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!!

CSC Rejection and beyond.....

Well, for those who have seen me in the past weeks I would like to clear that I am not here to cry on my failure as some people think I am doing it a lot these days. I don't want to write how unfortunate circumstances were for me that day or what could possible have happened correctly to get me a position as a project trainee in CSC. I don't want to blame god or fate or even myself. I just want to bookmark this event as I am sure its a starting point of something big. I just want to bookmark it so that when I will look back after many years I will know that once in life I was completely faithless, my confidence was shook, I was broken completely yet I somehow struggled and continued to fight and I hope there will be one day when I will reach a good position and I will feel good about this failure too as it taught me a lot. It's more like a public diary entry and I would always like to keep it in front of me.

I was not expecting to clear the written test so I have no feelings associated with being a CSC project trainee or anything like that. I was perfectly happy with my life and the way I had planned it. So getting selected in written was an unexpected event as lot of questions were out of syllabus and I used common sense in most of the questions to tick the right answer. So the chain of unfortunate events started between the period of getting selected for the interview and in between the interview. Interview was something I always considered as my forte. I always thought that I am one of the best person in expressing myself very clearly and I have a very decent communication skills and attitude which will definitely give me an edge over others. Besides I am a person who is always full of confidence and have full faith on himself no matter what happens. I keep myself away from expectations and too much attachment for anything. It keeps me emotionally safe and strong though at times it gives an impression of being heartless.

Anyway between 2 hours from result to interview, suddenly I developed a lot of attachment for this post. I planned many things according to it in my life. I was so hopefully not even  even for a second I  thought that I won't clear the interview. I was not at all nervous, I was even not thinking about what I will be going to say in side the interview, I was so confident that I will say something brilliant and they would be impressed and they would take me easily. But as it happens, the old hindi quote ' khushiyo ko apni hi najar lag jana', I used to utter that once I clear the written, interview won't be a big deal for me, I would definitely clear it with flying colors. So guess God was in full mood to prove me wrong and to kick me to make me realize that I am getting overconfident again.

Interview started very well, they asked me about what kind of person I am and what are my weaknesses, I answered well.Interviewers seemed impressed but then suddenly they said that I am giving very perfect and nice answers, and perfect is always bookish, and it seems to them that I already came up with a mindset of giving those answers. Now I don't know how come they got this idea but a thing started so positively suddenly became slightly negative. I didn't know what to answer for that argument and I said that I was just describing what I am. Anyway I recovered well in answering the technical questions and I was back on track again.I was answering everything correctly and with full confidence and I was getting really comfortable with the whole situation now. So as it happen with me always, the beginning of something bad when everything is going so good unexpectedly. They asked the same question of what you think about your life 5 years after, and I told them the same old answer, to be a good programmer and employee and worker and blah blah. They asked me to elaborate it ( which they didn't ask anyone else to do), I told the same ;using my potential in company's interest ramayana again, they asked me to elaborate it further, and bang as Saravasthi made kumbhakarna to say 'nindrasan' in place of 'indrasan', I said given a chance a project leader.

Now it suddenly wake up the third interviewer which was so far not so much interested in taking interview and who hasn't asked anything much to any other candidate. He started banging tons of question to me and I was replying everything calmly which was definitely impressing the other 2 interviewers but he was not satisfied. He asked me an out of syllabus question again and I told him that sir i haven't heard that term before as it was not in our syllabus, he thought that I was lying and faking confidence and guess this might be the reason of my doom and again I don't know how come he came to that idea.Anyway  I somehow responded good to the rest of the questions and I was sure that I did the best that I can do in those circumstances. I consulted some people and they said it was a stress interview and I performed well, they were just checking my confidence as I was replying the questions very well so I was somewhat assured about my selection.

Anyway 4 days were hell, and when the result came it was much more than hell. I could have danced in hell rather than facing those days after result. Many cleared, and I was not in the list. I could literally feel now the filmy scenes when someone kicks the wall, punches something hard, break things and cry loudly. The world was falling, I lost my faith in myself, I lost every piece of confidence that accumulated in me for 20 years. I lost faith in god being helpful to me always, I doubted on every good thing in my life. It was like suddenly everything changed polarity, me who was 99.9% positive was now 101% negative. The whole interview thing seemed to be a very well planned conspiracy by god to make my life bleak and devoid of any hope.

It took me only a few minutes to get over IIT, it took me only a few hours to get over personal setbacks ( which I guess most of boys had definitely suffered during college days) but for the first time in my life I failed to motivate myself. I failed to recollect myself, I failed to rise again and start running. I failed even to save me from collapsing. Generally I use to concept of 'bigger success' very well to get someone motivated but for the first time I just feel that there are only bigger failures in life. There is nothing such as ' jo hota hai acche ke liye hi hota hai' or ' aage kuch accha definitely hoga'. I felt like it was the last chance in the world to prove myself and I was comprehensively beaten.

Ironically whatever I had written in the essay of written test became true in my own interview. I had written that no matter how brilliant or hardworking you are, if you are not lucky you would definitely fail. I had written that at times a deserving person is wrongly judged and misinterpreted by a wrong person or system, I had written that at times a person may be rejected in an interview as the interviewer may fail to analyze him properly. So it seems like I was writing my own future there which I find very amusing now.

Anyway with one bad thing came many good things in my life. I was supported very well by my family first then friends then seniors. I was revived by my friends making me to realize what I am and I should not loose myself. I am thankful to many people who were a great support to me at that time and who brought me back somehow. I got support from most unexpected people and suddenly the whole world seemed to comfort me and trying to heal me. Also coincidentally, I got more than expected marks in this semester which usually never happens with me. God comforted me with a small band-aid after injuring me greatly as he always did throughout my life. It seems like I was sent through a NOT gate, everything I ever wished and never happened was happening but I can't be happy about it as everything I thought will never happen has happened.

Anyway, almost a week has passed now. I am not fully recovered yet. I am sure I will be alright soon. I often feel like something has snapped, something is missing now, a part of me is killed now. But I won't change my attitude, I would not bow down to the accepted standard of the world, I would continue acting the way I am and I hope one day the world will accept me as I am. I won't fake anything or pretend anything just to be on the safe side. I would be a rebel no matter how much failure it will cost me. I will be the same; honest, direct, optimistic and full of energy. I am finishing this post with a hope that one day surely everything on which my life was based on will come true, the hope, the optimism, the concept of a bigger success, the concept of learning from your mistakes and whatever happened happened for a good reason. The idea of god taking exam and eventually paying you the deserving reward. The idea of having extraordinary failure before extraordinary success. I won't give up and I hope this is the last time I am crying on something, this is the last time I am disappointed over something so people let me cry, let me be sad, let me be dejected and hopeless cause this is the last time you are seeing me like this.

Getting Back On D Trackkkk .....!!!!!!!

So, it's been long !! I haven't written anything for a long time. It's interesting that a hobby which used to be my passion and to a large extent my identity at a point of life is suddenly abandoned by me without any reason. I have been inactive not just in writing but also in my life. Life has gone stagnant these days, nothing is happening. Past couple months were neither very constructive nor very disastrous. It's queer i have the peek of both the constructive and disastrous time at the same point and now both have gone, nothing is happening at all.

So after few or better say after a lot of troubles and uncertainties I am finally back on track. Life is getting momentum again, it is pretty much like what it used to be in the early days of JEE preparation, but it's CAT now and in the span that elapsed between I can feel the difference what Sachin was indicating, the difference between a 19 year old and a 39 year old. Same difference I feel between my JEE preparation and CAT preparation ( which isn't started yet for the record ).

The JEE days were more like living in a dream world, when you just have hope and optimism, the only fear that u have is induced by the lame lectures by coaching faculties and when you hear about failures of other, rest u just imagine yourself in limelight clearing the exam with flying colors and on the seventh cloud. The preparation that time is also fluctuating, some day you will study a lot, some other day you will struggle to remain positive. There is a healthy competition and you use to take help from fellow competitors a lot. It's pretty much like being a rookie, a newbie , a new fish in the tank when you have no experience just enthusiasm and energy and there is nothing to make you go dull or bleak as you haven't face anything that will make you doubt your own abilities.

The CAT days are pretty much like a 39 year old Sachin, trying to prove that he still has the same potential enhanced with the experience now. But I personally feel that experience demotivates a lot than it helps. You start doubting on your own abilities as you have failed previously. Every new endeavor always begins with the thought that what if I failed. You become more practical and calculative in your life. You tend to decrease the entropy and follow a regular pattern. So life is all monotonous and inactive, you just keep on flowing with the flow. Your fellow competitors are more interested in what you are doing and how much you are preparing rather than your own preparation. Plus there are thousand other ways, with every way looking more lucrative and correct if you haven't chosen it.

Now the big question, what I am doing with my life ?? Seriously speaking, at this point of life; I have no idea what I am doing and what  I should do. It's pretty much like living a lucid dream with the hope that one day you will wake and everything will be alright and moving in a proper and fix direction. I have second thoughts in almost everything of my life. At times I am too optimistic, at times I am devoid of any hope; At times I am full of energy, at times I have no zeal left; At times I am hopeful for something better and positive, at times I doubt everything in life; At times I have full faith on myself, at times I start doubting on my capabilities.

Let's see what turn life will take from here. I am hopeful and curious as I am no where near to the life what I thought I would have when I would be 20 yet I have no complain and only  few regrets. The past few failures and experiences have made me mature enough so that I know what to expect and how much to expect and in social cases from whom to expect. I will try to be more regular and consistent in blogging and writing as it used to give me immense relief once. But after continuous criticism by others, I started doubting on my writing skills, I went to the mode of perfection when you think that once I have learned grammar and vocab enough I will start writing, but I think that time never comes, so I have stop thinking about getting to a perfect mode and then start writing. Perhaps if I had waited for the perfect mode back in 2010, I would never have a blog with 50+ posts. So for those who want to read my views and exchange theirs, they are most welcome. Those who want everything perfect and flawless, WHO CARES, it's not your place !!!!
Will catch you all later hopefully !!