BITS - The Last Day (Part 1)

Today is my last day BITS Pilani Goa Campus. I have mixed feelings about leaving this place. At first, I was happy that I would finally complete all the courses here, no longer have to endure the electricity cuts, the water shortage in summer, the constant struggle for grades, the overly restrictive internet connection, etc. But then, I realised all the moments I spent with my friends, be it Tejas' inappropriate and unintentional misuse of language or Amol's terrible timing for expressing his opinion. It has definitely been a wonderful experience.

A lot has happened in the last three and a half years. As our previous AH7 Hostel Assistant, Manas Bhaiyya put it, I entered BITS as a boy and now leave as a man. There's a lot of people who touched my life and changed me, right from the first year, till today.

I believe that the best way to thank all the people who made my life in BITS tolerable, fun and interesting is to write a sentence each about them and how they influenced my life.

First off, my teachers.

A Big Thank You:

To B. Deshpande Sir for being the best teacher I have been taught by, and whatever!
To R. Joshi Sir for his passion about the open source movement
To M. Bedekar Sir for his innovative ideas and guidance
To Neena Goveas Ma'am for making me distribute answer sheets in class
To D.M.Kulkarni Sir for giving me an opportunity to help the campus
To Imran Ahmed Sir for motivating me to achieve greater goals
To V.Sreejith Sir for being my Team Coach for ACM ICPC 2008
To Gireesan Sir who made my interest in Computer Science grow even more
To All AH7 Wardens for giving me leave whenever I needed to go home
To All other teachers for teaching me whatever I know today and not punishing me for sleeping in class

Now my friends...

I would like to thank the following people without whom BITS life would have probably been really dull

Siddhartha Wagh for waiting for me for more than two hours so that we could be allotted adjacent rooms
Amol Walunj for suggesting awesome movies whenever I wanted to watch one
Tejas Pradhan for helping me a lot during my apping
Nilesh Kulkarni for teaching me what quick learning actually is
Swapnil Dhamal for "Sure aahes ka???"
Vikrant Dhamdhere for entertaining me with his mimicking skills and for not knowing that I have a blog :)
Sohan Kale for allowing me to fix his laptop and install Ubuntu innumerable number of times
Sourabh Bodas for, well, teaching me the art of selective deafness :P
Mihir Mehta for his cricket gyaan
Ninad Puranik for teaching me what being a good boy is (in PS 1)
Vaibhav Shinde for being there to vent my boredom on
Aditya Yadav for hatching plans for projects with me one day before every examination
Rahul Sengupta for reminding me to look at the most obvious things, gifts and friends in life that we take for granted and tend to overlook
Karan Gaikwad for his dancing and his awesomeness
Kavya Meyyappan for being a source of inspiration to me
Sireesha Yakkali for getting me interested enough to read 'The Fountainhead'
Juthika Dabholkar for being bored, sleepy, hungry and tired, all at once ;)
Pranshu Sharma for her Tandoori PJs
Kartik Ukhalkar for participating in Codejams with me and helping me in all my endeavors
Rakesh Ganatra for being an awesome team member in Codejams and being extremely helpful whenever I needed favors
Rohan Anil for writing Natasha with me and helping me with Linux problems
Sujay Jain for leading the chorus all around the campus after the ASCII farewell
Ankit Panchbhai for entertaining me with his antics during PS 1
Anupam Mitra for TeXing with me and staying up with me till 5am singing Christmas Carols and completing the COP report
Yogesh C. for teaching me how to go from being a complete newbie to a network security professional
Hitesh Mantrala for being so active with the Linux User Group and for running the Gnome DC Hub
Starakjeet Nayak for being a friend
Ankita Kejriwal for being a great team member during Nettech
Abhik Lahiri for always being a step ahead of me in all my CS courses
Mansi Verma for showing me what dedication is
Prakash Murali for showing me what a great Resume is
The CS students of 2006 batch for being so awesome
My corridor mates for not smoking
AH7 for being a multifaceted and multitalented hostel
The TITAN DC Hub Admin Team for keeping the MainChat and AdminChat alive and interesting
The Woodstock DC Hub Admin Team for downloading the latest episodes immediately as soon as they were aired
and the entire 2006 batch for just being there!!!

I'm sure this list is incomplete (and includes only my friends from the 2006 batch for now) and a lot many names still need to be added. I will be working on it as and when I get time over the next few days.

More Later...