How to Be a “True” Ashokan

Anyone can be an Ashokan; but how do you become a person who takes all the potential the campus has to offer? Presenting the ultimate guide to becoming a true Ashokan!

1. Take as many courses as humanly possible: Your ultimate goal must be to complete a major and a minor in three years, along with starting a concentration. Audits are also highly recommended. You MUST explore everything AND get on the Dean’s List in your first two semesters itself. The ideal schedule is five courses, a co-curricular, and an audit. Anything less is disgraceful. Truly, disgrace here comes from not breaking records when it comes to academics.

    

2. Campus and Summer Fun: You need a stellar CV, so it is essential to sign up for summer semesters (whether at Ashoka or abroad), internships, and maybe even the Young Scholars Program as a Counselor…all in one summer. I mean, isn’t that what a three-and-a-half-month summer vacation is for? Be a part of at least five clubs and societies, and join sports coaching as well. All this will add to your CV to show, without any doubt, that you’re definitely the ‘well-rounded’  individual companies and grad schools are looking for. There is no way they won’t select you!
   ‘Ashoka in summer’ by Aqsa Pervez ​
3. Social Justice is Bae: Discourse is the last word in any encounter at Ashoka. Be it within the classroom or not, you must find something problematic about life, the universe, and everything, and then you must renounce it, or aggressively pursue ways to change it. If there is someone you know who is quiet about the situation, they are obviously complicit in some violence or injustice taking place, and if they side with the aggressors, they’re out of touch with the grassroots and live in a bubble of privilege that must be broken.  
4. Night? What’s That?: Since there’s so much to do, it’s pretty obvious that you need to stay up for it all. Classes till 6, then sports till 8.30, and then club meetings from 9 to midnight, followed by a meeting for some group presentation. You need to spend time with your friends as well and watch Vines till dawn. There’s no time to sleep, and if you get a couple of hours in bed, you’re lucky. Maybe you’ll sleep all day over the weekend, but when you’re in Ashoka, life begins at 11 PM.

    

5. Juniors are your mortal enemy: A regular catchphrase you hear in the Monsoon Semesters is “F***ing first-years”. These new kids are way too enthusiastic about life at college, and you can’t handle it. Their hands shoot up all the time in class (think young Hermione Granger x100), they’re the ones who don’t shut up about their GPA, and their classes, and everything under the sun. For those of you who want peaceful last semesters at Ashoka, these kids will drive you mad; you will go to incredible lengths to avoid dealing with them. But if anyone goes against that batch, you’ll be there for them. They’re annoying kids, but they’re also family.

    

6. The Real Party: Freshers! Winter Ball! DJ Night! These parties are must-attend events at Ashoka. Never mind that the music is so loud that you can’t hear people, or that it’s too crowded to find your friends, or that drunk party-goers greet you with wide smiles and say that they want to hug you, or that there’s rarely any food, or that everywhere you go there are couples canoodling under the lights…if you’re more of an introvert, you must force yourself to be social, even if you’re uncomfortable. A true Ashokan always attends the parties and forgets about human dignity (or anything unrelated to smoke, drink, dancing, and PDA).

Once you have achieved all these milestones, you will be granted the status of a ‘True’ Ashokan. You will be the dream student, the dream graduate, the dream person who can achieve anything with the power of critical thinking.

…or you can just, you know, chill out.

Edited by Priyanka Shankar

Images curated by Amrita Tuli

• academics
• campus life
• college life
• nightlife