Memoirs of a co-ord

Given I won't write a decent post on my blog for sometime, here's a copy of my article for the department mag...

Seems like just yesterday that the grand blueprint was drawn up for our plans of 6 issues a year. It looked so feasible, the kind of timelines and deadlines we had drawn. 6 issues, hah! Piece of cake. Call it arrogance, call it overconfidence. By the time the first issue came up, we said Ok, fine, 4 then. (We could’ve said 5, but just wanted some “even”ness in the system). Then when the second issue came out, it was exam season. We knew for sure that you’d all be scrambling with textbooks, and the edition we’d been working on will end up as a doormat, a tissue, an ink-flow-checking-paper, a fan (I’ve heard about the power-cuts in the hostel), a chewing gum wrapper, and just about everything else we didn’t want it to be. In all, one issue in the first sem, one issue (so far) in the second sem. Totally not where we wanted to be, given our tall claims. When it hit, it hit us hard.

“Hey, speak to the juniors, get some articles from them” says Vivek the Editor. The frequency of that statement follows a Poisson distribution, peaking at about a week before publishing, then dying down knowing we need to start working on the layout. Dutifully I comply, messaging them, calling them, meeting them, asking them. “I’ve told them Akka, but they are busy with assessments (or) lab mini-project (or) assessments (or) industrial visit (or) assessments”, comes the prompt reply from each of them. 2nd and 3rd years alike.

We had a good team of technically sound final year students to help with the regular features. Ravi, the biker boy, for introducing Robotics as an option for specialization; Mars, the spiritual physicist, to make EMW seem easier than, say, making an omelette; Shanka, the all-knowing non-‘hunk’a, to span the extremes of VLSI; Mathu, divine earthling, bringing in the fun part…the contests; more of them reminding us that it is still techie-friendly with the ECE crowd. What we needed was that extra creative spark from the juniors to tell them, this is for you, by you.

And then there was Pri Mo,
With her never-ending word flow,
Flying around the Science block,
The only good poet in the flock.


Put your ear to the ground Red-Indian style, and if you hear the sound of high heels trotting on the ground, then you know that AR is on her way, rushing to the Pulse meeting, and even better, that the science article is ready in her hands. Besides them, a decnt lot of contributions from students of all years. But it takes someone to make it all look appealing, look readable, look good. SAK did it, working night and day on the Pulse layout. For the unacquainted, he is the 2005 GATE AIR 6, 2006 GATE AIR 4. So, you can be a genius and still do extra curricular work, no excuses.

So many ideas, so little time. At least we can graduate in consolation thinking we’ve left it to our juniors to break the record of bringing more than 3 articles a year. (As Prof VCR candidly, and somewhat acerbically, put it, “So, this newsletter is bi-monthly, not monthly. Hmmm… good!” Err… good???) There were suggestions of a debate, but it got controversial. There was an accusation of “copy-pasting”, but the editors had done their homework well. (This guy was such a coward! Used the title of a prominent Tamil actress to slander us with his vocabulary of expletives, and before we could retort, deleted his ID. Besides, this no-gooder wouldn’t write for us, but rather lash out at those who do). Memories of working for pulse, the great expectations, summoning and canceling meetings within minutes, running around for articles, making up titles, searching for tit-bits, adding it in my statement of purpose to vindicate my fluency in the language (the things we say for an assistantship!), it’ll all be something to look back and smile about, if not roll on the floor laughing.