The ACM Summer School Experience at IIT Bombay
In the Beginning
Back in the month of June, I got selected for the ACM Summer Schools. Having had some previous experience around security and cryptography, Introduction to Cryptography at IIT Bombay was the obvious choice. But let's be real, more than the cryptography, it was the IIT Bombay that caught my eye and influenced the choice. I mean, it's IIT Bombay after all, what once was (and remained) a dream for many wannabe engineers during their PCM and JEE days. And so after a month of back and forth with my college due to a potential clash between the summer school and our semester-end examinations, we took a risk, and off we went from Namma Bengaluru to Aamchi Mumbai.
Then there was the School
The school itself, while being called an "Introduction to Cryptography" was far from being an introduction to anything. It was heavily theoretical. It was heavily mathematical. AND. IT. WAS. D E N S E.
Instead of just shifting every letter by 13 places and calling it a day for Caesar's Cipher, we were now learning how it could be mathematically defined, how and why it is (or isn't) secure. A lot of time was also spent trying to answer existential questions like: What exactly is security? What does it even mean for something to actually be secure, and how can we prove it mathematically?
And within a couple of days, we were into quantum cryptography. As Richard Feynman once said, If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics. I couldn't either. What I did understand, however, were the practical sessions which explored how various cryptographic algorithms work with everything that we do on the internet.
Safe to say, I was pretty lost and didn't know what to make of a lot of it. I guess this is what happens when you discover that education exists outside of YouTube videos and articles on the internet.
In The End
While I might not remember or understand a lot of what was taught in the classes, what I do remember is everything I did outside of them. Meeting new people from various colleges across the country, staying in the hostels on campus, the hostel food (which was actually good), exploring the campus during the evenings, and even a trek to the top of Sameer Hills inside the campus itself. And of course, walking almost 15-20 kilometres every. single. day. (I love walking xD)
Turns out, I got less of an introduction to cryptography and more of an introduction to Mumbai - but at least now I can play tour guide the next time I’m around.
