Nishant listened to these words carefully. He had never thought Shradha had this mature side. She was mostly seen playing pranks and teasing others. She wasn't really the friendly type, but she was surely presumed by others as the carefree person. While Nishant was still thinking about all of these, shradha had already cast this topic aside and she continued reading the syllabus and started asking questions. So they continued their discussion on things that would be needed for the exam.
For the next 2 days everyone buried themselves in books and notes. Last 2 days before the exams were the days where all the students who never set foot in library for the whole semester, would rush to get the books. It was like zombies coming back to life, or vampires waking up after a long sleep. These were the busy days for photocopy places near colleges. And all the nerds were treated like God. campus which usually looked like a party place, now looked like extended library. Under every tree, on every bench or every nook and corner of the college was filled with students who finally looked like students. Shradha preferred studying in college than at home. So she was also one of them, who would find one silent corner in the campus and sit there for hours. Nishant was preparing at his home, while his mother pampered him with food, drinks and advises.
Exam days passed rather quietly. On one of the lab exams however, there was a small incident which triggered actual friendship between shradha and Nishant. This was Java programming lab exam where each student had to write and then execute one java program. Thankfully Nishant had gotten one of the easy programs and he finished the exam rather quickly. The program shradha got was a tricky one and to her bad luck, she had not studied that one. So she was struggling initially. Then after thinking for some time, she figured out the logic and wrote the program on the exam paper. She had just started to code on the system when one of the invigilators came and started looking at her paper. This invigilator was a lady professor who was infamous for giving hard time to the students. She saw that shradha had completed the writing part and just like everyone else, judging the book by its cover, she started interrogating Shradha. Nishant who was about to submit his papers, hesitated and observed this scene as he had bad feeling about the situation. The professor started rambling about copying in exams and started accusing Shradha of cheating. Shradha was obviously not going to keep quiet about this accusation and she was about to argue back with the invigilator when Nishant interrupted them. He had always been in good books of all professors and this lady was not an exception. Nishant started showing his papers and told her that his experiment was completed. She was happy with nishant and was about to return to mock Shradha when Nishant spoke to shradha directly. He said, "See I told you to study this program and I made you rehearse this so many times, despite of your protests. Now can you say how useful my tutoring was". Shradha was puzzled by sudden interruption and Nishant's words. She was about to respond to Nishant when the professor looked at both of them and then asked Nishant that if they studied together. Nishant answered without hesitation that she was his friend and indeed they had studied together for most of the subjects. Upon hearing this, the professor just smiled to Shradha, told her to continue executing the program and left her alone. Shradha who had been preparing for a verbal fight was now shocked. She gave a nasty look to Nishant, smiled at him and said "wait for me" and returned to her program.
It took almost 30 minutes for the exam to end and Nishant was waiting outside the lab. Shradha had told him to wait and she had given him a nasty look, so leaving was not an option. After coming out of the lab, shradha dragged Nishant outside. She stood in front of him and demanded explanation. It was clear to her by now, that he had helped her, but the way she was treated was not at all fair. She was annoyed and she badly wanted to argue with that professor. Nishant tried to explain to Shradha that it was not worth it. He said, he was just trying to help and in these situations talking back would only escalate the situation. He also told that the professor was known to make things tough for students who argued with her. Even though Nishant did not agree the way she treated the students, especially how she treated Shradha today, fighting was not a solution. He said that we have to pick our battles and this was surely not worthy of calling a battle.
Shradha calmed down after listening to his words. Rationally it made sense to not to fight with professors in the first year of college. They all possessed powers to make 3 more years of college hell and she definitely could not afford that!