How an introvert from Bengaluru cracked JEE and found a second family at IIT Guwahati | Life in an IIT

One of the first things I noticed after settling into IIT Guwahati was something I had not expected at all: the students who did best academically were almost always the same people who were deeply involved in clubs, sports, events, and leadership roles outside the classroom. I had arrived with the assumption most people carry into an IIT – that this was a place where academic performance demanded everything you had, and anything else was a compromise. That assumption did not survive the first semester.

What I learned, gradually and then all at once, is that the real skill IIT teaches you is not how to study more. It is how to focus more, to be fully present in whatever you are doing rather than stretched thin across several things at once. That lesson has probably been the most useful thing I have taken from four years here, and my own journey is as good an illustration of it as any.

I am a final-year student in Electronics and Electrical Engineering at IIT Guwahati. I am 20 years old, from Bengaluru, and by the time I graduate, I will have been the Marketing and Finance Head of a TEDx event, a member of the institute’s dance club, and someone who walked into rooms full of strangers without hesitation. None of that would have seemed possible to the person who arrived here in 2023.

Growing up in Bengaluru

My father is a software engineer working in the semiconductor industry, and my mother is a homemaker. I did my schooling at Pristine Public School in Bengaluru until Class 10, and then Class 11 and 12 at Kumaran’s PU College.

Bengaluru is a city you only fully appreciate once you have lived somewhere else. The weather, above everything, that steady pleasantness throughout the day, is what I miss most. I also miss exploring its food spots, going out for adventure sports, and taking long bike rides across the city. And the South Indian breakfast options. The filter coffee, especially, is something I have not found a satisfactory replacement for in Guwahati, and I have genuinely tried.

‘What if this goes right?’: My JEE journey

I appeared for JEE Main and JEE Advanced in 2023, after taking regular coaching and watching YouTube videos for topics that needed extra attention. Like every aspirant, I went through phases where mock scores were discouraging. What I worked on was not letting one bad test set the tone for the next.

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During the actual exams, I noticed I performed better than I had in preparation, and I think a lot of that came down to mindset. While many students around me were focused on the possibility of failing, I kept trying to focus on the possibility of doing well. What if this goes right? That shift in framing kept me calmer than I might otherwise have been. I secured AIR 2218 in JEE Main and AIR 2029 in JEE Advanced.

Why I chose Electronics

My father’s work in the semiconductor industry was my first window into what electronics actually looks like as a profession. The more I learned about chip design, embedded systems, and IoT, the more genuinely interesting it became.

I considered Computer Science too, since it aligns with many of my interests, but what drew me to Electronics and Electrical Engineering was the intersection it occupies: hardware and software together, each informing the other. That breadth appealed to me, and continues to.

First time away from home

I joined IIT Guwahati in 2023. It was my first time living away from home. The transition was easier than I had imagined; the friends I found in the first few months became something close to a second family quite quickly.

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The one thing that truly caught me off guard was the weather. Going from Bengaluru’s climate to Guwahati’s summers is an adjustment that nobody adequately warns you about, and I say that having now survived several of them.

One of the quieter gifts of IIT life, something I did not anticipate, is what you absorb simply by being around people from so many different states, languages, and cultures. Not just in the classroom, in the mess, in the hostel corridor, in the conversations that happen at 11 pm when nobody has anywhere to be.

The introvert who joined a dance club

Before coming to IIT, I was fairly introverted. Speaking to new people, networking, taking up leadership positions – none of it came naturally. I knew it was something I needed to work on, but knowing and actually doing are different things.

IIT pushed me into doing. I became the marketing and finance head of TEDxIIT Guwahati, managing finances and working on bringing sponsors on board. I joined Cadence, the institute’s dance club. I was part of the Electronics Club, the Athletics Club, and volunteered for Techniche, IITG’s annual technical fest.

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Looking back, this is exactly what I meant when I said the best students here were also the most involved. Staying highly focused on one thing at a time, giving it your full attention rather than half of it while thinking about everything else, is what makes the combination possible. Time is rarely the constraint. Attention is.

A professor worth remembering

The faculty members here are deeply knowledgeable, and what I have come to appreciate more than their expertise is how approachable they become when you genuinely want to engage. One professor stands out in my four years here.

He has decades of both teaching and industry experience, yet still takes time to plan each lecture before class. What makes him memorable, though, is how he frames his subject. Rather than starting from his own research interests, he begins with gaps, places where the industry is incomplete, problems that remain unsolved, areas where early attention creates real opportunity.

He makes core engineering feel like a space to discover something, not just a career to walk into. I have found that framing genuinely motivating.

Khoka, and after dinner

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Just outside campus is a cluster of food stalls called Khoka. If I had to name one place that has hosted the most memorable conversations of my four years, it would be Khoka without question.

Evening chai, samosas, jalebi, Lohit anna’s biryani, and every kind of conversation that could follow. It is a place with a particular ease to it, the kind that makes a long day feel shorter.

But if I am honest, the part of the day I have come to love most is after dinner. Classes are done. The pressure has lifted. And what follows is what most people outside IIT do not picture when they imagine this place: impromptu dance sessions in hostel corridors, late-night poker games, movie screenings, and jamming sessions that nobody planned. People from completely different departments sitting together doing nothing in particular and everything that matters.

A lot of the learning that has stayed with me happened in those hours, not in lecture halls, but in conversations after midnight, in watching how people around me thought and worked and laughed.

Guwahati, and the ferry

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The city has its own pleasures that take time to find. The summers are difficult, but the sunsets are worth something. The Brahmaputra running alongside the campus is a constant that never quite loses its effect, and taking the ferry across it is an experience I have returned to more than once simply because it is worth it.

The location also makes the rest of the Northeast genuinely accessible – Meghalaya, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh – in a way that still surprises me whenever I think about it.

Looking ahead

I see myself in the semiconductor industry, working on chip design and computer architecture. The field is moving quickly, and the opportunity to work on technologies that shape computing at a fundamental level is exactly the kind of work I want to be doing.

In some ways, the direction has been there since childhood, through my father’s work. What IIT gave me was the depth to understand what that direction actually means.

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What it also gave me is the ability to walk into a room full of strangers and find my place in it. For someone who arrived here fairly unable to do that, it is probably the most significant thing I am leaving with.