How to wield Success at the GATE

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This post was written by me successfully during the GATE exam 2009.

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Waking up early on a Sunday morning is a bad sign. Waking up on a Sunday morning after a party with friends the previous night to write an exam -- the worst sign. The alarm played the perfect part of the dream destroyer that morning as well. After one hour of relentless ringing I had to give up to the irritating power of Evanescence's wake me up inside ...

I had got ready to leave home but I had one more task to complete before I could be there for the exam. I had to find the way to the exam center. I was able to reach the holy place, a well 1 hour 15 minutes before time, with lot of help from blore's own Auto bhaiyyas. I thought i would be the one to reach there first. But i was greeted by the faces of those guys who were going to have more beautiful wives and cars than me; the guys with the thick glasses and the greasy hair- the geeks. It was like walking into the sets of Attack of the Nerds. Amidst the ruckus created by the geeks and other semi interested students and engineers, I made my way to the small shop on the other side for my breakfast. Finally after a long time of a guy came and commanded the throng of people to go in and be seated inside.

It was a truly nostalgic feeling. Like a blast from the past. Memories of ye old University exams.. Haha.. Many of them were prepared or at least looked like they were. I knew that the only things I was going to answer were the questions on the right side. These questions were like, name, roll number and a number of such tough questions. But they didn't mention anywhere about how much marks each of those questions carried.

Anyway i went about answering all those questions when I saw a guy come in with a big bottle of water. Oh!! man.. prepared like anything. I should have brought pop corn. But I wasn't sure whether eatables were allowed in the exam hall. :( The technical questions were pretty easy. I could answer at least 7 of them correctly. which is a big achievement ( applause). I answered a total of 48/60. I didn't want to get the negative marks of the next 12 questions as well ,so, I stopped guessing the answers. The questions were generally categorized into two : those that I knew and those i didn't. But the latter category contained more questions and I am planning to write to the Chairman about the quantity of questions in Category 2.

In the meantime the guy who had come with the water had almost finished his bottle and from his face I could notice that he seriously needed to take a leak. Poor Guy..

I finished the exam in record time. But the Hall ticket said I could not leave before the completion time. So I cross-checked my brilliant answers and waited for one and a half hours before I asked the invigilator(a typical college lecturer) whether i could gracefully take my leave. I think he was invigilating an exam for the first time and the pride could be seen on his face. With the same gracefulness he told me that I would have to wait till the completion of 3 hours. And to think I never even sat through the whole time of any university exam.. OMG!! I was trapped in some other strange time space continuum.

This was the time, in the course of the whole exam, that I had a major dilemma. What will I do for one more hour? I didn't waste time to find the perfect solution. I found the desk a very good place to get the rest of the Sunday morning sleep. And sleep I did for half an hour. A delightful slumber. I woke up fast in fear, lest I should talk in my sleep and give away those brilliant answers that I had given.

Then I saw the desk. Aha! Nothing more interesting than to read the comments on the, long deprived of paint ,desk. And that too the back bench. :D

The guy who sat at my place was a rap fan (snoop dog and shaggy were the decorators of that place). At one time he had been a Shakira fan but he had developed a certain disliking for her. He name was scratched upon with dividers and correction ink so many times, that I had hard time reading that.

'Does love hurt ?' [some body was planning on loving someone]

The aswers were " Love hurts!!!' [he shouldn't have been so outright]

"I dunno. Please find out" [ i liked this one :)]

Then a series of four letter words.

Another guy had professed his love on the wood :

Mental Chandan*** loves Sharmila... *** [confessions of a self proclaimed crack or the work of his best friends . :)]

The other things were lots of Swastika symbols and random questions and answers.

Soon losing interest in them, I waited for the final fifteen minutes to go by. It was pure torture. I never thought 15 minutes would be so long. And finally the hammer struck the gong and I was free again. I walked out of the college gate passing the excited and nervous faces of the geeks and other unimportant people. That was the only gate i think i could have passed with so much of preparation.

Atlast an end to the trauma of whether I should go for higher studies or not. Then there is always next year... ;)

*** Original names cannot be given out due to security risks to the author. And Chandan; Yes, I took revenge on you for taking my name in vain.

Dad : If you are reading this; This is not my story but of some guy who went to a Gate exam without studying. How can he do that?

Status : Checking my GATE answers... who knows.. may be I got all 48 right. ;) and will be on my way to an IIT before you know it.

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