I read that sentence recently, and I don’t think I’ve ever related to anything more.

The strange thing is that I’m genuinely interested in people. I’m curious about their choices, their stories, the things that shaped them, the things they never say out loud. I like asking questions. I like understanding people. Listening has always come more naturally to me than speaking.

But there comes a point where I start seeing patterns. The more I notice, the quieter I become. Not because I lose interest, but because my mind fills with too many thoughts at once. None of them feel simple enough to say without losing something in translation.

People often mistake silence for indifference. For me, it has always been the opposite. Silence carries affection, concern, curiosity, and conversations that never leave my head. That’s why it feels like the most dishonest thing I can give someone. It hides everything I actually mean.

I don’t think it’s trust that’s missing. You can’t accuse a locked door of being broken. It’s something quieter than that.

I don’t avoid opening up because I expect betrayal. I avoid it because once people know you, they carry pieces of you. They can misunderstand them, forget them, reshape them without meaning to. Even when they care, they hold your story differently than you do. And I don’t know if I’m comfortable with that.

There’s also the fear of changing the shape of a relationship. Opening up feels like rearranging a room someone has already learned to navigate. I’m never sure they’ll recognize the person who emerges, or if they’ll have space for them at all.

So I stay where I’m familiar, asking questions instead of answering them, understanding instead of being understood. I’ve become good at making people feel heard while remaining almost invisible myself. Close enough to know them, distant enough that they never really know me.

The irony is that I crave connection. Real connection. The kind where someone sees you without reducing you to a single moment, a weakness, or a story. But I don’t know how to feed that hunger when my instinct is always to retreat into thought before I step into vulnerability, and I’ve become so practiced at containing myself that silence has started to look like my personality instead of my defense.

Maybe that’s why I disappear into my own head. It’s not because I have nothing to say. It’s because I have too much to say, and none of it feels safe once it leaves me.

And maybe that’s the hardest part.

Wanting to be known while instinctively hiding every part that could make you known.

I don’t know if there’s an end to that.

I only know that my silence has never meant the absence of feeling.

and,

I think, my version of intimacy, a relationship that asks nothing of me but presence

Welcome to r/UnitedUniversity.

This campus is massive. Depending on whether you are wearing a scrub suit, a corporate blazer, drafting in a design studio, or carrying a laptop bag, your daily reality here is going to be wildly different.

The official brochures will tell you about the infrastructure and the "vibrant campus life." This thread is going to tell you how to actually survive the administration, hack your academics, and graduate with a career instead of just a piece of paper.

Read this carefully, bookmark it, and share it with your batchmates.

1. The 75% Attendance Trap (This Applies to Everyone)

Let us get the most depressing part out of the way first: the administration is absolutely ruthless about attendance. Do not test them on this.

• Medical & Nursing (UIMS): You literally cannot afford to play games with your attendance. Between your clinical rotations and the strict National Medical Commission (NMC) guidelines, falling short here means you are getting detained and losing months of progress. Period.
• Law & Management: You might think you can proxy your way through, but the faculties are strict and they do random headcounts. Front-load your attendance. Keep it above 85% for the first two months of the semester. You will desperately need that buffer later when you have moot court preparations, off-campus internships, or just need a mental health day.
• Tech (B.Tech/BCA/MCA): The administration does not care about your GitHub commit streak or your freelance project. If you drop below 75% because you were coding in your hostel room, you will be detained from the end-semester exams. Getting detained tanks your CGPA, which instantly disqualifies you from off-campus ATS resume screening rounds.
• Design (B.Des) & Arts: Your attendance is not just about sitting in a lecture hall; it is about studio hours. If you miss classes, you miss continuous jury reviews and peer feedback. The faculty will absolutely block you from final submissions if your face has not been seen in the studio working on your drafts.

2. The Departmental Survival Guide

Every faculty at UU operates like its own mini-college. Here is the ground reality of your specific department.

The Law Faculty (BA/BBA LLB, LLM)

This is one of the most vocal and politically active departments on campus. The faculty is rigorous, but the real learning happens outside the classroom.

• The Hack: Do not wait for the university to arrange everything. Get involved in the Moot Court Society immediately, even if it is just doing baseline legal research for your seniors. Your final placement relies heavily on the internships you secure under advocates in the Allahabad High Court or corporate law firms. Start building your own legal network by year two.

Medical, Pharmacy & Paramedical (UIMS)

MBBS, Nursing, and D.Pharm students—you basically live in a different ecosystem. The United Medicity hospital attached to the campus means you get decent early clinical exposure.

• The Hack: The academic workload is relentless. Your seniors and the post-grad residents are your best survival guides. Learn how to navigate the hospital shifts efficiently and get on the good side of the clinical instructors and nurses. They control your practical, hands-on knowledge far more than the textbook lecturers do.

Management & Commerce (BBA, MBA, B.Com)

You are going to see a lot of mass recruitment drives for sales, marketing, and standard management trainee roles. The median packages are average.

• The Hack: A management degree here is only as good as your communication skills and your extracurricular portfolio. Participate in every presentation, case study competition, and industry visit. If you want a top-tier corporate package, you must aggressively pursue off-campus internships at better firms during your summer breaks. Do not rely solely on the campus placement cell.

Tech & Engineering (B.Tech, BCA, MCA)

The labs are decent, but the curriculum is the standard, outdated university fare. Mass recruiters (TCS, Infosys, Wipro) will dominate the campus placement drives offering 3.5 to 5 LPA.

• The Hack: Use the campus Wi-Fi and library to build your own skills. Escape tutorial hell and start building real backends. Get into competitive programming and open-source contributions (like Gerrit/Wikimedia) early. If you want a product-based role, you have to build your profile off-campus. (Side note: Reach out to the WikiTech Club on campus if you want to start contributing to real open-source projects).

Agriculture & Applied Sciences (B.Sc Ag, Maths/Physics)

Agriculture is not just theory here; get ready for actual fieldwork in the sun. The faculty leans traditional and expects heavy practical file submissions.

• The Hack: If you are aiming for government exams (like the Agriculture Field Officer - AFO) or higher research, start building your self-study routine in the library from the first semester. Keep your practical files updated weekly so they do not pile up before exams.

Arts, Media, Design & Hospitality

• B.Des & BAJMC: Your portfolio and your showreel are your actual degrees. Nobody cares about your written exam scores. Start freelancing, taking on design gigs, or running campus media pages immediately.
• Hospitality (BHMCT): Your practicals and industrial training rotations are everything. Do not slack off during your hotel rotations, as that is where you make the connections that get you hired.

3. Academics: Sessionals & The PYQ Cheat Code

Students worry constantly about internals and maintaining a decent CGPA without completely burning out. Here is how you game the academic system:

• The Sessional Trap: Internal marks are heavily dependent on your daily attendance, your behavior in class, and assignment submission deadlines. Swallow your pride, write the boring assignments, submit the files on time, and secure those free internal marks. It gives you a massive cushion for the final exams.
• The PYQ (Previous Year Questions) Cheat Code: At most universities, end-semester exams heavily reuse question patterns from the last 3 to 4 years. Build a repository of old papers from the library or ask seniors for their notes. Grinding PYQs two weeks before the exams is far more efficient than trying to read a 600-page reference book at the last minute.

4. The Hostel & Mess Reality (Day Scholar vs. Hosteller)

The transition to hostel life is a massive pain point for freshers.

• The Curfew Regime: The gates lock early, and the in-out timings are strictly enforced by the wardens. Late entries mean parental phone calls, administration drama, and written apologies.
• The Food Cycle: The mess food gets repetitive and bland very fast. While officially banned, almost everyone figures out how to sneak in and hide electric kettles or small induction stoves for late-night Maggi and coffee. Just learn how to hide them during warden inspections.
• The PG Alternative: By the second or third year, a large chunk of students move out to PGs or rented flats in Jhalwa or near the Rawatpur side. It allows you to escape the hostel restrictions, eat better food, and usually saves you money.
• Cheat code: Mess food quality usually drops after a few months, so a great budget-friendly trick is gathering 2 or 3 friends to buy a single canteen curry and pairing it with mess chapati and rice, while off-campus dining saves money, it offers very limited vegetarian options compared to the pricey campus food courts. Finally, try to secure a ground or first-floor room to escape the intense summer heat, and note that Bees Hostel provides larger rooms than Alaknanda or Indus.

5. Commute & Transport (For Day Scholars)

Since the campus is located on the outskirts (Jhalwa/Rawatpur side), getting there daily is a logistical puzzle.

• The College Bus: It is punctual but incredibly rigid. If you miss your morning pickup, you are paying out of pocket and losing an hour trying to reach campus.
• The E-Rickshaw Grind: If you use public transport, your life revolves around getting to the Jhalwa chauraha and fighting for shared e-rickshaws. Be warned: drivers will hike prices and availability drops to zero during heavy rain or exam seasons. Leave early.
• Personal Vehicles: The parking scene is heavily monitored. Guards strictly check for helmets at the main gate. Do not argue with the guards if you are missing a helmet—you will not win, and they will hold you up while your first lecture starts.

6. Campus Survival, Canteens & Egos

• Dress Code & Egos: Depending on your course (especially Law, Management, and Hospitality), the uniform rules can feel like you are back in high school. Do not pick useless fights with the administration or faculty over entry timings, ID cards, or blazers. Nod, agree, apologize, and save your mental energy for your career.
• The Canteen Rush: The main food spots on campus get chaotic during common break times. Ask your seniors about the best tapris and hidden food stalls just outside the campus gates in Jhalwa. You will get better, cheaper food and a place to actually sit and breathe.

7. Fests, Extracurriculars & Real Networking

To keep you from burning out, the university does throw annual fests and departmental events. Do not skip them just to sit in your room.

• The Networking Angle: These events are the only place where the different departments actually mix. It is where the tech guys meet the design guys, and the law students meet the management crowd.
• The Real Reason to Join Clubs: Volunteer for organizing committees and club boards. Do not do it for the useless participation certificate. Do it because managing a college event is a corporate simulation. It teaches you how to handle budgets, bypass administrative red tape, deal with vendor egos, and most importantly, it helps you find the ambitious 20% of the campus crowd who actually want to build things.

The Bottom Line: UU gives you decent infrastructure across the board, but the administration is tight and the spoon-feeding ends on day one. Whether you are aiming for the High Court, a hospital, a tech firm, or a design studio, you have to do your own heavy lifting.

Drop your department-specific hacks, warnings, or questions for the seniors in the comments below.

📌This is an evolving thread

This guide will be updated as more students and seniors share useful information. If you have department-specific tips, corrections, or survival hacks, leave them in the comments. The best suggestions will be added to keep this thread useful for future batches.

Hi, I’m 22M , currently studying engineering[Final year].

hobbies: books(philosophy, psychology), chess, music, and this engg. thing!

This is probably going to be a slightly strange post because I’m not entirely sure whether I’m looking for a relationship, a friendship that accidentally becomes something more, or just one person I genuinely click with. I guess I’d rather meet the person first and figure out what we are later.

A little about me:- I’m pretty curious about almost everything. I can go from talking about tech and some random thing I learned at 2am to suddenly questioning why people behave the way they do or what exactly makes two people feel close to each other. I like conversations that wander. The kind where we start with something completely stupid and somehow end up talking about life three hours later.

I’m also someone who has a weird relationship with friendship.

I know people. I talk to people. I can listen to someone for hours, remember small things they told me months ago, and probably understand them better than they expect me to. But I’m terrible at doing the opposite.

I don’t open up easily.

Not necessarily because I don’t trust people. I just became very used to handling things myself. Somewhere along the way I got really good at being someone people can feel close to without actually letting them get equally close to me.

And I think I’m tired of that.

I want the kind of connection where neither person has to perform friendship or constantly prove that they care. We could talk every day or disappear into our own lives for a bit and come back without it feeling weird. Send each other completely unhinged reels, argue about something incredibly pointless, sit silently on a call while doing our own thing, or randomly have a conversation at 1am that gets way more personal than either of us intended.

I want someone I can slowly learn to tell things to.

That probably sounds like a very basic thing, but it genuinely isn’t for me.

I’ve spent a lot of my life being the listener. I like being that person, but I’d also like to know what it feels like to have someone I can call when life is particularly shit without first thinking, “Do I really need to bother them with this?”

As for what I’m looking for in you, I don’t have some giant checklist. I care much more about how someone thinks than whether we have identical hobbies. Be curious about things. Have opinions. Tell me about some ridiculously niche subject you know way too much about. Challenge me when you think I’m wrong. Be capable of both stupidity and depth.

I value kindness a lot too, especially the quiet kind. Remembering things. Checking in. Actually showing up. Making someone feel like they don’t have to calculate how much of themselves they’re allowed to bring into the room.

I’d like to be that person for someone too.

I should probably warn you that getting to know me might take time. I’m much better at asking questions than answering them, and there’s a decent chance I’ll intellectualise an emotion before admitting I’m actually feeling it.

But if I genuinely become comfortable with someone, I care very deeply.

Maybe I’m looking for a girlfriend. Maybe I’m looking for my person. Maybe we just become two idiots who send each other memes and somehow end up knowing everything about each other.

I’m okay with finding out.

If you made it this far, don’t send me just “hey” because then both of us have to pretend we know what to do with that 😭

Tell me something about yourself that you could talk about for hours, or tell me a thought you’ve had that you’ve never really had a reason to tell anyone.

I’ll go from there.

And btw I write like articles and thoughts/reflection so thats why this post is long!

I read that sentence recently, and I don’t think I’ve ever related to anything more.

The strange thing is that I’m genuinely interested in people. I’m curious about their choices, their stories, the things that shaped them, the things they never say out loud. I like asking questions. I like understanding people. Listening has always come more naturally to me than speaking.

But there comes a point where I start seeing patterns. The more I notice, the quieter I become. Not because I lose interest, but because my mind fills with too many thoughts at once. None of them feel simple enough to say without losing something in translation.

People often mistake silence for indifference. For me, it has always been the opposite. Silence carries affection, concern, curiosity, and conversations that never leave my head. That’s why it feels like the most dishonest thing I can give someone. It hides everything I actually mean.

I don’t think it’s trust that’s missing. You can’t accuse a locked door of being broken. It’s something quieter than that.

I don’t avoid opening up because I expect betrayal. I avoid it because once people know you, they carry pieces of you. They can misunderstand them, forget them, reshape them without meaning to. Even when they care, they hold your story differently than you do. And I don’t know if I’m comfortable with that.

There’s also the fear of changing the shape of a relationship. Opening up feels like rearranging a room someone has already learned to navigate. I’m never sure they’ll recognize the person who emerges, or if they’ll have space for them at all.

So I stay where I’m familiar, asking questions instead of answering them, understanding instead of being understood. I’ve become good at making people feel heard while remaining almost invisible myself. Close enough to know them, distant enough that they never really know me.

The irony is that I crave connection. Real connection. The kind where someone sees you without reducing you to a single moment, a weakness, or a story. But I don’t know how to feed that hunger when my instinct is always to retreat into thought before I step into vulnerability, and I’ve become so practiced at containing myself that silence has started to look like my personality instead of my defense.

Maybe that’s why I disappear into my own head. It’s not because I have nothing to say. It’s because I have too much to say, and none of it feels safe once it leaves me.

And maybe that’s the hardest part.

Wanting to be known while instinctively hiding every part that could make you known.

I don’t know if there’s an end to that.

I only know that my silence has never meant the absence of feeling.

and,

I think, my version of intimacy, a relationship that asks nothing of me but presence.

If yes why not join the subreddit bhyii!!

Hey I’m a student and have 1.5 y.o.e in Full stack development(internship and freelance projects).
Currently i’m searching for more freelance projects to do if you guys have any feel free to reach out!

Tech stack- Next/react, node/bun, express, nest, postgreSQL, mongoDB, Cloud(AWS, GCP)

Thanks :)

Hey I’m a student and have 1.5 y.o.e in Full stack development(internship and freelance projects).
Currently i’m searching for more freelance projects to do if you guys have any feel free to reach out!

Tech stack- Next/react, node/bun, express, nest, postgreSQL, mongoDB, Cloud(AWS, GCP)

Thanks :)