Nobody prepares you for the first quiet evening in the hostel room after your parents leave. You're staring at the peeling ceiling fan, eating lukewarm mess paneer that tastes like rubber, and missing your mom asking if you ate lunch. It gets easier after month 2, but those first few weeks test you in ways exams never could.

Variables are what is inside the locker. A pointer is simply a slip of paper with the locker number written on it. The `&` operator gives you the locker number. The `*` operator opens the locker and reads what is inside. That's literally the whole concept. Don't let your first C programming textbook intimidate you.

Our hostel warden did a surprise raid on Floor 2 at 3:15 AM because the circuit breaker tripped. Turns out 6 different rooms were running electric kettles, sandwich makers, and an immersion rod simultaneously to make 14 packets of Maggi after a grueling DBMS lab prep. We hid our kettle inside a hollowed-out vintage CPU cabinet under the desk. The warden searched the whole wardrobe and bathroom, looked right at the glowing cabinet fan, and left saying 'Tum log padhai karo, switch mat udao'. Pure hostel engineering.

CTFs are divided into 5 standard categories: Web, Crypto, Forensics, Rev (Reverse Engineering), and Pwn (Binary Exploitation). Start with PicoCTF: solve the 50-point web challenges (inspecting page source, modifying cookies, basic SQL injections), then learn Ghidra for reverse engineering simple binaries. The dopamine of finding your first flag is unmatched.

We spend four years learning how to optimize compilers, balance chemical equations, and design reinforced concrete beams. Yet, the moment someone picks up a guitar at 1 AM on the hostel lawn, or starts writing poetry in the library gazebos, security guards blow whistles as if a crime has occurred. Engineering is fundamentally about creative problem-solving. When you kill artistic expression, music, and philosophical discussions, you produce robots instead of visionary creators. We need more open mics, hackathons that celebrate art and tech fusion, and campuses that stay alive under the stars.

Items you will desperately need in your first week: 1. Good extension board with surge protection 2. Electric kettle with auto-cut 3. An umbrella that can survive monsoon winds (cheap folding ones will snap) 4. Mattress topper (hostel coir mattresses feel like solid concrete for the first month) 5. At least 6 passport-size photos and 10 photocopies of Aadhaar/12th marksheet 6. First-aid pouch with paracetamol, antacids, and band-aids. Save this post!

Judges don't care about your 1,500 lines of code; they care about 3 things: 1. The Problem Hook (first 30 seconds: relatable student or real-world pain point) 2. Live Working Demo (never use slide screenshots; show real clicks) 3. Business / Scalability model (how does this survive beyond Sunday morning?). Keep slides under 6 pages.

For anyone preparing for GSoC 2027 or looking for Hacktoberfest contributions: 1. Cal.com (Next.js / TypeScript scheduling) 2. Infisical (Secret management & Go) 3. Oppia (Educational math platform for Python/Angular beginners) 4. Appsmith (Low-code developer tooling in Java/JS). All 4 have friendly Discord communities and dedicated 'good first issue' labels.

Our department computer lab has an ancient audio speaker wired to the central teacher console that nobody has touched since 2018. Yesterday during our 2-hour dull Solid State Physics lecture, someone found the open Bluetooth receiver named 'LAB_AUDIO_SYSTEM_01' and connected to it from the last bench. Instead of playing a joke, they queued up the lofi instrumental version of 'Kun Faya Kun' at 10% volume. The entire lab went dead quiet, and even the professor paused mid-equation, smiled, and said 'Chalo, mahaul accha hai' and kept writing.

During automated email testing in our Web Development lab, I put the department faculty mailing list into a cron job test script. Every Monday morning at 8 AM for three consecutive weeks, all 24 professors and the HOD received a high-resolution meme about recursion and off-by-one errors from 'bot@campusloop.internal'. The HOD printed out the meme, stuck it outside his office cabin, and wrote 'Very informative, improve formatting next time'.

All of my close friends have been placed, And as I have already told I was the 2nd to be placed in the group... But super happy for all of us. And the best part most of us are in the same city and offices are ridiculously close to each other...basically opposite buildings... Mazaa aagya...😁😁😁😁😁... I was waiting to post this coz 1 bande ka placement bacha tha last... Voh bhi kal hogya... Ab toh shayad saath bhi rahe duplex rent karke... Edit- To the people downvoting coz I didn't reveal my clg... Bhai zabardasti hai kya batau.. kya ho jayega

All of my close friends have been placed, And as I have already told I was the 2nd to be placed in the group... But super happy for all of us. And the best part most of us are in the same city and offices are ridiculously close to each other...basically opposite buildings... Mazaa aagya...😁😁😁😁😁... I was waiting to post this coz 1 bande ka placement bacha tha last... Voh bhi kal hogya... Ab toh shayad saath bhi rahe duplex rent karke... Edit- To the people downvoting coz I didn't reveal my clg... Bhai zabardasti hai kya batau.. kya ho jayega

Department fest tees design committee on Figma vs The final t-shirt the local screen printer handed us 2 hours before the inauguration 😭😭 Expectation vs Reality photo dump: We paid ₹650 each for dry-fit nylon that glows in the dark like a traffic cone 🤡