, with his math textbook in hand. I glance at him and smile.
Auro:"You've become quite the nerd, haven't you?"
Saiduth:"Look who's talking! So you studied anything yesterday?"
A:"Didn't open the textbook. Why, you finished? Gonna relax today, huh?"
S:"Yeah, I finished because we have an exam today."
I laugh.
A:"Don't start pulling my leg now. We have full-day FIITJEE today!"
S:"No, we have a test, and then FIITJEE!"
A:"Serious. Are you kidding me??!?"
S:"No! Ask Rohit if you will!"
5 minutes later: (Rohit enters)
A:"Dude, we really have a test today?"
Please say no.
Rohit:"Yes, obviously... why, you didn't know?" *hee hee*
A:"Wha.... but... I thought today was only FIITJEE?"
R:"No, I checked the timetable too."
S:"Auro, lol, you're dead meat if you're not bluffing.."
A:"Give me that book!"
I snatch the book from his hand, and he kindly does not take it back.

How I felt whilst writing the paper

7:45am
My mind is chaotic, and is overflowing with formulas and equations. I check my time. 15 minutes to go! I go through my check-list: Good chapters, finished. Boring chapters, almost. Wow-- the human brain's really efficient under pressure! This is literally mind-blowing! I should write about this on the blog some day... hey, wait a minute, I've wasted a minute! Curse you, brain!

8:15am
I'm sitting in my room, with my eyes focused on the text book. I hear someone whining about studying only for 2 hours for the exam. I chuckle, both at him and myself.
The teacher walks into the exam room, shouts at us to arrange the benches, and distributes the papers. She tells us to start the test.
I look around. Sagnik is studying the paper, and most others are frantically writing. I look at my question paper. A string of thoughts flood my mind:
Trigonometry. Parabola. Ellipse. Formula? Write. Meow. Question 6 easy. Bzzzzzzzzz...
I sit in static for 5 minutes. I take a long, hard look at the paper, and lift my pen. I'll do the easy questions first, and somehow manage the paper...

10:00am
Turns out the questions are easier than they look. Either that or I'm not doing anything right. For each problem, especially trigonometry, I spend a good 5 minutes on R&D, and then proceed to answering it. Also, considering that I have only about an hour left, I try to get faster. I still can't believe my carelessness.

11:00am
I finish the exam. I'm not too happy with my performance, but not very depressed about it either. I walk at snails' pace to my classroom, discussing the answers with my peers. A chilling thought enters my mind, as I sit in my place. What will I say to mom at home today? As I ponder over the alternatives, MP walks in.
He slowly comes over to my place, and asks (with that scary sober face): "How was the paper today?".
I smile.

Fellow classmates, let me end the story over here, as what happened after this is not very pleasing to hear.

Note: Yeah, it is a true story. Half-yearly Exam, Class 11, 2012. Here's my excuse for producing such a boring article-- time constraints do not permit creativity.
So long, till next week!

6 Qualities that make a Perfect Batch

Hai guys. 12th is really, really hectic, so I've not been able to post anything for a very long time. I've made myself some time now, so here's one more of my logical-analysis rants. But before that, a quick recap of what happened over the previous 2 weeks:

Pandit ManikandaSamy got furious with us once again, a week ago (I think we didn't bring our FIITJEE NCERT notebooks or something, or more probably, our juniors got him angry). He followed the usual punishment- Finish the chapter lightspeed. Luckily for us, it was the 4th/5th time we were doing various-object-fields, and we could understand what he was teaching.

Delete the AC comment I made a couple of months ago, the vile contractor got everything fixed but the switch. And the equation is simple-- No switch, No AC. And every rain that came in the last month came only in the afternoon, after school was over. Even the rain gods ensured that we both burnt in class and never got a holiday.

On a lighter note, everyone in the class seems to have gained an affinity for smacking Saiduth on the head. Even the guy at the kiosk outside started picking on Saiduth (and me, to a little extent). Saiduth almost never had proper change, only 50 and 100 rupee notes. The kiosk dude would stuff a puff into Saiduth's hands, and charge 15 rupees. Ouch...
 Anyway, we later hatched a plan that made the kiosk guy the laughing stock of everyone in near vicinity. Sweet revenge.

We also nearly gave Chandrasekharan VenkataMadhavan a heart attack when we finished the solid state package a day before the due date. Looks like sincerity in our class quadrupled. Even Akshay spent his free time at school doing the chemistry package. Whoa.


The near-perfect class.

This makes me wonder- How would a perfect batch be? Let me begin on one more of my philosophical ventures:

1. Sincere: No-brainer. An insincere batch would be paying far less attention to studies than it should-- making it more of hypocrisy and a wastage of the FIITJEE fees.
2. Efficient: Of course. Sathiaraj Sir got this drilled into our minds an year ago. A perfect batch must be diligent in its work, and must complete all work in time. Handling a sloppy-but-sincere batch is like trying to teach a donkey math... which is useless.
3. Well-behaved: No one would like to teach a bunch of jabbering monkeys. As teachers so beautifully put it, pin-drop-silence is a must for the perfect batch.
4. Packed with Geniuses? This is a toughie for sure. Would a batch of brainy-powerhouses be better than a batch with slightly lower IQs? Does the quantity of the student-elites matter more than the quality of their studies? MVM produced most of the top ranks, but the selection ratio was higher for CV. The TF batch has all the strongies (Much like RCB) but our batch has a more uniform distribution (CSK, anyone?). So which is better? 
5. Interactive: Again, this comes at a price. Our batch is very, very interactive, but we usually think outside the box. Way outside the box, actually. Sometimes, during class discussions on various topics (Eg. How to engineer a motor), we (especially Abhishek) come up with all kinds of answers and ideas which annoy our teachers... but the TF batch, on the other hand, is so silent I get headaches sitting in that class.
6. Happy: This goes hand-in-hand with the previous point. Happiness is what separates someone from the poor kids at coaching centers like Narayana, Chaitanya etc. and turns him/her into an educated person rather than a problem-solving robot. Any happy batch (with happy teachers too, of course) is destined to be a great batch.

Actually, imagining a class with the above qualities is near-impossible, at least from a teacher's point of view. Remember, Physics  Pandit sir once told us that any student who never made fun of his teacher wasn't a student in the first place? That blatantly violates #3.
All said, in my view, the perfect batch is the imperfect batch.
Bye bye, everyone.

Summer Fever, IPL fever, Viral fever and more

Well, I haven't posted for a long time, and for good reason too. The previous two weeks were boring, lack-luster weeks without almost no activity at all, except for a couple of noteworthy incidents.
PMS had a 'talk' with us last week, about his being 'harshit'. He promised--no, clarified that he would only beat students with a high capacitance-- no, capacity-- and kept true to his word.
The first was 3 days ago. We had PMS for the morning, as usual, and he became angry, or rather disappointed, after Sagnik didn't submit his NCERT notebook. He launched himself into a turbo mode with an 800% increase in teaching speed. After an hour of continuous dictating-writing, we had Chemistry.
CVM sir, on discovering that quite a few didn't balance iodoform reactions (well, he asked us to balance them the previous day), his heart rate increased quadruple. He shouted, and my heart skipped a beat (Poor Anand). There was a moment of stunned silence in the class, followed by more shouting. After chemistry was over and CVM was relieved of his misery, we had physics again, and PMS looked visibly happier. The only logical conclusion I have is that he heard CVM too.
Our midphase was pretty normal. As usual, I screwed up chemistry, but our class made a marked improvement. CVM sir told us to write in a more... NCERTish way for the Bi-Weekly, and most ended up having to take extra time. Unfortunately, PMS came in before we could, and no one could finish on time.
All said, we get AC classrooms from tomorrow, and we can study happily ever after. We get summer holidays in a couple of weeks.
Our juniors had their first fiitjee PTM yesterday, while we get our first one on May-End. Why doesn't fiitjee take an interest in our class? We had no reshuffling test either- not that I'm complaining, just saying.
Oh, and about our holidays, what are you going to do during those magic days? How about an international vacation? Or olympiad preparation? Let me guess: The IPL. The CSK faction of our class seems to be pretty happy right now, and I'm willing to bet CSK will end up at the top of the points table. Haha, my sadism took a high last year when CSK lost the finals last year. I hope that continues. As I write, CSK plays. Hey, Murali Vijay is OUT! Awesome. I won't be surprised if CSK scores lower than 80.
One more thing, there's a viral fever out there in the city. About 6 of them contracted it already, so be careful. If you want to stay out of this, don't:

• Eat ice-cream
• Drink Pepsi
• Switch on the AC
• Eat delicious mangoes
• Take a swim
• Watch the IPL

And here we are at the end of this boring, inconclusive post. Next post next week!

Bye-Bye!