3 Hard-to-Digest Truths of College Life
Students should be aware of
The voyage no one knew about or cared for started on August 08, 2018. The day when I got into college. Cheers to another one among billions.
That day was sort of special, after all, one of the childhood wishes of a kid came true, he has officially become a college student, and if to be precise — a literature student. How great he has become, how much he has achieved, no? Aah! So proud of you my son, so proud of you!
Now, once in a day (yup, overthinking is my other name), when I look back at it, I see how stupid all that was.
A kid who knew nothing, found another way so that he could not know anything.
That’s what college life was for me, in its briefest form.
Before we proceed any further, let me clarify that the intention behind this article is not to defame colleges and those who enroll in them. But to tear out the made-up belief that ‘College is that milestone after which you’ll get success, knowledge, friends, happiness; and in its absence — no, you won’t get anything. Take your sheep somewhere else to pasture, you before Christ shepherd boy’.
So without any further-a-do, let’s proceed.
- Is it really like, “Oh captain, my captain”?
For such a question, you would be bombed with a straight — NO.
Professors like Robin Williams doesn’t exist. I mean I wish I would’ve met at least one like him, but no, they just don’t exist. Those whose sole purpose is not just to finish the text, but to teach students how to dream and how to create their dreamland, they don’t. Instead, the kind who exists is like,
“Your last year is the most important, so make sure you make the most out of it”
“Well, what should I do to make the most out of it?”
Instead of saying, “Learn to breathe, to live life in its most pure sense, not just to stay alive, to feel your surroundings, to see everything which you can, and to love whoever you want, and whoever you can. Learn to experience life, in the light of the cosmos.” Sounds great, right, yeah I know. But they not gonna say that.
They’ll say, “Enroll into coaching, and start preparing for civil.”
“And life, what about that?”
“What about that? There isn’t anything about that. You can even live your life after thirty, can’t you, after having a settled job, a life partner, two kids, and a financially stable background, yes you can. I did, even though I have mid-life crises which I’ll not talk about, but I’m living my life, so can you. So be practical, this isn’t a movie, where somebody would see you as their inspiration, and would stand-up on a bench, to say,
Oh captain, my captain!”
No, nobody would say that.
I grew up in Delhi, India, and this is where I finished (would finish, one semester is still there) my academics, and this is the kind of professor which I met. You can say that I am wrong, that not all professors are the same, that your professor was so amazing and chilled out, and that’s alright. Because you live in a cozy beautiful village of Italy, and your professor used to come in camel boxers, with a floral linen shirt, and Hawaii flip-flops.
That’s totally alright, see, I gulped it.
2. You may be Dumb, but you not gonna find your Dumber.
Finding friends in college could be tough, and tougher if you’re an introvert like me. In the last three years of my life, I met many people, but in the name of friends, I only had one, which surprisingly was my friend from high school. So if you want, you can say (the fact), that I didn’t make any friends in college.
Honestly speaking it’s quite difficult to make friends over there, in school it’s comparing easy. You share buses with them, share most of the classes, and there are 99% chances that they live in your neighborhood, and in the initial years, it was your parents who helped you in making friends. So with that many things, anyone can become friends with anyone or anything, even rocks.
On the other hand, in college, things get pretty crazy. There’s isn’t anybody whom you know, not your school friends, or your neighborhood friends, or your parents, nobody. So nobody gonna help this introvert, who’s seeking out help, in his mind at least.
So what you gonna do? Spend your time in the canteen, and in praising every art which you witness — even her — in your mind.
Now it’s not that you not gonna try, or I didn’t try to make friends. I did.
Wanna know what happened?
I used to talk to this blah..blah..blah person, both online and offline, and we did this for like one and a half or two years. Then one day, I texted something to that blah..blah..blah with ‘friend’ at the end of that text. A moment later I received,
“We aren’t friends, we just talk, so please don’t do that”
(BLASTS)
From that day, I haven’t called anyone “friend” (except for the one, who is indeed a friend, I mentioned him, right?).
College can absolutely change anyone’s life, if not in a positive way, then in the negative, but it will. Thanks, that I had that one friend, with whom I talked trash to the world and to society. Sometimes I do think about those who don’t even have that one friend, how would they survive, and face all that.
My advice to you would be, to not waste time looking for that one special friend, the way you saw in movies, whom you’ll meet, and would do a startup. Instead embrace those, who already are your friends, who knows you, understands you, and with whom, no matter what happens, you could curse the world.
3. College didn’t teach me Search Engine Optimization.
In college you can learn many things, hundreds of things actually —
- Who is who?
- Who is talking to whom?
- Who is a friend of whom?
- Who hates whom?
- Who talks behind whom?
- and who knows how long the list goes. . .
So? Hundreds of things.
Jokes apart, it’s not that you would only waste your time being in college, you would learn things, many things, but majorly two things —
- Attendance; and
- Assignments
Let me elucidate it to you.
Attendance, something which no matter how hard you work for and how many classes you attend, would not go beyond 60%, PERIOD.
Assignments, something which you would’ve no idea about as it was yesterday when the text started, and just a day after, you have a 25 mark assignment in your hand, and yes one thing, ‘if you copied from somewhere, your submission would be canceled and you would be marked zero. So go and read that text, as you still have half an hour. Now make sure you don’t make any excuse, as when I was a student, I used to read books in just a matter of moments.’
Department only and only wants syllabus from you, no matter what you do or where you live, just complete your syllabus, make assignments, keep your attendance fair, give exams, get a degree, and get lost; who knows what you’ll do, and where you’ll live, we were only responsible till that degree.
It’s been almost three years to me in college, and I can proudly say that whatever I know today or aware of, is all because of my own enthusiasm and interest. College didn’t show me any way to survive out in the world.
From the beginning of 2020, I’ve been working upon my skills, and have been learning different things, from Email Marketing, Graphic Designing, Content Writing, SEO Optimization, keyword researching, Organic lead/traffic generation, keeping track of my finances, and running a full-time online business, which I started with zero investment, like literal zero. Even after being an introvert I did all that, I mailed people, people belonging to public companies, and put my point to them with confidence, which most probably I wouldn’t be able to do if I would’ve been only a college student. As folks in my department still believe in “Jane Eyre.”
As per them, an artist’s life is the life given by God.
Well, good for them if they think of such things. The reality is, to sustain that life, even the artist needs to be smart and business-minded, or else he/she wouldn’t be able to survive in this ‘show-me-your-riches’ InstaWorld.
Now, to sum-up my point I only wanna advise you, to not have high hopes from college. It’s not that I want you to run from it or to take some stupid pledge that you’ll never go to any college, no. It isn’t all bad, it’s just that, it offers good very little. It’s possible that it can be beneficial for you, and you could learn new things while being in it.
Even for me, I won’t say I didn’t learn anything at all. I have, and among those things, the one which worked best was, the realization of not knowing things. Realization of the reality that how much ahead I would have been if I would’ve started earlier, and how much ahead I am, from the beings who haven’t started yet.
College is like life, it could be anything for anyone, could give anything to anyone.
It depends upon the individual that what his/her intention is.
