Essential Supplies for Freshmen

Joining college can be an overwhelming experience. From your entrance exams to the never-ending cycle of forms that you need to fill out before you start, it can get pretty stressful and hectic. Some of you might be already organized with your innate pre-planning skills, but not everyone is lucky. So to make things easier, here is a list of things you must be equipped with before you start the next phase of your life:

• Drawing Supplies: If you don’t already know, engineering is a field that requires a lot of visualization through drawings.

Engineering Drawing is a compulsory subject for all B.Tech. and M.Sc. students in their first year. To successfully tackle

ED, you should have the following in your arsenal: mini drafter, engineering compass, roller scale, master circle, mechanical pencils, drawing pencils with varying shades (HB, H1, H2,

H3), and a geometry box. Available in almost all stationary shops, the previously mentioned list of things are necessary to get your drawings right.

Some of you can give away your supplies after the first year, but the others aren’t so lucky as they have drawing subjects in future semesters. So, maintain your mini drafter and other supplies well so that you don’t have to go running around to get another one. • Lab Coat: Unlike the classic whitecoloured lab coats we are all used to, you would need a blue-colored lab coat for engineering lab classes. This long coat, with its unique texture, is designed to protect you from the various hazards you might face in your labs. Used in the workshop, chemistry

lab and other concerned departments, this iconic lab coat is a must-have in your inventory. You can get one of these bad boys at almost any stationary shop. Get your hands on one as soon as you can, unless you want to wander the campus or the hostel asking others to lend theirs. • Calculator: Although seen as an illegal item in most of school life, calculators are pretty useful and important in college. No matter which course you’re taking, a

scientific calculator

always comes in handy when it comes to crunching numbers. You’ve probably conditioned yourself to using a logarithmic table, but times have changed now; automation is the future. Stationary shops sell a wide variety of calculators at different price ranges, including graphing calculators.

However, keep in mind that graphing calculators aren’t

allowed during exams; only scientific calculators are. • Bicycle: A bicycle isn’t an essential like the others in this list, but it sure helps you get around quicker.

Your hostels are quite far from your classrooms and walking back and forth all the time can get tiring, especially after long lab sessions. With a cycle, roaming the streets of Surat is also easier, since you don’t have to always rely on rickshaw-walas and the

BRTS buses. A few spots near the campus sell decent cycles at different price ranges. Remember to buy a lock along with your cycles as there is always someone looking for a cheaper alternative to walking. Keep in mind that SVNIT also has its own characteristic yellow buses that circulate throughout the campus all day according to a fixed schedule. You can catch rides on these buses to get from one place to another

on campus, however, they are often crowded during the mornings and afternoons when students come from and go back to the hostels. • Important Apps: Your phone can be used for so much more than just swiping through social media and procrastinating all day. Attendancetracking apps are a godsend for all college students. Just make sure to mark it every day and you can easily keep track of how many classes you’ve slept through. Learn something new with apps that provide online courses to sharpen your skill sets. You can even learn new languages to better communicate with people of all regions. ‘SVNIT 101’ and ‘SVNIT Essentials’ can also help you adjust to the college lifestyle, supplying you with stuff that will help you survive four (or five) years at the institute.