Article for Article 19
My department at IIT Madras-the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences- has a peculiar way of allotting the streams of specialization starting from the third year of the five-year course I am enrolled in. The performance of the first three semesters in terms of the CGPA will be taken into account while deciding the stream to be allotted to a student. There are only two streams available: Development Studies and English Studies. Having studied English courses for the first two semesters gave me a clear image that English is not for me. I could not risk getting into English Studies. Therefore, I had to make sure that the grades in other courses compensate for the not-so-okay grades in English. This meant that only studies, studies and studies for the two years. Any other activity that could prove to be detrimental to studies were cut off immediately. This meant no Positions of Responsibility or PoRs for two years. That strategy paid off, and I was allotted the Develop...