Prakhar Sinha

1.What were your most memorable moments at IIT? Could you describe any moments when you felt low at IIT and what you did to get back to normal?

Yes, it is difficult to identify one such event at IIT Delhi. There have been series of events. What I’ve done the most at IITD is participate in debating club and lit club activities. Not just peeking into them but having fun while I am doing that… This is the most memorable thing I can think of right now. Each time there is a debating event or a quizzing event, I plan to go there and eventually being a part of the thing that is what used to give me happiness. Even the idea of going there is a very memorable thing to me. Yeah, there had been many moments were I felt low as well. Not least when sometimes I couldn’t do well in all my papers but yes, what is done is done you can do nothing about it. Just study harder for the next semester with more efforts. You don’t have to think too much about it. Divert your mind to something else. Something that you like doing, and move on. I think that is how you get better.

2. Do you have any regrets from your time in IIT?

I cant think of any big regret that I have. Oh yeah, I know that I could have been much better at my studies(not to say that I was bad at it), but that would have been at the expense of not doing anything else, which I thing would have been wrong . I don’t advise you not to study and do other things. What I am saying is that for me, it worked, it may or may not work for you. But the important thing is that you don’t completely overlook either academics or extra curriculars.

3. What changes did you notice in your personality before and after IIT? How have your extra-curricular activities and internships been instrumental in causing this change?

A lot of changes. First is, that I realised the importance of having people around you. There are a lot of people around you and each one of them is different and they tend to change your perspective on life. You may think that whatever happens, you will remain exactly like you are. But this will change according to the people around you. So, having the right set of people around you is very important. So, that perspective on life is something that changed for me. I ended up appreciating people more and I started looking at people differently. There are many other things that have changed in me. But that is not something unique to me. It happens to everyone who comes to IITD. So, this is something that changed in me that I felt was unique to me.

4. What words of advice would you give to your juniors- some things that they should do, some changes in the way of thinking, etc. Any specific advice for students of any particular year?

One thing that I definitely would recommend to juniors is to do an industrial internship. So, I once did an internship at an oil company- a drilling company. So, when I had gone there, the company had been in trouble. Still, it was a great experience to have observed things from an inside perspective. A corporate internship really lets you observe things from a corporate view. Just getting to look at how people work in a corporate environment gives you a whole new view. When you’re studying at an academic institution, you are in a very restricted environment and you only meet a certain kind of people and your interaction with the outside world on a serious level is very limited. But doing an industrial intern will change all this. So, even if you plan to pursue a research line of work, you should do at least one corporate intern. So, this is something that I would recommend to everyone.

5. What are some things that you would advise juniors not to do?

An important thing that I’d like to tell the juniors not to do is to sit in your room doing nothing of worth. There is a huge world outside and you will have a lot of time after IIT. This place gives you a huge amount of opportunities and lets you follow many paths. So, you shouldn’t waste any part of your life at IIT by doing nothing. You should always be doing something. Something that you enjoy.

6. What projects did you work on during IIT? Any favourite research stream?

Haha. I’m really not the person you should be asking that question to. It’s not that I didn’t do any projects. I did a few projects. But my BTech project is a long drawn out story. I didn’t do particularly well in it, but it was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed doing my projects. Apart from these, I also did a philosophy project, which I found nice.