AM I READY?
Amongst all the euphoria for college and all
the rhapsodies that all my dear friends keep mumbling unendingly, I personally
come back to one nagging question time and again- Am I ready? Ready to go to
college? Ready for the freedom from school rules that we all have heard of from
time immemorial? Ready for the madness of choosing a different dress to wear to
college everyday and not the same well ironed school tunic? Ready for canteen
interfering our urges to attend a lecture (esp. for we bhavanites who have not
had an in campus canteen ever! )
I
think it is a cocktail of mixed feelings- that of anxiety and fear, freedom and
inferiority complex of being lost in a crowd, amazement and disappointments,
surprises and setbacks.
The
jump from a school to a college is quite huge. People who have attended college
after 10th itself have already passed that stage but many of the
others like me have our own personalized and customized apprehensions of the
doorstep we are going to walk into pretty soon. No rules about your dressing,
neither you have to tie up pigtails every morning (ugh! How I hated that at
school!), un granted yet snatched freedom of not attending a lecture, and the
most importantly lost in a huge huge crowd of people like you and still fight
for your identity. No everyday national anthem and prayers and no assemblies!
My
mind has often grazed on the idea that unknowingly how safe we had been in
school. A fixed timetable, a fixed dress, a restricted campus and a closely
known and personally attached staff. But here in college, as I have heard, you
have to run to your professor and dig out help from him unlike at school when
your teacher, instead, used to compel you and make sure you study and do well.
Will we be able to handle the change? Well, I guess, time will tell.
From
a set of rules at school to a free bird in college another point of concern is
our academic performance. I agree all of us have done extremely well at school,
but did we notice that it was a place where we were bound to do well? We were
given a proper guidance and environment to study but here, at college, the
saying I hear from every single person is-college is self study. Will we, then,
be able to stay up to the mark taking into consideration the varied types of
distractions available?
There
are mixed feelings that drain me now and then. Those of excitement and fear.
Excitement stems from the desire to see a brand new world and an opportunity to
create a new identity for ourselves, leaving behind the good and the bad we saw
at school. At the same time, fear, particularly for me, stems from the anxiety
whether the new world that I will see soon would be good or bad.
People
from all walks of life have raised one seemingly frightening question at me-
“why have you refused to leave Nagpur when you have been getting colleges like
LSR Delhi and Christ Bangalore??” to all of them, I have just one answer-such a
large leap in life would be constipating for me! And I would be unable to
digest that. You may call it my comfort zone of staying in Nagpur, or my indifference
to gain a new experience of staying alone but honestly, I am least interested
in such “experiences”. I can, in no way, trade awful loneliness and even worse
food facilities with so-called freedom that one gets on staying alone. I think,
personally, my comfort zone is where I would like to stick to. And about the
“exposure” that people quote you get only outside, to all of them-the college
remains with you only for 4 years but your life is what is more important.
Opportunities have to be grabbed not spoon fed and life is finally what YOU
make of it and not your college professor.
Whatever
might be the attractions in college life the things I am really really going to
miss about my school is-the fight for
being the class monitor, the race that we had as to who finishes copying the
stuff written on the blackboard first and then keeps on shouting mam rub the
board!! , who induces something different in the same uniform in order to stand
out of the class, who manages to purposefully come late to the class and
manages to stand out (outstanding students!) and also who takes the quickest
first supplement in tests and who takes the maximum, the sweet comparison of
marks and taking each others’ answer sheets to ask for an explanation “why the
hell have I not been given marks and he has for the same answer!”, the anxiety
of what I have got for recess today to the fight over tasty food, distributing
sweets on birthdays and so much more. The fight for the first bench in
elementary school which now will change to the fight for the last bench! The awesome
time at recess when we would either play in the corridor or rather dutifully
spread our napkins and eat our tiffins together or trying to hide your tiffin fron that big foodie because of whom you return home empty stomach! The planning of asking baseless
questions to teacher to waste a class or making small anonymous noises to distract
the teacher, stuffing food in our mouths when the teacher faced the blackboard
or purposely putting our heads down and acting asleep or our very own chalk fight. Today I am hit by strong gusty waves of nostalgia!
“When
you make new friends,
Don’t
forget the old.
Because
if new is silver,
Old
is GOLD!” J
Have a happy college!!
P.S.
– I am already getting sleepless nights!! The excitement is onnn!! J
