Amidst all the uncertainties and disquiets that pervade our lives, we find ourselves at the closure of a significant phase - the significance being gained merely from the amount of time for which it lasted. Looking ahead, some of us feel like being at the brink of a plunge into the infinite opportunities that a seemingly bright future holds in store for us. The rest of us are left pondering over what went wrong that wiped us out of the race. Will the wheel keep turning?? We'll have to wait and watch.
Going back to where it all started, we were just a bunch of people who had been led by circumstances to being a part of a single grand scheme - becoming engineers. Some of us always wanted to be here, some never expected to, some never thought we would, and others never wanted to. A good mix of enthusiastic, reluctant and indifferent teens condemning themselves to work toward a common mission - it required blissful optimists to hope for positive results, and those, incidentally, we had in abundance. And if one looked closely enough, one could just about catch a glimpse of the revered 'board' gang break into faint sly smirks at the backdrop of the whole scenario. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and jerks become engineers! Oh yes...India is a 'secular' country. Am I a proud Indian or what!!
It took us some time to come to terms with reality; some of us were dealing with the astonishment and the others with the depression. Having completed that successfully, we settled into our new lives and made ourselves comfortable in them. And the wise men thought it wasn't auspicious to start any serious work during the first year, allowing us the extra time to explore all possible ways of bettering the comforts. From here on, no 'time' was going to be auspicious enough. Wise men with too much forethought often miscalculate. Good for us!
As each semester made way for the next, the distinction between consecutive semesters began to blur. What was supposed to be a collection of discrete stages had transformed into a monotonous continuum. We tried to break the boredom through various means; some of us accepted defeat, the others pretended not to. And finally something did break the tedium of our lives - placements! The whole new world of aptitude and GDs and PIs. Or was it new?! Anyway, some of us eased into this new mode of 'worth assessment', while some of us needed to work on it, and the others didn't have to bother. And so the placements happened; some of us got job 'offers' and some of us couldn't and then there was the Great Recession. Thank you!
The closer we got to the end, the farther it seemed to be. The final year project - something that we had all initially looked forward to - now became a mere formality; the biggest hurdle between us and freedom. And the four subjects in the final semester seemed like four hundred! But we valiantly pushed our way through all of them, just as we had for the past four years, to give ourselves our respective best chances of graduating. And now, with the announcement of the results, we have achieved graduation! The process might not have been the best, but the word does bring a smile.
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