Well, it’s been a week and a half. As classes begin to start up, all the fun touristy stuff with our IIT hosts has been winding down. Not that we’re not still having fun, but we all have to wake up at 8 or 9 am pretty much every morning. Did I mention classes are mandatory? As a person who really does much better learning from a textbook on their own (a few days before the exam), I really can’t stand being forced to go to class. Things are totally different in discussion based classes (of which I have none), but for a course where a teacher is just writing on the board, I find that a textbook author can organize their thoughts much better, and I can follow at my own pace, skipping over the obvious and taking my time on the hard to get concepts. Now I’m forced to go to class just to sign the attendance sheet, for fear if I miss more than 25% of the lectures (and I know it will only get harder to wake up on time) that they might fail me. And really, who the hell designed the desks at IITD?! I’ve heard there is an idea here that it’s good to make students suffer while they are in school so they have to struggle… Personally, I prefer the cushy chairs at McGill. Way better for sleeping through classes.

So as you may already know, this is supposed to be my last semester of university. I will have finished one semester early because of my AP credits and a summer course. But as the approval process (or should I say battle) of courses between IIT and McGill continues, and I have to start going to mandatory lectures, I’m starting to think maybe I won’t be able to finish. It’s not that the courses seem super tough, although I’m sure they will get hard as we start to get assignments and tests, but rather there just aren’t that many classes that I’m really interested in that I think I can actually receive credit for. In CS, I’ve taken most of what I’m interested in, and in most other subjects, I have no pre-reqs because I took too many CS courses and nothing else. I was planning on taking 2 industrial design courses which I was super excited about, but the professor said there’s no space for me. Now maybe there’s actually not enough room in the studio, and who am I that I should get a spot over someone actually in the program, but I think maybe the professor just didn’t like the idea of an undergrad exchange student in CS (that’s 3 strikes…) taking his courses. So I have two choices: bear through it, and sign up for some more courses and finish on time, or drop some courses, have a really easy semester here, and go back to McGill next summer for a May-June French course. So lets try to make a decision… Reasons for postponing graduation and going back to Montreal:

1. There’s really no place I’d rather be than Montreal in the summertime
2. I can take a pass/fail French course, which is easy, and studying french is fun
3. This semeter will be incredibly easy because I’ll only need 15 IIT credits (IIT students usually take 20-26)
4. Easy semester means I’ll have time to travel, take photos, maybe start drawing again, and take tabla lessons
5. I’ll get to focus on my independent research project and hopefully finish with something publishable

Now reasons against:

1. I REALLY want to be done with school
2. I love the idea of not having any binding agreements of where I need to be (physically) in the near or distant future, although realistically, I should be done travelling (either tired of it or out of money) by May anyway…
3. There’s really not that much to do here, so other than travelling on the weekends, there’s not really any reason not to just work very hard here

So it seems I should probably postpone my early graduation, and come back to McGill next summer. Luckily, it works out so I still get to travel after this semester. I’m still not completely sure, so if anyone has any comments or ideas, please help me decide. Especially anyone who will be in Montreal this summer and wants to convince me to join them.

Throughout the week. I still have had a chance to travel around a bit, and we’ve been hanging out with the group of exchange students a lot. Some notable places I went were the Red Fort, Old Delhi, Nehru Place Market, Main Bazaar. Here are my latest photos… Not too exciting, but a few good ones. Stay tuned for next weekend’s trip to Agra (Taj Mahal).