This article was written by Garvit Sharma (Batch of 2021).
The vacations are over, and so are my hopes for a decent GPA. I promised myself I’d study for the repeats during the holidays, but my promises are probably not as strong as the urge to sleep till noon. Right now I am freer than Solomon Northup, not because I have prepared everything, but because I barely know the Economics and History course outlines. The only ‘cartels’ I am aware of right now are the ones in Medellín and Cali. So why should I even bother studying? I’ll study when I get back to college, I swear. Don’t get the wrong idea. Stay in school, people. Studying and making projects (research papers?) might suck the life out of you and turn you into a weed-smoking, alcohol-chugging, sleep-deprived, crying-for-help social pariah, but it will land you a plum job. So I guess it’s all worth it.
It has been three months in Law School, and I think it is the right time to look back with a feeling of pride (regret?). In a college where people usually have good trips and bad trips, I have had nothing but persistent guilt trips. It’s the same feeling of guilt that haunts you the night before your exams. You start reliving, in slow motion, all those hours you wasted during the whole trimester. Needless to say, nothing can be done now. I have somehow survived (survived, not passed, mind you) the first trimester and I feel someone should reward me for this incredible feat. So what if you survived a bear attack and ate raw bison liver, Mr. DiCaprio? Try surviving Economics and History in the same trimester. Making us study these two subjects at the same time is as good an idea as building a wall on the U.S. border to stop the Mexicans from pouring in. Might as well make us study calculus and trigonometry. But hey, that’s not all. This place is not that bad. There is no need to feel overwhelmed. It’s not like you have to make four projects and write eight exams in ninety days, right?
I can’t entirely blame NLS for everything. To be honest, I screwed up everything before I even came to this place. I ended up (inadvertently) bro-zoning myself on the ‘Batch of 2021’ group chat. Long story short, I now have thirty sisters. And they do not show any respite. Day in and day out I have to bear my female batch mates call me ‘bhaiya’. The marketing people at Proctor & Gamble made a huge mistake by making Ranveer Singh the brand ambassador of Head & Shoulders. I have more market value as far as matters of lifelong celibacy are concerned.
Things moved way too fast during the first three weeks at NLS, what with all the thousand orientations and the million committee applications. Applying for different committees appeared to be a very exciting idea until the moment I actually started writing my applications. That is the moment I realized that I hadn’t done anything worthy in my nineteen years of existence on this godforsaken planet. I found my batch mates writing 4-page long applications. That didn’t dishearten me at all. These are the kind of people who take notes in Torts class. God bless them.
There is only one thing that is worse than overly competitive batch mates – overly competitive batch mates who finish their projects before you have even started. Working on projects was nothing short of an ordeal. I had to dump my old pal Wikipedia and embrace JSTOR. It was not a very smooth transition. The most interesting thing about projects, however, was TurnItIn. It is perhaps the cleverest (and cruelest) invention of all time. TurnItIn is solely responsible for killing the Pritam Chakraborty within all of us.
I think it would be best if I don’t give an account of my exams. I don’t want the three people who end up reading this article to cry. One of the few memories I actually want to retain in my head from the first trimester is from Spiritus (a.k.a. ‘three days a slave’). Spiritus was made out to be a ‘first-year event’ for some reason. The seniors promised that it would be the ‘chillest’ time of the year. I did feel special for some time. But that feeling ended as soon as I realized that the term ‘first-year event’ is nothing but a euphemism for ‘you-are-a-first-year-student-and-you-will-work-like-draught-animals.’ After all, why would anyone enjoy leveling the throwball court at 7 in the morning? Don’t get me wrong. I loved Spiritus. I am quite sure ‘I carried 5 mattresses on the top of my head all the way from Yamuna to the Himalaya common room’ will look great on my CV.
All things considered, the first trimester was one hell of a ride. Sometimes (mostly) depressing and sometimes fun. Met some great people. Met some not-so-great people. Failed my exams. Smuggled food into the library. Roamed the entire college at 3 in the morning searching for Wi-Fi. Did NOT pass out from over consumption of alcohol. Went from ‘I love mess food’ to ‘I can’t digest mess food’ in a flash. Slept in class. Et cetera, et cetera. I just hope that the next trimester would be better. I hope.
Happy Diwali.
Such a good piece of writing!