The Degree of Freedom

Here is how the story goes.

About a month and a half ago, Debayan, a friend of mine wrote a blog entry, in which he casully enough mentioned foss.in. That was when I heard of the event for the first time(although the name felt slightly familier). I made a note mentally.

About a month or so ago he advised me to register to foss.in as workout lead of LDTP (workout = sort of combined development activity also known as a 'hackfest'). He said he was doing the same with Tesseract OCR. I did not pay him much heed then. When he repeated his advise I came out with an escuse that, I was quite inexperienced to become Workout Lead, but I will tell someone on the #ldtp channel to register so I may join in later(which infact was true).

So I caught up with Nagappan, and asked hm for advise. That incedently turned out to be the last day for registration for talks and workouts. He advised me that as no one was available, I may register as Workout Lead, and Varadhan may join in later. Nagappan lives in the US.

I did that as I thought it was our best shot. Although I knew that I would not be able to attend as my semester exams, speculated to start from 24th Nov may collide with foss.in dates 25th to 29th Nov.

About 10 days later foss.in released their first shortlist. I was in it!

My first reaction was that I would not go there as exams were way more important. But then some congratulatory SMS's later and seeing my name being flashed in the College Media (read mailing lists, gtalk status messages) combined with the 'rebel' spark reminiscent in me, I decided to bunk exams. Better if I get a green flag from college, if not I was stiill going.

Back to the college, I started delving deeper into the situation. I asked for "some official letter" from foss.in. A guy called Harsha (another LDTP enthusiasist) added me on gtalk, and advised me strictly against missing my exams, and encouraged me to sort some win-win way out. The discussion at the #foss.in channel was sort of the last blow to my plans.

Now I was confused!

Till an hour ago when I found a leather bound file inside which was a certificate. On is was written the following words in running calligraphy:

National Institute of Technology

Durgapur, India

The Board of Governors of the Institute upon the recommendation of the Senate hereby confers on

Shreyank Gupta

the degree of

Bachelor of Technology

in

Computer Science & Engineering

with

First Class

under the seal of the Institute given at Durgapur on this Eight day of November Two thousand and Eight

(perticulars changed on request)

Below was a cool embossed seal of the college with the signature of the Chairman of the Board of Governers and the Director.

And I decided not to go if I have to miss even a single exam.

True Story!!!