"Yearbook" - Infosys, Mysore Diaries - #BlogChatterA2Z

After the Christmas celebrations, we lazed on the campus with nothing much to do. For the first time, we had no work to finish because we’d already completed working on the project. We had the final demo in two days. Our placement letters would be out on the day after the project demos and we could stay for 2 or 3 days on the campus with approval. With New Year around the corner, we wanted to stay on the campus on the 31^st night and start back to Hyderabad on Jan 1^st. We’d all decided to first visit our hometown no matter what location we’d be posted to. 

With our time officially ending on the Mysore campus, we had varied emotions. The Infosys management was clever in disclosing our posting locations at the last minute. This kept us all occupied with the dilemma about our posting locations rather than the thoughts of missing the campus. 

Unlike most of us, Myra also had something else to worry about – it was Chetan. Chetan had listed his primary job location as Bangalore, the second being Chennai. Myra’s choices were like all of ours – Hyderabad and Bangalore in that order. Much as they both wanted to continue their relationship, neither of them was ready to compromise on their job location. So, they both spent a lot of time, discussing and figuring out what to do. This meant I spent more time with Arjun, Anusha, Swati, Rishi, and occasionally the rest of our college friends.

After all the short, hectic trips, we all decided to take it easy and spend more time on the campus. Irrespective of our job locations, we all knew that it was inevitable that we were leaving the Mysore campus. We visited our favorite places on the campus multiple times and eat to our heart’s content. 

Finally, it was the day of project demos. Our team met early in the classroom and got everything ready. Other teams were also getting their projects ready for demo. At around 9:30 AM, the instructor came in with some paperwork. He started calling out teams one after the other. The demo was quite simple – we did not present to the whole class, rather the instructor approached the team and we gave him a demo.

Soon, it was our turn and the instructor approached us. He asked us about the project, its technical stack, a few use cases, and the implementation of various modules. We’d all prepared on various sections and answered him accordingly. After Myra’s demo of a module, the instructor noted something on his notepad and said, “Very good. Nice implementation and good documentation. Congratulations.”

We were all elated and thanked the instructor. Although we’d finished our project early, we were still tentative that morning and his remarks made us very happy. We high-fived one another and left the classroom. 

“We’ve officially completed our training. Now, all we have left to do is to get a class photo for the yearbook”, I said to Myra and Arjun.

“Why are you calling it a yearbook? It’s so high-school-like. We don’t get a book, we only get the class photo in front of the GEC2 building”, Arjun scolded.

“It will be yearbook to me. I almost feel as if we’ve completed college. I’ve learned much more here than I’ve ever learned in our four years of engineering.”, I said.

“True! Yearbook sounds apt to me”, Myra smiled at me. 

“Aren’t you guys worried about our job locations?”, I asked.

“We should never worry about something that we don’t have control over. The placement is done on a random basis and we can do nothing about it”, Arjun said.

“Agreed”, Myra replied. 

We walked around for a while when my phone alarm rang.

“Time for yearbook photo”, I said.

We walked towards the GEC2 building. About 200 of our classmates were near the building. The photographer was ready with his camera setup. He asked us all to stand on the stairs in front of GEC2 and we all did. He took various snaps and gave us a thumbs up. 

“Yayyyyyy”, everybody shouted.

“See, this feels like college graduation”, I said to Arjun to which he nodded.

Soon, people started dissembling. However, the three of us did not. We could not. It was undoubtedly the best graduation of our lives and we wanted to savor every minute……

-- To be continued

This post is a part of the Blogchatter A2Z Challenge.