Concluding almost 4 years at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay deserves something more than a “7 things I learnt at IIT” post, I thought. I searched for a long time for the right thing to write on this occasion before stumbling across the answer in an old notebook.
In that notebook, from just a week after the start of my undergrad, I had answered some questions. Things like my introduction, my passions and goals, and my mistakes and regrets. So last night, almost a week after I completed my undergrad, it was serendipitously enlightening to see how my responses to the most basic of questions had changed over the course of a B.Tech. in electrical engineering.
I had claimed, in those days, to be a hardcore skeptic, frustrated about the sacrifices during my JEE days not yielding the desired result. As a result, my time on campus was a period of following my heart without any restriction of risk analysis. I was the one saying “yes” to every plan, agreeing to impromptu trips, or risking it all for just to make some event successful in my POR. After three years of wielding strict control for JEE preparation, my college days were at the other extreme – of caring less, letting go and running free – I was, in many respects, just being the average kid that I couldn’t be in the three years before. And while I did cover some significant territory of learning by running wild, with all due gratitude, I’m never putting my inner child in the driver’s seat of my life again. The stories I shall narrate came at the cost of immensely frustrated days, fights with friends, more than one tear-inducing grade, and nights filled with intensely questioning who I am if I just go with the flow every time. For even the calmest of us have their triggers, and the last few years have done a great job of exposing many of mine.
I have therefore learnt to let a more mature side of myself be in charge – to let better considerations guide me than the present moment. To the skeptic, IITB has taught how to believe sometimes. To the relentless questioner, how to find answers on her own, and in the extremist, IITB has inculcated consistency and balance.
So it is not just for the education and the opportunities and the people and the memories, but also for the pain, for the slice of real life that IITB served to this protected kid, that I am grateful. It is the pain I dealt with that gives me faith that I shall serve some good purpose.
With sincere thanks to everyone who was with me,
~200070084 👻◾
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