Zoom Barabar Zoom: A Comprehensive Guide to Recreating Campus at Home

By Akanksha Mishra (UG22)

It’s been a month into the Monsoon semester and you’re not where you thought you would be. With the entire semester shifting online, you can no longer barge into your friend’s room any time of the day, punctuate your classes with trips to the SR, or sit in the mess lawns during ‘golden hour’. Instead of being confused about what the professor is saying in an AC02 first-floor classroom, you’re now confused in the comfort of your own home. Feeling like you’re missing out on the essential college experience? Unable to concentrate without the cacophony of 40 other restless students on the same floor? Don’t worry, we have your back. 

Here are 10 foolproof ways to recreate the complete Ashokan experience at home. 

1. Balanced diet? Pfft, just another capitalist agenda to stop you from getting wasted in the middle of the day and unlocking your full potential. To be able to write 2000 word papers the night before the deadline, you must survive exclusively on Maggi, mountain dew, and the daily bucket of coffee. 
2. Have your parents play the fire-alarm sounds at 3 a.m. right outside your room for fifteen minutes as a weekly routine. Once you manage to fall back asleep, have them play it again. 
3. Plan “family games night” in the fashion of “floor games night” on the busiest day of your week, and then try to hide in your room for the rest of the night. (Alternatively, you could just ignore the emails from your virtual RAs). 
4. Get dressed for classes! Want everyone in your class to notice your outfit? Turn on your camera the entire time, even if the professor does not ask you to do so. Pray that the sight of your existence will earn you much needed participation points.
5. Sneak in alcohol without letting your parents know (be prepared for high school flashbacks) and drink it under dim lights and your basic lo-fi playlist in the background. You might have to make do with regular alcohol, but Farm Fresh will probably host a recipe tutorial for Sonipat-highway spiked alcohol soon. 
6. Call The Hunger Cycle/Dhaba at 1 a.m. and order food that will probably only be ready by the time you are back on campus. 
7. Ask your parents to turn off the geyser while you’re in the middle of your shower, to remind you that you missed hot water timings yet again. Make it a point to run out of toilet paper when you need it the most. 
8. Have video calls with your friends titled “study sessions” during finals week where you only complain about your workload and stare blankly into each other’s faces for 3 hours every night. 
9. Be in charge of your own laundry: count it before you put it in the washing machine, and then forget to take it out for 3 days. (Bonus: hang your underwear out to dry on a windy day without clips, and then spend the next week hunting for it through the neighbourhood).
10. Buy yourself snacks with your own money and then instruct your siblings to steal them, to give yourself a taste of the authentic dorm experience. Then, don’t forget to rant about it on your family WhatsApp group. 

While we do not guarantee that you will be transported back to our 25-acre haven in the middle of Sonipat, it is still worth a shot. If it doesn’t work for you, don’t be disheartened because you can still participate in collective, and perhaps inescapable  Ashokan experiences like (rightfully) bashing the admin, complaining about your readings, getting annoyed by political science majors in your classes, and ignoring all emails from the Student Government. 

Happy Zooming!