Life in an IIT | Why this IIT Guwahati student says don’t study after dinner

I am now a final-year student in the Mehta Family School of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati. I am 21, from Surat, and if you ask what I have spent four years here doing, the honest answer is – almost everything. Classes, clubs, fests, street plays, improv comedy, a harmonium on an Inter-IIT stage, a 250-person cultural contingent, and enough late nights to fill a separate story.

Growing up in Surat

Surat is a city that gets into you in ways you do not realise until you leave. My father is in textiles, practically the default profession for a Surat family, and my mother is both a homemaker and a teacher who had a very direct hand in the decisions that shaped my path. I did my schooling at S D Jain Modern School until Class 10 and then went to Bhagwan Mahavir International School for Class 11 and 12, with JEE coaching at Narayana Surat running alongside.

While at the IIT campus in Assam, what I miss most about home is the food, and I mean that precisely. Coco, khamani, locho – these are things that simply do not exist outside Surat. You can find something labelled khaman or chaat elsewhere, but the taste is not the same. And then there is Navratri. I love garba deeply. I have tried to carry a piece of that to IIT Guwahati through the GarbaRaas event on campus, a multi-day cultural event on campus around Navratri; but you can only go so far.

The fear of science

In Class 10, I was genuinely scared of taking science. That fear was somewhat contagious in the environment I was in, so I went looking for a way out, which is what led me to YouTube, career videos, and a brief flirtation with doing data analytics through commerce. The people I spoke to eventually convinced me it was not a wise plan.

Once I committed to science, someone offered me the idea of two years of studying hard, and all fun after that. I bought into it completely. And honestly, for me it turned out to be true, though not quite in the way that phrase is usually meant.

What truly shaped how I studied was something my teacher at Narayana told us: “If you study for JEE, you will never be a good student.

But if you learn the science, the physics, the chemistry, the mathematics, there will be no match for you. Love the process, and even if the outcome is not in your favour, you will still come out a winner.” That line followed me through four years of IIT and has not left yet.

By the end of Class 11, something shifted. There were batch-changing exams, students ranked and regrouped by merit, and something about that moment sparked in me. After that, studying stopped feeling like a sacrifice. The science, the maths, the problems themselves became genuinely more fun than the fun I was giving up.

In my first attempt at JEE Main, I scored 99.78 percentile, including a 100 percentile in Physics. After that, the focus shifted entirely to JEE Advanced, where I secured AIR 1001.

Following the teacher, not the coaching

Just before my first JEE Main attempt, several teachers I had trained under at Narayana switched institutes. It was gut-wrenching; they had built us from Class 11, and we were deeply close to them. After my first attempt, I made the decision to follow the teachers rather than stay with the coaching. I moved to PW Surat for the Advanced preparation.

It was the right call, and it reinforced something I already believed: the relationship with a teacher matters more than the institution around it.

Waiting for DSAI until the last round

When my rank came through, I was in a position I had never let myself seriously imagine: I could actually get into Data Science and AI, the very domain I wanted to study through commerce but by avoiding science. ChatGPT and the wider AI explosion were happening in real time, and saying no to that at that moment felt unwise. I chose only MnC (Mathematics and Computing), CSE (Computer Science and Engineering), and DSAI across the top IITs during JoSAA counselling, no non-circuital branches.

For the first four rounds, I was allotted MnC at IIT Hyderabad. In the fifth round, I got MnC at IIT Kanpur. It was only in the sixth and final round that I received DSAI at IIT Guwahati. I was extremely happy because I had always wanted this branch.

Arriving with no expectations

I came to IIT Guwahati in August 2023. It was my first time away from home.

What helped me most in those early weeks was that I had deliberately chosen not to arrive with expectations. A lot of students and parents spend months before joining trying to find out everything about their college in advance. I did not know enough to do that, and looking back, I think it worked in my favour.

Whatever the campus offered, that was what it was going to be. I could be unhappy about it, or I could just live with it and be happy about it. I chose the latter.

I had also decided before arriving that I would make as many friends as possible, by hook or by crook. In the registration room itself, I found a friend who has stayed with me ever since. Through her, more friendships followed. It also helped that six students from my school batch were joining IITG, and my roommate had been a close friend since Class 11. The campus was so beautiful that falling in love with it was not difficult. The food took some adjustment, but you grow past it.

Breaking the interaction ban on Day 3

There is a three-month interaction ban for first-year students at IITG; no formal contact with seniors until it is lifted. A few of my friends decided early on that this rule did not quite apply to us.

By the third day on campus, we had found our way to Xpressions, the institute’s dramatics society. That club became one of the most central things in my four years here. It taught me people skills, writing, acting, and a kind of boldness and confidence that does not appear on a transcript but follows you into every room. Alongside Xpressions, I got involved with Anchorenza and RadioG. And then came the Consulting and Analytics Club.

3 years on an inter-IIT stage

In my first year, I travelled to IIT Kharagpur for an inter-IIT cultural meet. I was part of the music team for the street play, playing harmonium on stage, and also contributed to sets and direction for the stage play. We won silver in the street play and bronze in the stage play. The preparation had taken more than four months. Watching it come together in front of an audience from across all the IITs was something I had no words for in that moment.

In my second year, I was part of writing and directing the street play, though personal circumstances kept me from travelling to IIT Patna for the meet.

In my third year, I became the assistant contingent leader for Inter-IIT Cultural Meet 8.0, held at IIT Kanpur in December 2025, managing a contingent of more than 250 students. IIT Guwahati secured fourth position overall, the highest the institute had ever placed across all inter-IIT cultural meets. I had sleepless nights for months leading up to it. There are two sides to inter-IIT culturals: the performance itself, and the contentions, where you scrutinise other teams against the rules and regulations. Both matter equally and both keep you on edge until the last result is announced.

At the hostel level, I won first place in Improv Comedy at Manthan – the annual inter-hostel cultural competition, in my first year, and gold in Mime in my second year. In my third year, I co-convened Manthan itself.

Learning Telugu at IITG

One of the quieter pleasures of four years at IITG has been the cultural exchange that happens when you live closely with people from everywhere. I live in Umiam, a smaller hostel, and over time its staff and vendors have started feeling like people I have known for years. The juice centre in particular – the staff, the owner, their Oreo shake – has been a reliable constant. The guards at the New SAC greet me like they know me, because by now they do. I have picked up a little Assamese from them. I have taught them some Gujarati in return.

I also did not expect to find so many Telugu-speaking students in Guwahati. My South Indian friends have been generous about it, teaching me words along the way, some of which I probably could not repeat here. Enough of it stuck that when I arrived in Hyderabad for my Microsoft internship this summer, the Telugu I had learned on a campus in the Northeast turned out to be genuinely useful.

‘Don’t study after dinner’

The most valuable piece of advice I received early on was this: after dinner, you cannot study. What that really means is that IIT life begins at 9 pm – clubs, fests, societies, the connections that define four years here. If you spend that time studying, you will miss most of what makes this place what it is.

The priority order I have come to believe in is simple: health first, academics second, everything else after that. If someone tries to convince you the order should be different, they are not looking out for you. Attend your classes, even when you absorb nothing; you will have enough context to catch up later. Treat your time with the urgency of someone who always has something due. And accept early that free time at an IIT is largely a myth; if you feel like you have too much of it, you are probably not looking hard enough at what is around you.

A core value I picked up at Microsoft is that it is better to be a learn-it-all than a know-it-all, because one of my favourite teachers had said essentially the same thing about JEE years ago. Learn the thing itself. Fall in love with the process. I was scared of science at 16, which is perhaps the best evidence that this works: the process, eventually, takes care of the rest.