Freshers party
In the first week of our stay in the college, Freshers party was a regular feature. There was one hosted by Atheneum, the college student council. (Incidentally, Atheneum is greek, meaning an association for the promotion of learning. Now, which student wants promotion of learning in college?? OK, whatever..!!) The dean was there to address us, and after he left, it was a free-for-all ragging session by the seniors. The most common assignment given to boys was to interact with a girl senior and get some details about her. Some girl seniors would not say anything, and start berating us that we have come to ask for such things without any shame. Some girl seniors would take pity on us and say something. But the really mischievous "rowdy" girl seniors would invent stuff about themselves and supply it to us. We would go back happily and reveal all the precious information we had gathered, alas, only to realise very late that we had been tricked. Such delivery of "mis-information" was promptly greeted by the seniors who would then punish us by sending us to another "rowdy" girl senior.
There was one freshers party at the department the next day, organised by the department association. (This had been routinely named as Instrumentation Engineering Association, sparing us the difficulty of remembering another arbit greek name..!!) Everybody was asked to go on stage and give an introduction. Well, not an extensive introduction as in "The life and times of Meenakshisankar" (which anyway would not be too extensive, as I had studied in a boys school till then..!!) but only a standard introduction where we have to fill in the blanks to standard headings such as Name, School, (someone in the middle started saying the centums they scored in plus2 exam.. aargh..!!) Hobbies, and finally an interesting question on What we knew about Instrumentation and why we chose to study it. Some of the profound philosophical answers given by students to the last question include, "Don't know", "My father's friend's uncle's brother-in-law studied it and he is well settled now", "Industrialisation is here to stay, so Instrumentation is here to say" (that was a good one), etc. When my turn came to introduce myself, I mentioned my interest in poetry and narrated a poem I had written while waiting in the audience. It was something about senior-junior relationship, and of course, it was full of praise to the seniors. It earned a warm round of applause.
The pre-final year students felt that they would be failing in their moral responsibility as seniors if they didn't have a separate freshers party for us to welcome us into the fold. (Who knows, my poem may have awaken some of their conscience..!!) So, they organised one more freshers party. This was as good as any other. The highlight here is that the chairman of the association, Suresh (who is mentioned in the previous post), chose to attend it. When asked to speak on the occasion, he casually mentioned that he came primarily because he heard that some cakes and coffee were being served. The way he says it with a "mandhagaasa punnaigai" (seriously I don't know the English word for that), especially with his slightly protruding paunch being visible, it would be ultimate. The pre-final year seniors conducted their own version of introduction and a game to develop interaction among the first years. We were also given our T-numbers. (We'll see more about this later)
There came a time, when we became seniors and had to arrange such freshers parties for the new freshers. But, that was not a problem. We had good training in it, thanks to our seniors.!!
(Posted on 08-Aug-2003)
There was one freshers party at the department the next day, organised by the department association. (This had been routinely named as Instrumentation Engineering Association, sparing us the difficulty of remembering another arbit greek name..!!) Everybody was asked to go on stage and give an introduction. Well, not an extensive introduction as in "The life and times of Meenakshisankar" (which anyway would not be too extensive, as I had studied in a boys school till then..!!) but only a standard introduction where we have to fill in the blanks to standard headings such as Name, School, (someone in the middle started saying the centums they scored in plus2 exam.. aargh..!!) Hobbies, and finally an interesting question on What we knew about Instrumentation and why we chose to study it. Some of the profound philosophical answers given by students to the last question include, "Don't know", "My father's friend's uncle's brother-in-law studied it and he is well settled now", "Industrialisation is here to stay, so Instrumentation is here to say" (that was a good one), etc. When my turn came to introduce myself, I mentioned my interest in poetry and narrated a poem I had written while waiting in the audience. It was something about senior-junior relationship, and of course, it was full of praise to the seniors. It earned a warm round of applause.
The pre-final year students felt that they would be failing in their moral responsibility as seniors if they didn't have a separate freshers party for us to welcome us into the fold. (Who knows, my poem may have awaken some of their conscience..!!) So, they organised one more freshers party. This was as good as any other. The highlight here is that the chairman of the association, Suresh (who is mentioned in the previous post), chose to attend it. When asked to speak on the occasion, he casually mentioned that he came primarily because he heard that some cakes and coffee were being served. The way he says it with a "mandhagaasa punnaigai" (seriously I don't know the English word for that), especially with his slightly protruding paunch being visible, it would be ultimate. The pre-final year seniors conducted their own version of introduction and a game to develop interaction among the first years. We were also given our T-numbers. (We'll see more about this later)
There came a time, when we became seniors and had to arrange such freshers parties for the new freshers. But, that was not a problem. We had good training in it, thanks to our seniors.!!
(Posted on 08-Aug-2003)
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