This decision will decide our next 2 years so read it properly. To help us decide, we asked the same question to ChatGPT and it replied with the same answer we wanted (actually only half of us wanted this, others were still confused).

Do or Die?

Exams got scheduled for 3rd and 5th semester between 01-18 Dec 2025. Attending SIH Grand Finale means leaving 2 exams for 5th sem students and 3 exams for 3rd sem students.

Once again let me introduce the entire team with a few more details:

Sumit Singh Rathore: (Yours truly 😁) 5th Semester - IT Branch - Already 1 back in Physics in 1st Sem (Yeah, I am the Team Leader even with the backlog)
Chhayank Saini: (Na koduku) 5th Semester - VLSI Branch - Already 3 backs in multiple semesters. (Can't reveal all the details 🙄. It's confidential. That's why the title is "Do or Die")
Bharti Saini: 5th Semester - CS Branch - Almost 10 CGPA - Zero backlogs
Himanshi: 5th Semester - EC Branch - Almost 10 CGPA - Zero backlogs
Jai Deep: 3rd Semester - CS Branch - Zero backlogs
Ankit Kulhari: 7th Semester - CS Branch - Zero backlogs - No Exams (the one and only person in the entire team whose 100% sure about his decision)

Problem 1: Will OUR UNIVERSITY postpone the exams?

Now the situation is that 4 of our members are in 5th sem and 1 in 3rd sem. So, we quickly messaged our college faculty and even emailed the UNIVERSITY (can't reveal the name. just find it out yourself) and the Government of Rajasthan explaining the entire situation.

(I could add images to prove this but why waste time writing one more line or why waste those precious megabytes for someone whose not wasting a single minute for us.)

Guess what. They don't care. Only seen but no reply.

I just want to ask one thing, "If our university is a government university and the SIH is also a government organised event then why can't they postpone the exams or even better why didn't they scheduled those exams on some other dates from the very beginning?"

Now I get it why our education system sucks. (If you are a government official, reading this blog, kindly ignore this part 😂)

After 10+ emails and a week of sleepless nights, the final decision date arrived.

Problem 2: Are we all going?

And one of us can't leave the exams because of her Honours Degree and even we don't wanna force her. She wanted to but that's not an option for her. We only have to face the backlogs but she will face her career fall under her feet in the future (or maybe not, who knows). So, 1 player down before the battle even started.

4 more to go....

Now comes the second member: Na koduku. Well, as I mentioned earlier, 3 backs from earlier 🙄 annnddddddd if we add 2 more then it becomes 5, which is...... not something he can handle at this young age.

2 players down and the real battle has yet to start.

3 more to go....

I am not gonna mention any names here. Just figure it out yourself.

Problem 3: Is it 1 Girl or 2?

What about other 3? They can definitely leave exams for SIH. After all it's SIH, the National Level Hackathon every engineering student dreams of.... WWWWWWEEEEELLLLLLLLL, not just yet. We are just getting started. This list of problems is too long. It will keep unfolding with time. That's the beauty of problems, either they will appear all at once or right at the moment when you think that it's finally all over.

One of the 2 members who dropped out of the game, is a girl. And if you have read the Part 1: The Team, then you can understand why I chose 2 girls in the first place.

Parents' of the second girl are now worried about their phool jaisi najook daughter. As the older sibling of the house, I can understand this. Even I don't want my sugli si sister to go with some random dudes to a so called national level event I had never heard about.

But atleast give us a chance to explain and show how kind and caring we are. It's not like we are going to a hackathon for the first time (Okay 3 of us are, but I am familiar with these things. I had participated in so many hackathons at this point).

Actually the problem was that she (our team member) herself stopped us from talking to her parents, otherwise my mother was already in her running shoes as if she's gonna run a marathon to her house just to convince her parents (I really love my family, so caring 🥹)

After hustling for a few days, one of our member finally managed to convince her brother to travel to the SIH with us (or did he 😏?).

So the plan was that her brother will..........

CONFIDENTIAL CONTENT

(You guys are not the only readers here. My team is also reading this. I can't reveal all the details but to summarise it all in a line - "She and her brother both decided to travel to SIH at last")

The Conclusion

I am born ready to take the risk. So, I was already in. After all, how can a leader leave his team behind 😎.

But there was one more of us whose even braver than the entire team. He decided to leave 3 exams meanwhile we were only leaving 2 of our exams. he never had any backlogs.

"He gladly took those bullets to his heart without even saying OUCH 😂"
(I don't know the actual phrase)

Jai Deep, huge respect for you man. I am glad you are a part of the team 🥹.

So, the final number was 4 (four) including Yours truly (Me), Jaideep, Bharti and Ankit.

Next Stop: Gunnttttuuurrrr 🥳

Read about our journey, the people and the food we had during these 6 days travel in Part 3: The Journey.

Stay tuned for more content coming soon!