1091 . Is it a prime number? It is not divisible by 3 so 1091 is definitely not a number I would be liking. Turns out it is a prime number. Makes sense why such a stupid number won’t have any factors. This number literally gives me trauma and flashbacks, because something related to this number was giving me existential crisis throughout my fourth semester.
Such a hatred has never been there after the hatred against 1100 (11 is prime and I don’t care about zeroes). But 1100 was completely trash while 1091 taught me a lot of things. Enough foreshadowing ig, lets jump into the stuff. This entry is about my experiences and thoughts I went through while attending the course HS1091 - Tamil for Beginners. Yes, as a native Tamil speaker, I took this course for silly reasons I regretted the most, but in the end it turned out to be one of the best decisions I took at the start of the semester. I shall yap about my complete experience from start to end I had with this love-hate course throughout the semester.
If you are wondering what’s 1100 - its just EE1100 - Basic Electrical Engineering, where our professor randomly decided to screw up our batch with his absurd grading system. I was one of the victims among 20-30 other victims. I got a C grade in that course, but it would’ve been phenomenally better if I had just gotten even a B and I still get sad about it now.
Before Course Registration
During mid of the third semester, I knew fourth semester would be a little bit heavier than the current semester, and a lot of seniors suggested us to take a easier course such as a some Humanities elective instead of some CS/Math course. So I went through the list and I found this course HS1091 - Tamil for beginners. At that point I never thought I would apply to that course and even if I applied I wouldn’t get because the number of seats was too less (around 30 at the start).
According to our course curriculum we are supposed to complete three HS (Humanities) Electives compulsorily. So I was like, hmmm maybe I can gamble this. Parallelly, I was trying to get along with Prof. Manikandan and wanted to explore Bioinformatics. While all my other friends were trying for other electives like OB (Machine Learning Foundations) , Korean etc., I wanted to do a CS course badly away from what my friends did.
When the course registration started, I put my first priority as CS6024 - Computational Biology and my second priority as HS1091 and my third priority as OB2204 - Machine Learning Foundations (Just in case). But then I’m a pro gambler I believed in my unlucky skills and put HS1091 at the top and then CS6024. This was because I was partially scared that I might not be able to handle CS6024 along with other core courses and I was pretty sure that I wouldn’t get the HS course (Plan B was this: Even if I get it, I would drop it and ask prof. Manikandan to add me in CS6024 - which was always an option for me).
Keeping these in my mind, I grinded CS6024 during the vacations. I finished around 6-7 chapters on my own from the reference book which the professor suggested. I just jokingly said to few ppl that I’ve applied to HS1091 as well, people also took it as a joke and laughed it off.
Provisional Registration happened. I got allotted for CS6024. I was excited and scared as well. Then came the actual allotment. This time I got allotted for HS1091. I was like “No way!!” and then was ready to move ahead with plan B.
One of my classmates (1MA0) who saw my name in that course list, like a mofo announced it in a 25-ppl grp of my class, tagging me and saying that “he lost respect for me”. For a second I was sad but then I laughed because I never had respect for him and never cared about him so I just replied “I just gambled and I got it” and moved on.
Start of the semester
I hard convinced myself that I just put the course so that I could complete one HS, not to boost my CG and RG others. I was planning to drop the course and add CS6024 after seeing how some of my so-called “close” friends’ reactions were. Some of them didn’t really care about it and made me feel that its fine, but others were kinda joking around it somewhat as a coping mechanism ig. I didn’t find that comfortable at all.
First working day, first class of the day was that Tamil class. I was already scared af, I was preparing myself heavily for the introductory questions like : “What’s your mother tongue” , “Where are you from” , “Do you know Tamil?” , “Why did you take this course” etc. I went to the class, the expected questions came - but I didn’t wanna lie, I said the truth and the whole class just called me rg. This was the first time, I was ready to take up the embarrassment , usually I would be running away from embarrassments, or better I wouldn’t doing something that has a slightest possibility of me being embarrassed (People pleaser issues?). It was surreal and I was feeling so guilty. Once the class got over I spoke to the teacher saying that I know Tamil, is it fine that I take the course. She said its fine. Not really sure what she was thinking when I said I know Tamil, but I got some confidence and approval from her and it felt somewhat better.
I was confused between dropping HS1091 - the approval from the mam as well as easy 9 credits , S grade and free HS course vs CS6024 , so called “dignity” , “people pleasing” and excitement to learn bioinformatics was head to head. At the end I asked one of my friends 1K15 about what I should be doing. He gave me some clarity on what to do and not to worry about other people. I gave it a thought about it, then I took the decision of not dropping it and continuing with the course. I literally convinced myself by telling myself - “Hey this is a challenge and upcoming character transformation - Let’s go through this”.
I was actually right with that - indeed I overcame a lot of stupid policies that never really made sense, and developed myself to choose a peaceful version of myself. For the first time I overthrew some of stupid morals which I used to take decision so that I had to please other people. Instead, I replaced it with pleasing myself first and some level of decency. I just thought to myself, “do I really wanna please this person, does this person gonna give me any value knowing my “true self”? Is it even worth doing it? What so good about making this person think about me as a good person?“.
Outside of the course experience
Initially I was so afraid to getting hate, so I told my friends not to spread this information. Even when someone used to ask which electives I’ve taken, I would just say some HS and then disappear from that place. Slowly things changed. There was this one person I hated the most in insti - He came and asked me which elective did I take. At first I dodged him pretty smoothly. But then the next time I just said to him with a proud face that I got HS1091 just to mock him. From “Aiyooo what will people think of me if I say that I opted for HS1091” to “You can say whatever you want, I literally don’t care” - I see this as an absolute win for me.
Other things like this also happened outside of the course - One of my other friends RD1 just announced in a group 1024 people that I got HS1091. I dmed him saying that this was too much of a joke for me to take it lite and he deleted it after few minutes. Still when some of my friends try to leak this info to people who didn’t know, I just get annoyed - Like they voluntarily go and tell people that I got HS1091 even though they knew how uncomfortable it made me at the start of the semester. Even last month ig one other close friend H!R sent a message on a public group that I had to clean it up with my admin powers lol.
This also gave me the confidence to say “NO” properly. The “I don’t care” attitude actually made me more peaceful. It removed the unnecessary FOMO inside that was making me sad. I gained a good amount of confidence with this. This incident was like a good software reset for me - I still do overthinking but now I’m able to differentiate between what I should be caring about and what I can just say “Idc” and keep my mental sanity at a proper place. I started to live for myself and just for myself - Not to please random strangers. My circle of “I care about” went exponentially smaller and made me take a lot of good decisions.
This same “I don’t care” attitude also removed the unnecessary hesitation and delay I used to have in my life to do something I want to. Again its just a software reset, by default I’m used to overthink and be prepared for things, so the initial delay is always there, before I take any decision, but it has improved a lot because I can just throw away some of the overthinking branches with “I literally don’t care”. Life optimization with “I don’t care” - “That person doesn’t give a F” pruning ahhh.
I was also cautious about not losing my standards as well. This attitude is slightly risky in that sense because it suddenly feels like you have free will and you can do anything. But then still I had to resort to some level of “Ok I do care” at some times despite I wasn’t caring about it because it meant that I also overthrew my standards, which wasn’t really a good thing. Now I’m just trying to find the balance between these two ideas while trying to maximize self peace.
Course Experience
To explain this in two words - Trauma and Existential Crisis.
First week, I just went on full cope mode - I was searching for sensible reasons why I am sitting here in this course. None of the reasons were sensible so I gave up on it and started accepting it. Every time a person I knew walks through the class corridor, I would just pretend like I never saw them.
The teacher was some old lady (in her 50 - 60’s at least). She literally treated all of us like a 3-year old kid and started teaching the course like a kindergarten teacher. It was literally so cringe to me spell out those letters.
The next few weeks is me having existential crisis of why I am sitting in this class, Why am I wasting 4 hours of my life every week. I used to sit alone in the class, No one I knew was in the class (thankfully or unfortunately?).
Sometimes I just felt lonely in the class. But I didn’t have the courage nor the care to even socialize for that one class. I just played sudoku the whole class for the most part. Few times I tried talking to a french senior girl who was also in the class, but then by the second time I spoke I just realized there is no point and she isn’t that interested to talk.
In the final days, the teacher forced me to talk with her (for some oral activities). At that point I was not even trying to pretend properly. I just wanted her to mistake my shyness for not knowing how to talk but then yeah how long can I pretend. Eventually I realized she also found out but she didn’t want to call out explicitly.
Once the course was over, I finally felt very happy that it got over, but then I used to get sad occasionally that I did this course for four months. Few days later, I just met one of my classmates JA3. Usually, I would try to avoid eye contact and run away from him, because he is a person such n immense level of confidence, and he speaks really well, which usually made me uncomfortable. But then I thought,“I have finished HS1091, nothing can be more uncomfortable than the four month of existential crisis” and just went and sat in front of him.
As expected, he started his conversation. He is such a nice and jovial person. He asked me some questions. I don’t really remember the exact question, but then he asked me something along these lines, “like what is the biggest risk have you taken so far?“. It was at the same time he was about to take a big risk in his life and ig he wanted to get opinions on risks. I just thought about it for a second.
Usually, I’m a very safe person. I always try to have a backup. I’ve always chosen safe paths. When he asked me the question, I couldn’t think of anything of the scale he was about to do. But then, taking HS1091 and not dropping it felt like one big risk to me. Then I yapped to him, “hey big is a qualitative term, I haven’t taken big risks, maybe small risks.”. Then he asked what’s that. Then I proceeded to explain. I knew he wouldn’t understand what’s the risk about this because obviously what I feel is nothing to him, because of how much sociable that guy is.
He said “what was so risky about that?“. Then I explained about how this course has brought a lot of transformation. I was expecting some first hand embarrassment and judging from him, but then he said - “Oh that’s really a nice story, very good to hear that you did well and you crossed this far”. I was surprised. I wasn’t expecting that. Suddenly, I felt better and motivated. He gained a lot of respect in that instant. To all the people, whom I openly talked about this, either they generally look down upon me or just don’t even talk about it. But then the way this guy handled it made me feel good. I just genuinely hope he is doing good wherever he is going (I heard recently that he is doing good indeed).
Summary
No summary. Too much yap. I just want to add: Never doing this kind of stunt again in my life, but I’m happy that I don’t have to do this stunt again, because I think I’ve learnt enough in this stunt hehe. It was bad, but I don’t regret it at all. No matter who says what, it’s over anyway and I don’t care about this anymore. Still here and there people joke about this, but honestly they will never know how much the course helped me and the best part: they don’t need to.