The Graduation Book is the culmination and celebration of the years spent in NITK by the students. The idea behind this book is to capture all the important moments of the time spent in college and preserve them in a way that the graduated students can recollect their entire college lives. It is a souvenir and a bundle of emotions hidden in some aesthetic pages.

We interviewed Rahul Madhogarhia from Mechanical Engineering Department (Batch of 2020), Team Lead of the Gradbook team, about this year’s edition of the Graduation Book.

1) What can people expect from the edition of GradBook this year?

A lot of brainstorming sessions were held to incorporate all the significant occurrences into the Gradbook. The events which were very close to our batch, places without which our time at NITK wouldn’t have been the same, people who became indispensable parts of our lives, friends who we thought we would never lose but unfortunately did, have all been presented beautifully in the form of mesmerising design and heart-touching words by the members of Design and Content teams.

2) How did the pandemic affect the whole process?

Our initial plan was to get the books printed by the third week of March and distribute amongst
all the students before end-sems began. However, due to the pandemic, the whole plan reached a dead end. The biggest issue before us was the processing of our mess refunds, from which the amount for the Graduation Book is deducted after every student’s consent for the same. Due to the hostel offices being shut down, it was not possible to process the mess refunds anytime soon and so we had to ask all the students to pay by themselves with the help of the Students’ Council. Another challenge was to decide about the distribution. Because of the uncertainty of the situation, we decided to deliver the books to everyone’s convenient addresses instead of keeping them at the college. The delivery system changed the entire logistics of the price of each book but we tried our best to maintain a single constant price for everyone irrespective of their location.

3) How did it feel when it was finally ready?

It was the most satisfying thing in the worlds when we got our first sample copy. Our Design Team Lead, Manjunath Maigur, received the copy and informed us that it was perfect and everything looked exactly like we had imagined. That was the first step for us which made us even more excited about making the Gradbook a success and getting it delivered to all our batchmates.

4) What lies ahead, what is left of the process?

Currently, we are taking orders for the book and trying to reach everyone we can. Once we get all the orders and the payments, the vendor will take almost 20-25 days to print all the books and keep them ready for shipment. Followed by that, depending on the locations and the number of orders pertaining to a specific state or region, the books will be delivered within a period of one week as specified by the shipment agency. We are now just hoping to execute our plan without any more delays. The journey for the Gradbook team is nowhere near complete. As the gigantic task of distribution lies ahead, we wish them good luck and congratulate them on a job well done.

Deadline for ordering the Gradbook 2020 is 30th August, 11:59 pm.
Link for the same is as follows: https://forms.gle/aQcM4Umq1PsvY4Zt7