My Reflection on My Recent Life and Why I Got Into the IITM BS Degree

Atharv Khare here, originally from Bhopal. I'm graduating with my local B.Tech this year, and now entering Degree level here in the IITM BS program.

This would be something like a big reflection of my life, so sit tight. Well, let me try to recollect and articulate my entire journey on why I decided to take up this program.

Family

Looking back, I feel incredibly blessed to have grown up in a deeply caring and understanding family. My relatives on both sides are fascinating people who have achieved immense respect in their fields. Yet, what I love most is that we can still sit down together and just laugh. In an era where so many give their greed the cloak of "ambition" and chase purely demonstrable metrics, my family has remained grounded.

My parents are joyful people whom I consider my closest friends. My mother, who holds an M.Sc. in Mathematics and a B.Ed., actually left her government job to raise my brother and me, a decision I will always respect and honor. She deeply shaped how I perceive the world, ensuring we approached life in a responsible, judicious way even when it was easy to slip up. My father is equally remarkable. Growing up, I heard stories from his colleagues (who are now global CEOs, CTOs, and foreign professors) about how brilliant he was, an academic topper in his 1991 CSE batch who turned down lucrative corporate offers comparable to top IIT packages today, simply because he didn't want a white-collar corporate life. He chose to stay in Bhopal to care for my grandparents and nurture students as a professor. He is incredibly easygoing, never brings work home, and can turn any situation into a laughable, lighthearted moment.

School & Detachment

And actually now more about me, I used to go to an elite school in my city. Elite why? Because they kept high standards for themselves and considered themselves one. It was an academic powerhouse school, and they had the finest teachers that came from Delhi directly. I enjoyed high school as academics came naturally easy to me, because I was able to touch the soul of every subject and never had to study hard.

Even when I entered class 11th, things went smoothly at first, though I quickly grew frustrated with the coaching culture. It was during COVID, and I had joined an A2 batch from South Delhi. They were all gaming the JEE Advanced exam right from day one, teachers and students both were just solving PYQs like anything. It hurt me. It made me feel disappointed in education, and I thought to myself, what is this, this isn't learning. I almost detached myself from those people.

But I wanted to actually test what I am capable of myself before judging them, so I made it a habit to give their national-level phase tests. Surprisingly, I was able to get into the top 20 ranks from the center, and so the admin and people there were too after me to move up the batch, tho I wanted to do the exact opposite. But this experience just detached me from this ranking game and things in life in general. Around this time, I discovered Buddhism and started reflecting on my own actions even more.

Class 12th Collapse

Then came class 12th. This was the point where, as others would see it, my life graph took a massive spike instead of going smoothly. First, a problem I had since childhood came back, a chronic cold and difficulty breathing, so I had to get treatment for that. Then I fell and broke my arm, and two months went entirely into that care. Right after, I got a severe heatstroke, mixed in with COVID vaccination side effects, which downed me to bed for 20 days straight.. yes, 20 days, and I even spent days in the hospital for the first time in my life.

Soon after that, I got COVID. This was October now, and I had a fever of 100 to 105 degrees that lasted all the way until mid December. We got the best doctors from Delhi and Bangalore, but the real problem was just that my body had grown too weak. My immunity fell to almost nothing, and the electrolytes in my body were completely depleted. What I really needed was 6 to 7 months of special care just to recover, but the exam season was already around. I went on to give my pre-boards and board practicals while living on pills, forcing myself to eat two times a day just to keep my fever under 100.

Then came boards. I actually enjoyed one-shotting 70% of the class 12th syllabus in just the short exam gaps given for the board exams, and I enjoyed applying what I had learned so quickly into the papers. And after that, I thought I could finally rest. JEE or any other entrance exam was completely out of the question at this point.

The Aftermath

But when the board results came, not only did I score below 90 percent for the first time in my entire life, I actually felt that my mind was not doing good. We ran some tests, and I got a prescription showing there was a subtle neural decay from the prolonged strain. The doctors and everyone around me were saying to just take it easy for a few months. But I couldn't, I suddenly got too interested in every single aspect of life. A pebble, a falling leaf, a simple bird, the clear sky... I could keep watching them all day. At this point, I lost my fear of everything, fear of becoming, fear of death, etc. Ambitions and dreams left me, as I just wanted to see what this world holds for me at this point. Truly so, not making it up.

Though there are some things you cannot avoid, and my mother seriously saw that I could actually leave everything to go on to become a monk's apprentice or walk the path of hermitage. Yes, I was serious, and so she had me make a promise, that no matter what happens, I won't leave them, and I would try to observe this world by walking with others and doing what others normally do.

So I got enrolled in the city's private college, but I did not find it stimulating at all. I lost my interest in books, which I thought could never happen. So my father suggested I should join this program. He said this is designed for students like me. I was hesitant, I did not want to get into another worldly game. But still he persisted. Never ever in my life has my father ever told me to do something, so I took it up.

Starting out, the Foundation level honestly bored me. I did that with a mentality to just go to the minimal quiz on the quiz day, look at formulas one day before, and just do those many questions to just pass the 40-mark cutoff. And I went on about, developed a habit of writing journals, and had been watching anime for 4 years now. I had watched 1000+ movies already by the time I was in class 10th, so now content also left me. There was no media left with sufficient quality to stimulate me, but then I became a sorta otaku, so I started appreciating Japanese art, writing, and culture, this hooked me for sometime.

The Return

Then one fine day, yes, one day, it happened like that on one day in May 2024, I remember, I felt like reading some physics. I pulled down a physics book from my father's book storage room. And surprisingly enough, I read through 100 pages in a day without losing anything. I thought my memory that I used to have, and my tenacity and ability to pick up things, was gone after the health issues in class 12th.

So this same time, my primary doctor told me everything was fine, so I finally threw away all my health records and medical history. My body and mind both had sufficiently recovered. So I wanted to test what I can do. I took a challenge: I will take the IITM BS degree seriously now, and I would continue the diploma and degree levels also (I had planned on exiting after foundation earlier, just to finish off my local B.Tech anyhow).

I watched the live sessions and attended the lectures for the first time, and honestly, I found myself drawn to learning once again. I did my Diploma in Programming with almost a 9.5 CGPA. But I realized that during these three years I was away from academics, a lot of gaps had formed; I had lost touch and the sense of many fundamental topics. This got even more clear and evident in the Diploma in Data Science. I could just get a 9.05 CGPA in that, and I made a lot of silly mistakes in every paper. But now, at this point, I was just fascinated by data science, just like I was in my 9th standard. I kept making mistakes, but the learnings that followed them and the feedback from instructors felt like a new sense of real joy and energy to me.

And continuing on, I decided I would focus on completing this degree seriously now. My local B.Tech is almost done, I won't have to attend college anymore, just give exams there. So I can re-discover myself by spending time in the degree level honestly now.

Where I Am Now

What may follow in the future, who knows? I don't think about it. As for professional experience, I try to avoid and prolong it. I want to avoid doing a job for as long as I can, because I still feel NGO and community work is what would suit me. But people around me keep telling me I should get financial independence and get enough capital of my own to start a meaningful service later on.

And I think I finally have my motivation or a clear goal: I wish to start an elementary and primary school that behaves like a real school. So for this, I might need to take up some job if I want to start it independently without family help. Thus, I recently took up a part-time gig as a data analyst remotely for a small business now. And I am thinking of visiting the IITM campus sometime, to talk to all the great, experienced people and get a bit of their wisdom to find more perspective.

Right now, I try to find a very simple, small reason to just wake up every day. And my story is not one of a transformation, I've essentially achieved nothing yet, and probably won't in the traditional sense.

But I feel really blessed to have experienced this program. I never thought I would get to encounter something like this in my life, someone actually creating a degree like this for the sake of real education in this country. A huge, heartfelt thank you to the creators, inceptors, and coordinators. This is truly a life-changing experience for anyone who wants to experience genuine, quality learning.