Engineering, the course where you learn to bullshit your way through 8 semesters

                                                                                                                                         -Chetas Das

                                                       My father once remarked, “College can be highly addictive, learn to embrace it.” in an effort to make sure that I do not skip college after having appeared in the blacklist back in the second semester. I’d like to rephrase that quote – College can be highly addictive, avoid it. For students of Xavier Institute of Engineering (XIE) it is quite the opposite. Many of them prefer to skip college whenever they can during Second Year. This is because the First year classes contain a bunch of random students across different streams, probably because the college is too lazy to organize the classes thanks to late admissions. When students enter the second year, most of them end up being in a class different from that of the friends they made in FE. Eventually though, you will meet likeable people in your class and 3 years will fly by.

Food

XIE’s canteen is rumoured to serve the nastiest food known to Mumbaikars. The taste may not be as pathetic as one can imagine, but what makes it that way probably, are the appetizing cockroaches and spiders found in these preparations. Andy’s, as the canteen is known to most students, for a brief period served Lemonade in small glass bottles. It was an instant hit until a student found a spider in his drink. (Yuck! Till date, yuck!) My sympathy goes out to the arachnid’s kith and kin. He must have died a terrible death in that toxic nimbu pani which has given diarrhoea or at least a bout of stomach ache to a good 40% of its drinkers. 

Also the word around the college is that a B.E student found lizards and cockroaches in the water cooler while it was being cleaned and that he brings 4 bottles of drinking water from home. Students therefore prefer to eat from the friendly aunty in the lane opposite to the college or one of the idli shops scattered in the same lane. Tasty vada pavs, samosas etc are available outside the campus too. Although the canteen has recently undergone a revamp, but that by any means did not change how the students feel about the food they serve. In conclusion I’d like to quote ‘I bet prison food tastes better’.

college ground

The campus is vast enough to house all of the students comfortably and encourage all of them to play a sport or two. Labs are decent and classrooms are a liiiiiiitle dingy but very well ventilated. What annoys the students of XIE though is walking into the campus while continuously attempting to dodge the wedding paraphernalia left over from the previous night. If you want to get married, I'm pretty sure the principal will let you have the ground, because some Tom, Dick or Harry seems to have his wedding on the college ground every other day. This happens at least twice every week. The area is very noisy too. Brass bands play ugly sounding music while students struggle to remember the mnemonic they made 10 minutes before the exam started. Writing an exam is not fun in general, these awful sounding bands and loudspeakers make it a real struggle.

This college is not the best way to spend your 4 (or more) Engineering years, but not bad enough for you to quit college all together. The cons are many and the pros are few, and even 5 years from now there will be nothing new. The fact about life in XIE and all colleges in general, is that students bond over bitching about their college. And honestly, XIE isn’t bad at all and a few years from now, me and my classmates will be doing just fine (hopefully).