‘I came to IIT doubting myself. I leave motivating thousands of students’ | Life in an IIT

For about seven to eight months before JEE, my brother and I would study until 4 in the morning and start again at 10. Four to six hours of sleep between sessions, every single day. People often ask what kept me going through that kind of grind.

The answer is not complicated: I wanted to live with dignity and respect – and I understood early that in this society, education is what brings that. That belief carried me through every late night, every exhausted morning, and eventually into IIT Hyderabad.

I am 21 years old, in my final year of Electrical Engineering at IITH. I am originally from Hyderabad; my parents live in Nizampet, which means I am technically about two hours from home. It does not always feel that way – being away at college can make those two hours feel much longer.

My father is a manager at a construction firm, and my mother is a homemaker. I did my Class 10 and intermediate at Sri Chaitanya in Hyderabad. Growing up, I was self-driven and independent by nature – those were not traits I developed at IIT; they were what took me there in the first place.

What I miss most about home is the food, and the kind of comfort that only your own house provides. Some things are irreplaceable, no matter how much your college eventually starts to feel like a second home. I prepared for JEE entirely from home, without any coaching institute.

My brother was my anchor through all of it. We studied together through the night, night after night; he sat with me through every session, kept pushing when I slowed down, and refused to let the momentum drop. I have said this plainly before, and I mean it completely: it was my brother who craved my success more than I did, at least in those months.

Whatever I achieved belongs to him as much as it belongs to me. The biggest challenge was not the syllabus or the competition; it was consistency. Staying consistent across months of exhaustion is a different kind of difficulty that is hard to describe until you have lived it.

Watching classmates who were not preparing, who seemed to be moving through life freely while I was at a desk at 3 in the morning, that was disheartening on certain days. There were stretches where self-motivation simply was not enough.

My family, and my brother above all, were what filled that gap every time. During counselling, I applied for Computer Science Engineering (CSE), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Electrical Engineering (EE). I was allotted Electrical Engineering at IIT Hyderabad.

I had wanted CSE or AI, but the decision, when it came to it, was clear. I chose to sacrifice my preferred branch for the IIT. Getting to IIT Hyderabad was the goal, and I held that above everything else. That choice ended up shaping the next four years in ways I could not have predicted because what I found at IITH had very little to do with which department my name was filed under.

I joined IIT Hyderabad in 2023. It was the first time I had lived away from home, and being alone was genuinely unsettling in the beginning. I called my mother every day, mostly to complain – about the food, the hostel, the distance.

I still remember one evening when I broke down entirely on a phone call with her. The next day, she was at my door. She walked into my room and gave me a firm, clear instruction: stop feeling alone, take the initiative, go speak to people, make friends.

That is exactly what I did. And it changed everything. I became part of several clubs and student initiatives at IITH, with most of my involvement going into the rural development space, through Milan (the institute’s annual inter-hostel competition), Prayas (a rural education initiative) and Aksharadaan (an education-focused outreach initiative).

Time management became non-negotiable: strict hours were set aside for assignments and exam preparation, and everything else was built carefully around that. The work that has meant the most to me is with Aksharamaala (an online learning initiative for rural government-school students).

I am currently leading the foundation’s efforts across Telangana, teaching underprivileged school students in online mode. What started as a club responsibility became something I think about well beyond campus hours. Every session is a reminder of why I wanted to come to an IIT in the first place: to eventually be in a position to give something back.

I have also organised campus tours for company heads and international delegates from Indonesia and Japan. Standing in those rooms, a girl from a middle-class Hyderabad family, hosting guests from across the world on an IIT campus, is the kind of thing that would simply not have been possible in most other settings.

IIT gives you a platform whose scale you only fully understand once you are standing on it. IIT Hyderabad transformed me in ways I had not planned for. I came in as someone who doubted herself. I leave as someone who stands in front of school students and speaks to them about what is possible.

I have learned how to manage, how to lead, how to communicate, and, more quietly, how to believe that difficulty is not the same as impossibility.