college days!!

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 10^th 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!

                           Anyways, it depends on person to person and remains a debatable topic throughout. But  one thing is common and sure, all of us, each one of us has those little butterflies in our tummies while imagining the first day of college and at the same time the remembrances from school keep hitting us on and off! So to all my friends-have a great college life and stay safe! Also, don’t forget your school friends because

“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