RESONANCE:2018
When we leave our home, our safe haven, even the embrace of our loved ones cannot pacify our restless hearts. What if I can’t make any friends? What if the seniors bully me? What if I can’t adjust to college life? A million ‘what if’s whiz around in our brains. The first day on the campus was a blur of unknown faces and uncertain smiles, while I struggled to remember the names of the people I met. For someone who has never spent a day away from home, except vacations, the thought of living on my own was an exciting yet unknown territory. Students were assigned their clusters within the first two days of the Resonance program- each cluster was a group of ethnically diverse people with equally varied interests and hobbies, but all of them were united by their enthusiasm in helping their cluster win the cluster competitions. Every morning we tumbled out of our beds and blindly headed towards the washrooms because lack of sleep scaled very low on the list of excuses for being late for morning activities. Be it trekking, crouching in the Earth Air Tunnels, planting trees on the hill slopes or zip lining across the valleys- it would be safe to say that most of the experiences were very draining, yet enriching and completely unique. Later in the day we attended invited lectures by eminent personalities in the field of Artificial Intelligence, Cyber Security, Rural Development and Conservation of Nature. The commencement of IPW (Intensive Programming Workshop) and club activities gave us a feel of what classes in college were like. Even though staying awake during the classes was a daunting task because of the tiring morning activities, I’d like to think that I managed to learn and brush up on certain lessons. Evenings in NU during the Resonance program mostly composed of sports activities, followed by dinner and the reports of the cluster activities. Some of the members of a cluster actively participated in all the sports activities, while the others screamed themselves hoarse while cheering for their teams. After dinner, all the clusters huddled at the auditorium to present their daily report in unique manners. Resonance gave us a chance to try out different sports and co-curricular activities- some of them we enjoyed, others we didn’t. It gave us a chance to understand what our potentials might be and maybe helped some of us set some goals for the near future. Resonance did ward away our homesickness by keeping us busy all day. It turned a set of strangers into friends and then to family. We found a home within the confines of NIIT University. Riona Chakrabarti B. Tech CSE (2018-22)
