All those who had enjoyed their three month long vacation were back at the hostel by the 22nd of July in order to finish the formalities of fee payment and course registration on time. My roommate was one of the unfortunate ones to not turn up on time and ended up paying a thousand rupee fine for not completing the formalities on time. A new academic year had begun and the first thing on the agenda of most of the clubs at NITK was recruitment. The post-holders of the more popular clubs wasted no time in doing their best to popularise their respective clubs even more. Each of the clubs were ready with a format for their recruitment process; they had colourful posters and witty resumes distributed among the second year students within no time and were ready to begin the recruitments.
The clubs that consider themselves among the top are IEEE, CSI, ISTE, IE, and of course Rotaract which is trying very hard indeed to catch up with the four technical clubs but with little success. Each of these clubs recruits around thirty people every year and since it is extremely difficult to find a hundred and fifty people who are all enthusiastic, talented and capable of delivering what is required of them, the clubs end up fighting among themselves to get the best lot to join them. One would think it is a simple process where the individuals select the club they want at the end of a gruelling week of interviews based on their performance. It is not that simple at all. If you speak to a few second year students, you will soon realise that they are being pressured by their party seniors, friends and the conveners of the clubs. The clubs surprisingly discuss amongst themselves before coming up with a final list of students that they wish to recruit. It is an extremely confusing and an irritating process.
I am a part of the Rotaract Club and had an insight scoop of the process this time round. All though it was all very amusing and interesting in the first couple of days, it soon became boring to go over the same routine over and over again. Once all the clubs had finished their interviews for the aspirants, there was a negotiation session where the heads of the four technical clubs came up with the final list of recruits for their respective clubs by mutual consent. Rotaract was initially supposed to be a part of the negotiations but for reasons unknown we weren't which leaves us with the rejects from the top four and a select few who preferred to join us. I get the feeling that we're like Everton in the BPL. We just have to manage with what we get for yet another year. It was such a bore towards the end that I decided, to quote one Eric Cartman "Screw you guys, I'm goin' home."