Is our insti really safe for girls? Some safety tips!

“Isn’t it better to make insti safe than ask girls not to travel at night and all?”

“If we can’t travel through SAC road at night, why is it there at the first place? Close it. ”

These are few of the typical reactions we hear when girls are asked to restrict their adventures for the sake of their own safety.

Just one question, Is there any harm in being at bit cautious? Restrain from certain explorations if they cause serious issues to you? Insti is of course a nice place to chill out. It is not that a girl’s life is at risk in insti. But if you don’t follow any of the formal/informal rules and regulations, yes, there are chances that you will be a victim of abuses.

Story of a naked man chasing girls in the SAC road at night is well known. From my first year at we were asked to keep away from that road. May be because girls are scared to go to SAC road at night (or the guy shifted his work place!), the new hero is the area near OAT. Let me throw light on some of the incidents of girl’s abuse in the OAT area.

• A foreign exchange student was molested by a guy in cycle on her way to food court. After the brutal act guy asked her,” It feels nice, doesn’t it?” From his dressing and dialogue the girl assumed that it is an insti guy. (Estrogen starvation is making insti guys desperate?)
• A girl’s mobile was snatched by a guy at 7.30ish pm. She was with her friend (a guy). So please don’t think that you will be safe if a guy is with you. (All insti guys eat from mess, so they will be weaker than people from outside :P)
• In another incident one of my friends lost her gold chain, again on the way to food court. It wasn’t even dark. Occasions of stealing gold chains are common here. Credits to the shooting up of price of gold.

Even after employing a security in the OAT road, the area still remains unsafe for girls. Always use main roads if you want to go to food court.

Insti is a great place to go for night walks. But late walks (especially lone walks) have caused many security issues. Construction workers chasing couples near Velachery gate and HS terrace remains unidentified. Here are certain tips to make your night walks non-violent:

• Don’t go to department terraces; let it be HS or BT or which ever.
• Keep an eye on people around you. Don’t make calls or listen to music when you are walking alone. Always keep right so that you can see people coming from behind.
• Please try to restrict your expeditions to administration area and residential zone. Avoid velachery/taramani gates and border roads.
• Don’t go to stadium after 9 pm.

Despite of all these measures, If you still face any trouble (chances are minimal) use the control room number, 044 22579999, for quick action.

So girls, to enjoy your insti life you have to be a bit careful, a bit. Don’t break rules just to show that you are cool, the cost will be high. Stay safe, have fun! 🙂

How to beat the Power Cut in insti?

It’s confirmed. IIT M now has a power cut from 4 PM to 6 PM everyday. And it’s here to stay in the foreseeable future too. (There is a 4000 MW shortage due to the simultaneous maintenance of some power plants after all). Perhaps first time in the recent past, many of us have had the trouble of coming out of the cozy cacoon that our rooms are.

Because coming out of your room shouting at the top of your voice and hurling abuses at all other people in the hostel is funny only once, most of us are wondering despondently how to kill the time during these power cuts. Observing people over the past few days, these are the things being done and worth mentioning (chasing monkeys with a knife in hand is hardly a productive use of time 🙂 ).

• Read: Since 4 o’clock is also a time with plenty of sunlight, it is a really nice idea to grab a novel which you wanted to finish since long, or even catch up on the news reading the paper. At the risk of being outcast as a ‘Maggoo’, you can even dare to read your coursework. We caught a few people mugging on the terrace to avoid getting caught. Worst comes to worst reading can atleast help induce sleep, which is another possible activity (or lack of it).
• Socialize: Not on Facebook but in person. We spend most of our time on Social networking sites or chatting with friends in our hostel or even our room-neighbours (in some extreme cases :P). These 2 hours give a perfect opportunity to fart with your wingmates, catch a game of chess or scrabble or even play some pranks on your friends!
• Play: Put all the Baddy courts, TT tables, Carrom boards and insti grounds to their full use and play! A lot of our tax-payers’ money has gone into building them. If internet/computers was making you a couch potato, you have lost your excuse. 😛 On a serious note, 4-6 is really an awesome time to go out and do any physical activity. You’ll be back just in time to freshen up and go for dinner.
• 
• Pursue your hobby: Are you also one of those who look longingly at the forlorn Drums/Flute/Some musical instrument in your room everyday, cursing yourself for wasting money on it? Well, these power cuts have also coincided with people taking out their dusty guitars striking incoherently (often at the annoyance of their friends!), but at least they’ll never say, “Mujhe hamesha guitar seekhna thha, kabhi time hee nahi mila!” (I always wanted to learn guitar, but never could find time).
• Crash: If the idea of doing any of the above repulses you, better save some energy and catch some shut eye (if you haven’t already, reading this article ie :P). Note that this can also be achieved by mugging for courses as mentioned above.

PS: We drafted this article in our laptops during the power cut. So, writing is also another time-killer.

Share your stories! Tell us how you have been dealing with the power cuts.

A note to freshies from a benevolent senior!

Exactly 6 months ago, you stepped into one of the most prestigious engineering institute of the country. IITM! Finally! New city, different surroundings, unknown people and a sudden new found freedom! It was a teenage dream come true. But at the same time, the thought of leaving the safe and secure covet of family and staying miles away in some undersized space was equally painful and agonising.

As soon as you entered your respective hostels, Mitr coordinators welcomed you with open arms. ( And breathed down your neck too, didn’t they? :P). And there were other kind of ‘Mitr’, eagerly waiting for you: Your roommates! These were probably your first set of people you came face to face apart from your old school friends who happened to be in the same institution. Well, everyone secretly wants an ideal roommate which whom one could get on like a house on fire but mostly it happens the other way round. If you are still on a silent mode with your roommate just because he/she is not your type, it is high time that you open up and talk to them as much as possible because now they are your immediate family, next to your real family. They might not not belong to the same school of thought but then adjusting is a great skill in itself. Maintain a friendly contact, nevertheless.

Next come friends. These are those with whom you are going to some of the most wonderful moments for your life. It is very common for freshmen to befriend only those who are in the same department. My advice: Don’t restrict yourself to your discipline. Make friends from other departments as well. But at the same time, don’t go on adding everyone you meet on your way to CRC to your friend list. Choose your buddies because they say, “You don’t choose your family. They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them. But friends are the family we choose for ourselves.”

If the first few months were about getting comfortable, enjoying first Shaastra/Saarang the rest of the year will be packed with departmental festivals, insti elections, coordships. Actually, insti elections are that time of the year when seniors start asking you for favours! It is natural to get excited with all the hype surrounding it, be careful and manage your time and resources wisely. While it is important to pursue your interests and ambitions, you must also make sure that you don’t just end up following the herd and doing things you don’t really like.

Last but not the least, amidst all the awesome things that a college life guarantees you, academics should always be there at the back of your head. That is precisely for what you have toiled and slogged day and night for 2 years. Contrary to what people say, academics in college is lot more demanding than that in school. However, demanding does not mean you lock yourself in your room and stick your big nose to your books with Fevikwik. Activities other than studies are equally important. They act as stress busters and sometimes, double up as exciting avenues to meet new people. Prioritize and involve yourself in some non academic activities. This is only time when you can explore a lot of interesting extracurricular activities which will help you realize what you actually love to do and would like to pursue, along with your academics, in the future.

4 tips to manage time while at IIT

 One night, as we were walking back to our rooms, a friend of mine asks me two questions – “What is the most important thing you learnt at IIT? and Is there anything you wish you had learnt here by now?”

My quick response was – ” I learnt that, learning time management was one of the most important things you should expect from college life, and coming to the second question, I wish I had learnt how to tame time by now”. This wasn’t the first time I had thought about the necessity to manage time and if I need to eventually manage time better, this shouldn’t be my last either.

To truly get the most out of college life, one definitely needs to prioritize the various tasks that are to be done, be it attending footer practice, finishing that painful assignment which is due tomorrow or just catching a movie. And quite often, we manage to do everything pretty successfully except managing the acads part. Our excuse might vary from ‘the course being too boring’ to ‘the prof being the Satan himself whose humor lies in subjecting innocent students to sadistic torture’ – touché.

But, we do have to accept the fact that most of us would like to manage time better. So here are some of the tricks and tips which the gurus of time management suggest –

• Things done fast are the worst done :How many times do you find yourself pulled out of your room, may be by your hostel-sec or a wingie, to participate in some event or the other just when you were about to start that assignment of yours(due in some hours)? … Or, your friend calls you for his treat today just because he has finally found time( and cash ) today. And, do you always find yourself catching deadlines rather than spending time doing things the way you like them to be done ? To avoid such situations, one should remember to deal with tasks before they become so urgent that they have to be done immediately, thus disrupting one’s time flexibility.It is difficult to do that, agreed, but you need to find a solution, like Stephen Covey’s time matrix for example. The rule is simple – Always strive to do the important-but-not-urgent tasks rather than the urgent ones because they will be the ones that define you, not the ones which you finished in a hurry because you had to get them done.

• Closures are important : The thing to avoid is to drop a task when it is only partially finished, without any good “closure”; it then either gets lost, or weighs on one’s mind and prevents one from fully thinking about something else, or has to be redone from an earlier point when one picks it up again.

• Don’t forget to recharge your Mojo : We all need an ego boost now and then, especially when we are doing a long project ( may be like a btp or a ddp ). So related to the point about “closure” is the desirability of being able to chop up an extremely long task into smaller, self-contained ones, ideally each with its own immediate “payoff”.Because, these immediate “payoffs” are the ones which are going to drive you in the long run. Remember the saying “Success always tastes sweeter when there is anticipation and anxiety before it” ?

• Realize your productive hours : Finally, recall what were your productive hours before joining IIT. For some it could have been early in the morning while for some others it might be in the evening. It so happens often that we don’t realize our most productive hours of the day and lose out that valuable time for redundant tasks or errands. So, pick some sort of organisational system and make a real effort to stick to it; a half-hearted system is probably worse than no system at all. Each person has his/her own ways and it is essential that you realize this and base your plans around it. For computer scientists, CS undergrads and free-lance hackers, we have a saying – ‘The optimal coding ability takes place between a BAC( blood alcohol content ) of .129 and .138 and between the times 1am and 4 am ‘. So find your right mix to ace your next test ;).

One of the best time management article for academic purposes can be found here at http://terrytao.wordpress.com/2008/08/07/on-time-management/ .

Read more about the time matrix from here
http://www.effective-time-management-strategies.com/time-management-matrix.htm .

Apart from these, most of the big univs all have time management tips on their main website itself. Do check them out for some concise tips.

Note: The author would like to assure the readers that although he is a CSE undergrad he does not drink and would also like to advise the readers to not drink excessively if at all they do.