A three-hour day!

With the university exams over, it was time to relax. But not for long. The usual fun and frolic that follows on the last day of the exams was not there. This time it was much different. The internal lab exams were scheduled 3 days from the day of the last university exam. No one would be in a mood to study after an almost month long series of exams. The thought that the exams were over was even more frightening. Now I had to ‘focus’ on lab exams. I don’t think the word ‘focus’ ever suited me. Fourth semester was never one during which teachers came regularly to class. They were less concerned, but we were least concerned whether they came or not! Not their fault though; they say we were the worst batch the college has ever seen, until date. And I don’t defend the fact too. They are right, in a way! The usual 6-month tenure of a semester did not apply for S4. We got very few working days. It started in February and ended in July. Yeah you can count and very well see that we got 6 months indeed! But not in reality. There was (fairly)regular classes in February. But in March, the IT department teachers were attending a 3-week long Teacher’s Training Program. This gave us the freedom to spend the whole day chatting, playing and fooling around in class. We barely had an hour’s class each day. Then there was a new wave of interest – playing cards! Many joined in the card bandwagon, and unbelievably, the girls were in the frontline. If the morning was spent playing cards, the afternoon would be spent on charades. That meant almost a month of fun. It was April, and with the swearing in of a new Head of Department, we had hopes of getting a tour sanctioned. We got the green signal and the first week was spent touring. By mid-April, the University had declared a new scheme for the academic year. They called it ‘Sem-break’. It was not a study leave. It was rather a leave for the teachers, a month long vacation! Classes were temporarily suspended from 18th of April till June. Now all these meant over 2 months of vacation, and not to mention the intermittent hartals and public holidays. Classes resumed from June, for the sake of it. It made no much difference though. Class hours were few and the student attendance too!

During these times, the thing that was most affected was the laboratory sessions. We have two labs- Data Structures and Java. While the basics of the former were taught in semester 3 and it also had a theory paper in semester 4, there was no theory class for Java. That meant we either study for ourselves or go for tuition. I, for some reason, could not join a tuition in Java. I never thought it would be such a tough subject (probably for me). But by the time I realized that, it was too late. In fact, I realized it on the day before the lab exam, day before yesterday to be precise. At midnight! The book was open in front of me, and I stared into the book. Undoubtedly, I could not understand a word! All I could recall was the ‘import’ statements! I could see they were analogous to the ‘#include’ statements in C++! (Brilliant me!). I was losing hope. I decided to memorize the program codes. I knew I can’t do that. Cuz if I were capable enough to memorize stuff, I would be doing Medicine instead of Engineering! Memorizing is not my cup of tea. I thought of alternatives- cheating, taking bits to the lab et al. But preparing bits would consume a lot of time. I had decided to fail. I had no choice. I do not know how to start doing a program. In C++ there was the main() function, but Applet programs don’t. So where the fuck does the program execution start? Frankly, I still don’t know! Finally, I managed to study two class definitions, which were common to 3 programs. I hoped to type in at least something on my monitor! I realized staying awake late at night, was not gonna help this time, cuz I did not even know what to expect, let alone what to study. I went to bed before my usual time and got up just 30 minutes before the exam! The college is nearly 15-minute walk from hostel.

I reached college, and to my relief, there was no power supply in the lab. Yes! That meant no lab exam today. How could they conduct a lab exam without power? But unfortunately, the teachers managed to run 11 systems on the UPS and we were called in for the exam. We were distributed answer sheets to write down the algorithm, before we could proceed. The teacher was hopeless seeing the algorithms of each student, and without much hesitation, she gave the green signal to everyone to ‘try’ the program. Luckily, the program implemented the two classes I had memorized. I started out typing them but got stuck midway. I lost track of what I had fed in my memory and I could not carry on. I turned around and looked at everyone around me. I could see heads turned intently on their respective monitors, while their fingers did the job. I peeped onto my neighbor’s monitor and could see what I wanted. I started typing out what he’d typed. But unfortunately, he had to make a few changes in the code he’d written before and he drifted to different parts of the program and made modifications. I lost track for a second time. I was left staring into the blank. Often, the power supply got tripped, giving me hopes, but resumed in a few minutes leaving me lost again. It was 1130, still over an hour to go before I could leave the lab. I had been sitting idle in front of my system for almost an hour now. Twice the lab assistants came over to me and warned me “to keep my eyes on my computer screen”! The java lab is a smaller one and the teachers could easily see every student in the room. I knew there was no way out. I have not been used to keeping thund (cheat bits!), though I resort to all other means, I did not have the balls to take out a slip and copy inside the exam hall. At 1145, I decided to leave the lab. Tell the invigilator that I won’t be able to the program and that it would not be any fruitful to stay in the lab any longer. I was about to get up from my seat, that the power supply went dead for an umpteenth time. All the active systems lost power and shutdown. Suddenly I got this feeling that I will be saved. What if the power did not resume in an hour? But then again, I knew it was a distant possibility. 5 minutes, 6 minutes, 8 minutes. My hopes were rising. But alas, within 10 minutes, the power resumed. All the systems came to life and I went dead! I looked into my monitor. To the right of the scroll bar of the Eclipse SDK text editor, I could see a plethora of red patches. I clicked on one of them and the editor showed me an area where an error had occurred. It gave the description of the error, but fuck, I did not know how to rectify it. I did not even understand what the error was in the first place. I peeked at the other monitors. I could not see red patches. Instead, there were only yellow and white. I did not know what that meant, but I guessed it posed no ‘danger’, cuz conventionally, red is the color for danger!

I was left alone in the crowd; my friends were starting to get the Applet window (that’s where the program output appears). I turned to my neighbor’s monitor and could see a pile of cards, and a grid layout. The guy was clicking on the pile and cards were being placed on the grid. Wow, he’s gotta be a genius, I thought. For the second time, I decided to leave the lab. But then, the invigilator started summoning each us for the viva voce. I could not leave the lab until that was over. My viva voce was a wreck. She asked me over 6 questions, and I could only manage to get a half-answer right! She looked at me hopeless, and asked me to return to my seat. It was 1230. The next batch had to come in for the test. That meant we had to leave. I prayed for the power supply to go out. It did not. The invigilator rose to check our outputs. She started from the front row. I was in the third row. I could see the so-called Applet Window displaying at least something on every computer screen she checked. What have I got to show? Nothing! In a while, I found her standing next to my monitor. She asked me to show what I got. I said I’ve got nothing!! I tried to sound sad and gentle, to convince her that I tried my best, but could not get the output. She asked me to scroll down the length of my program code. It ended quite fast! She was surprised to see such a small program code! In fact, I had not written anything to even make the program appear lengthier. She took my answer sheet, scribbled something on it and told me I could go. I have never felt better! I left the room with my head bent. I did not want to face anyone. The next batch had entered and I could feel they were looking inquisitively on me, wanting to know how it had gone. But I did not want to talk to anyone. I left the lab. I sat in the sun outside. It was hot, but felt much better than the air-conditioned lab. It was all over. I had done my part (or have I?!!! ;-)). Now it was at the mercy of the teacher. My friend Anand came out after a few minutes. We talked to a few of our friends. I did not talk much. In fact, I was not in a mood to. The both of us stayed in the college for a while and then left...