VIT, somewhere near Sehore. The middle of nowhere, with a college attached to it. Sahil Srivastava walked in as 21BCE10516, a terrified first-year who wasn't entirely sure college was real, and walked out four years later with a degree, a job, and roughly twenty people who could blackmail him for life. A Bad Engineer is not a guide to college life. It is the story of three hostel rooms, a hallway that became home, a group that made zero sense on paper, and all the nights that never made it into the syllabus. The fest they snuck into without passes, the heartbreaks that somehow became just another Tuesday, and the bucket his friends held for him and still refuse to let him forget.

Somewhere between the assignments, late-night conversations, terrible decisions, and friendships that made everything worthwhile, an engineering student became something he never expected: a photographer, a dancer, a traveller, and, above all, a friend. Because a bad engineer, it turns out, isn't someone with low grades. It's someone who was sent to learn circuits and code but came back with a life full of stories. The degree was the receipt. The people were the product.