Hackathon Project – Episode 6.5 – Way More Than a Hackathon

This is another episode of the series College Life. This is Hackathon Project – Episode 6 – Part 5. Enjoy Reading!

Night Before Hackathon 😶

Okay so now most of the work was done. The only thing that left, was to go through the final project one more time. So as a regular we did a conference call nearly 11:30 pm. I was reading the problem statement and something caught my eye and of Abhinav’s too(Wait for the high point). Holy sh*t, we had misinterpreted the problem statement due to just one short abbreviation. Now it was near midnight and we didn’t have the main project ready (pretty exciting right).

Ankit & I shook ourselves out of the shock. We started searching for a problem statement. We got one, but the catch was, this project was totally based on ML. I was the only one in the group who knew ML. So now the whole thing was again dependent on me(sh*t 🙂 ). No time for excuses. I started working on the documentation right away. And now I had to prepare it from scratch. We did a project in so many days and in so many hours and I just had one night to do it. All my teammates could not do anything, as they wanted to help but they cannot learn ML in one night, right.

The Big Day

Anyway, by hook or by crook I was able to prepare the documentation more or less. I decided that I would give the finishing touches in college. As it was pretty much clear that we won’t be able to attend any classes before the Hackathon began.

We were giving the final touches to our documentation, doing any last-minute changes. Akash helped us in creating a seksy(u read it r8) presentation. Mayukh followed his instructions while I was on a round in the college to see if everything was going well. I was talking with teachers and taking care of other stuff.

All classes were suspended from 12:45, I guess. I don’t remember the exact time. And the prelims of the Hackathon began.

Presentation Time

Akash and my team both were in the same classroom. We discussed in between us and decided that my team will give the presentation first and after that Akash and his team will give their presentation.

And the judges where our HOD and the one & only AP Sir.

So, the first presentation we gave on the project that we just prepared overnight. Ankit gave the introductory part and I completed the presentation. We were not cross-questioned on this project, but wait for the high point.

We saw that we won’t get a chance to present our other projects. So we decided to give one more presentation as our backup project. We were totally thrashed on this one. Our HOD was asking a lot of questions and we were out of answers. But the time was up as each team was assigned only 5 mins per presentation.

Were kind of Shocked!😬

We were totally pulled out from our roots and were thinking whether we would qualify for the next round. But I didn’t have time to lament. It was my responsibility and of other members too to see that all the other presentations for every department and respective years was going on smoothly. And a lot of other stuff, I was running from one classroom to another classroom, from one floor to another.

But there was something unusual, that I found with the presentations of most of the teams. The thing was that the presentation had to be a 3 slide format. But most of the teams had more than 3 slides in their presentations. That was a kind of violation of the rules and that would directly result in the disqualification of the team.

I asked most of the teachers whether they knew this thing or not. And they had no idea of such a rule. I was truly shattered as it would have been an injustice to the teams who had been following the rules and had put extra effort in doing so.

Most of the teachers in my department took my suggestion and were now judging them based on that. Except for some biased teachers who had some personal grudges with a few of the students.

A Small EGO Problem

Now here comes the exciting part. The teachers of the other departments were conducting and judging the presentations carelessly. I even asked them whether they were aware of this rule or not. But as we know some have ego problems. They think how can a junior or a student know better than them. So they told me that no such rule exists and that rule is after the selection of the projects for the finals. There was no point in arguing with them over there in front of so many students. Because I had to take care of other classes too.

But somehow the prelims were over. From each room, 5 teams were selected for the finals. We were very much tensed whether or not our team was going to be selected or not. But at last, the results were out and we were into the finals! We were happy but we didn’t know that this happiness was for just a short while as finals were not just like any normal finals.

To be continued…

To read part – 4, Click Here.