My First Year in College: A Quest for Knowledge

(As the blog ended up being much longer than I expected, I have divided it into two parts. Here is  PART-1)

It took me 18 years to realize why the age of 18 is considered enough to be an adult. It is because you step into college that year!!  

It won't be a lie if I say a BOY stepped into college and an 'almost' full-fledged MAN stepped out after completing the first year.

But before I start, I need to specify, especially for the readers who haven't reached college yet, that.... college life is anything except what Bollywood shows it to be!

But one thing is for sure: You learn a lot!!

Especially for me, this year has been an ocean of knowledge, and I still feel there is much more I could have learned! Having been kind of homeschooled till I turned 11 due to my medical conditions, I had been carrying on a lot of backlogs in Socializing and communication. Having changed 5 schools (and cities) in the next 7 years made sure I had a few backlogs added and none cleared and before I could realize it, I was standing in a campus filled with thousands of students ! I had one hand filled with emotions and the other with expectations, but to be honest, I never expected my first year to be such A QUEST FOR KNOWLEDGE!      

 As I sit back and relish my journey and the lessons I learned, I thought maybe you could join as well?

Here's a kind invitation for you all :):          

(Don't worry, I'll try to keep it as short as I can.)

Learning from the Crowd!                                                                                                                                           

                                   The first thing everyone would have noticed in their colleges (especially us, VITians) is the crowd. A crowd of competitive, unique teenagers as old as you! And It is impossible that the crowd doesn't affect you. The first thing I learned from living in such a big crowd was, 'No matter how good you are, there will be at least someone better than you, and no matter how bad you are, there will be someone worse than you!'. This might seem like a pretty normal line to read, but It completely changed a lot of equations for me. Back in school, it was easy to be the best and easier to be the worst, but In such a big crowd, there were at least hundreds who could write better than me, and there were thousands who sang worse than me! As soon as I realized this, I started being confident in things that I wasn't good at. The fact that there were people of the same level and even lower than that around me made it easier for me to go out and learn, make mistakes in the process  but not be ashamed of them, as I was not the only one doing that! And at the same time, there was no scope for ego and arrogance, as there were so many people BETTER than me in the fields I was BEST at.

Everyone around me was insanely skilled in various different fields, thus constantly giving me existential crises. Academically, it had a worse impact. Having gone from being a "prodigy", district topper-level student to "Please God help me in today's exam" level student during the lockdown, being surrounded by such talented peers was(is??) 

giving me nightmares, but I had to use the same nightmares to wake up so I would count that as a positive impact too.     

The second major thing I learned was   

  ACCOUNTABILITY- 

 A big word with a bigger meaning! College life taught me to be accountable for my deeds. School is more about "If you don't do well,I'll tell your parents" while college is about "If you don't do well, YOU WILL SUFFER," and that changes your mentality towards these things. Instead of worrying about an excuse or a reason to explain your mistake to your parents, now you are solely worrying about how to clear your mess and how to improve yourself to not let this happen again! Eventually you even start worrying about it's long term impacts and thus your approach completely changes.                                                                                      

The next lesson was,

Observing what you see! 

This quote didn't hit me as hard as it did this year, when I finally understood its depth. My father always urged me to be keen and observing and when I started doing that, it was a whole new experience! OBSERVING things and thinking them through made those things appear completely different from how we SEE them. It made me see the good in everyone, even in those who hadn't seen it themselves yet. Now that I saw the good in everyone, I could learn and inherit the goods from everyone, and hating or disliking was completely thrown out of the equation. 

Please stay tuned for part 2 ...