IT'S JUST FINAL YEAR; IT'S NOT THE END !!!

FINAL YEAR, the word fascinates all of us. In the beginning of college, you see the people of final year and think that these guys are really mature. They are having jobs, experience of surviving the entire college; some of these are going to better colleges for PG while some are having some other better plans. The seniors look far more mature and talking to them is a pleasure as you think that you are gaining something from them. In the 3^rd year, the final year fantasies revolve pretty much around 2 things. The first is to get a nice job or to secure admission into a nice PG college and second is the fun afterwards. Plans to travel across the country; visiting Goa, Mumbai or any other place with your gang and capturing all the moments to ensure that you have best memories that will be cherished for the rest of your life.

College life differs a lot from school in a way that group politics plays a huge part here. There are visible boundaries between various groups but final year is the time when the boundaries start fading away. People mix up again as they used to in the earlier days of college. People start talking to one another again and share everything that happened within the college time. Classes are fun again as no one is interested in any sort of study, in fact no one is interested in attending them, people attend them as they have nothing else to do.

Final year is the time when you start forgiving people that so far you have intensely hated and why not as they are no longer going to be a part of your life. You start talking nicely to everyone as nothing matters anymore. It’s like in the end, everything is coming together not because it was suppose to but because nothing matters now so what’s the harm in brining everything together. There is not much of enmity left between anyone. 

Final year is also a healing and redemption phase for many people. Hearts are already broken long ago; Dreams are scattered; Myths are busted and you have hit the rock bottom so many times that you are no longer afraid of falling. Many of you have seen your worst nightmares becoming a reality. You start recollecting pieces of your heart to start a new emotional adventure. The tiny hopes group together to form a cluster of optimism and the future looks bright again. You rediscover yourself and define yourself in a better and more mature manner and you start trying again for new things. The sheer frustration of not meeting your potential or not reaching where you thought you must have reached starts dissolving and fading and you look forward for newer challenges.

I guess the name final year is quite ironic in a way that only a phase is ending but it’s more of a beginning of an entire new era of someone’s life.  An era where you start again from square zero without any prejudice about yourself, an era where not much is left to prove and there is an ample space for growing and learning again. We are transiting to the professional world and the rules of their game are quite tough and cruel than our game. There would be funny incidences but it would lack the genuine careless laugh, there would be money but it would lack the people and the time to spend to, there would be dreams but it would lack the motivation to chase them, there would be recognition but it would lack the respect that should comes with it.

Most of us have lived a conventional life so far in the college. We were scared of chasing what we want to do because it was not what we had to do. We were afraid to learn a new language as we were worried about completing our lab assignment. We were afraid to learn to play the guitar as we were afraid about our scores of mid semester. We wanted a trip to some remote place but our coaching classes won’t allow us to do. We wanted to do some NGO work but we have to prepare for campus. Lastly, there were times we wanted to do nothing, just sit into blank or just sleep the whole day but we were afraid others are working hard so we should do the same.

Most of us spent the whole college life in insecurity, restraining and constraining ourselves as we thought that we must work hard to reach somewhere not to do things that give us pleasure. Of course, we had fun hang outs, we watched sitcoms, we didn’t study much but it was not in the usual careless manner. We had our regrets of not utilizing our time properly. Some of us reproached ourselves when we failed to score well in a mid semester or an end semester. We didn’t enjoy life as it was supposed to be but we enjoyed it for the sake of enjoying. There was a restriction there also; it was more of a conventional enjoyment that others are enjoying so I should also enjoy.

Now in the remaining time, I say lets investment this time in our betterment. Do something that we always wanted to do. Learn to dance, play guitar, some language, some technology and if you don’t want to do anything, then don’t. Don’t force betterment on you for the sake of running in the next round. Sleep without setting the alarm if you don’t want to wake early. There is no harm at times in sitting and watching every other person you know running. Rest is good. It opens our eyes and help us to see what we really want to do in life and how should we do it. Let us sketch our future with all the colors we had and if we are missing something then leave it blank as life would choose the best colors for it by its own will and at the proper time.

There shouldn’t be any regret in the last phase of college. Let us try to make this final year not an end but a beginning of something new, lay the foundation of something strong, and base our entire future on it so that when we would look back we would feel proud of the one decision we had taken in these last moments and make sure the entire direction of our life would change from here. We must remember it’s just final year but it’s not the end.

PLACEMENTS.............

The word triggers lots of emotions in us specially in the final year crowd. This word looks pretty normal in the first 3 years of engineering; we never give it a serious thought and are very casual about it. We see our seniors going through it and we always relate ourselves to the best ones and hope to repeat their success or even perform better than them. In some way, we are always in a comfort zone that we would excel and would perform exceptionally well. But, if only life goes as we visualize it in our fantasies. When we actually go through the placement procedure what comes out is a very changed form of us. Both, the successful ones and the failures, no one is same afterwards.

Most of us are not mentally prepared for failures and don’t know how to tackle ‘rejection’. The reactions of other peoples and constant nagging from irrelevant relatives and people studying elsewhere make the situation worse. Our faith in our abilities is heavily shaken which unbalances our whole life. We start doubting almost everything; our past achievements, our brilliance, our talent; our capabilities. This also puts a question mark on our future ambitions and we are not sure whether we will be able to achieve them or not or as a matter of fact whether we are eligible enough to even give it a try or not. We all start with the big IIT dream and getting a fat package like 20+ lakh and after our initial dream to reach the best elite institutes of countries is crushed we somehow compromise and start to think about grabbing the best companies of our own college. We see mass recruiters with the same eyes as we used to see local colleges (most of us are studying in these colleges now) that time and never think about getting into those until they are the only hope. Then comes a time where we are so much in doubt that even the 3 lpa package which once we used to think is far below our dignity and standard starts looking unachievable. We doubt that whether we will make it to any company or not.

The origin, reason and main source of all these problems is the highly intellectual suggestions and comments of ‘other people; the pseudo specialists of every problem’. They always have something to say. If you are successful then it was because of your luck and procedures were easy and best suited for you. If you are unsuccessful and sad then you are the typical ‘cry baby’ and ‘Mr. complaining’ who isn’t competent enough to get into the companies and is now crying everywhere. If you are not complaining and happy thinking that luck wasn’t with you then you will meet the ‘angoor khatte hai’ crowd who will smash you everywhere by saying that since you didn’t get into that’s why you find everything unfair. Lastly, if you do not care about your failure at all then you are hiding and pretending but deep down you are extremely hurt and affected. So beware of these experts and try to shield your mental peace from them as much as you can as these people harm our self confidence the most.

Most of the humans are either ‘masochist’ or ‘hypocrite’. Those who should fairly contemplate the situation and give a clean chit to themselves start doubting on their own capabilities and tag themselves as useless and looser while those who really weren’t capable and need significant hard work and improvement start blaming situation and their luck. Such contradictions prevail almost everywhere in our country. Those who must complain start crying and those who must cry start complaining.

If we carefully retrospect all the events with an unbiased mind and in a third person frame of reference we can easily infer that at times all we lack was some amount of luck. May be that day was not yours but some other time, some other day or in fact some other person judging your performance; you could have easily cleared it. Failure never means that we were not capable enough or lacked the desired qualities. One must never doubt oneself on such occasions. Even if there are some shortcomings then those could easily be identified and rectified. There is always a next time and there is always the scope of a bigger success. I don’t want to repeat clichés like how Amitabh Bacchan became a mega star after getting rejected by all India radio initially for improper voice or the life incidents of Michael Jordon or Abraham Lincoln. But success after failure is something we observe in day to day life.

I have seen people losing their entire faith and confidence after one failure. People get intimidated, life appears bleak and daunting to them. Hope became a dangerous thing driving them insane. They started living in a world where they are not only incapable but also unlucky and victim of cruel claws of destiny. I never understand how we can be so stubborn that we allow a single event to judge our entire life. Can certain people or a system or an exam decide whether we are capable enough to be successful or not? Surely the people who got selected were capable, no doubt, they indeed got the required skill sets to get a place in the company but the one who didn’t make it were no lesser capable. Life ditches us when we trust it most but this is one thing that we must accept now that life never go as we plan it else there would be no thrill in living it.

We have lived our life for 20+ years and only we know what we are capable of doing and what we are not. Whether we have done proper justice with our life or not and no other person can issue a certificate on our abilities and decide our fate. We must put efforts for the sake of improving ourselves and for the sake of adding values into our life not for getting into certain organization and getting a certain package. At the end of the day it’s all about how satisfied you are with the life you have lived and only we can decide that not some other person or organization or society. We must be confident enough to know our potential and then what we need is to be patient. Sooner or later, appreciation and acknowledgement will come indeed. Sooner or later, we will definitely get success and reach where not only we are destined to be but also we deserve to be.

Lastly, we have to give up our urge to prove ourselves better and distinct always. The constant longing of getting success everywhere and standing above everyone. Success provides joy but failure is a complete package. You can introspect, analyse  think about your flaws and weakness, there is an ample scope of improvement. Failure insures that you won’t fail at the next level if only you know how to use failure properly. Don’t think about the society, don’t think about your friends and circles, and don’t think about your own expectations and the standard you set for yourself. Just release yourself from all constraints and carefully assess the situation and think what went wrong, what you must have done and what you mustn’t and what to do to ensure you won’t repeat your previous mistakes. At the end of the day life is too large to declare ourselves as a persistent looser and opportunities come and go if only you have the willpower and urge to keep on fighting and struggling.

ALL THE BEST EVERYONE FOR UPCOMING PLACEMENTS!!