There was an air of dismay. Not a single person got it right. We all died a thousand deaths inside, thinking ‘God, why oh why?’ The professor smirked and said, “It’s the Internet bubble burst, stupid!” (Ok, not stupid). Thrashed were our hopes of shining in the class and a sense of hopelessness hit us hard with the realisation we all took forward. “You’ll never it have it all, pre-read or no pre-read!”
Nonetheless, a swarm of pre-reads followed and we took our chances. Over the time, our energy wavered and the pre-pre reads were more of WhatsApp work allocation. The untouched stack of Mint found its twin in the pile of Ivey cases. What started out as an army of German soldiers became a secret society of Ghissus a.k.a the nerds. But hail the ghissus for saving our backs. More often than not, we all came unprepared in classes carrying doped faces and blank looks. The professor showing his mercy might throw the question for an open house only to get more quizzical faces staring him down. Disgruntled, he would charge like a hawk around the room ready to prey on faces hidden behind their laptops. In that very moment, a shaky hand would go up and there he was our messiah, Pranav. With the bolting speed of light, he had managed to read the Slideshare summary and had a half-baked answer ready to hold Sir at bay. After spending an eternity at iterating words like ‘holistic approach’, ‘competitive advantage’, ‘customer satisfaction’, etc. with his animated hands, Pranav had done the unthinkable i.e CONVINCE sir! We were all wearing BeingPranav T-shirts in our heads. Since Roadies salute wasn’t an option, we chose to honour his valour with some old-fashioned desk thumping.
The cat and mouse chase still ensues with luck dicing about for and against us. There are days when even the backbenchers rise up to the occasion and score on a googly. And sometimes, even the momentary drifting off fetches us a cold call. What remains constant is pre-read and the fact that ‘slideshare hai na, bacha lega’.
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