By Shivam Ratnani
I am soon to be a graduate. This is usually an indicator of competence. I wake up every afternoon and realize that I slept through half the day and did not achieve anything, but then again I have nothing to do at the moment. I switch on the Television; watch some glamorized Cricket, where we usually get emotionally attached to people who don't know of our existence. There we find ourselves applauding every remarkable event, as if it’s a fine piece of art & as if we are highly experienced critics.
Later in the day, I switch on the laptop; go on the internet where I view my Facebook updates and check out trending topics on Twitter. This takes about 5 minutes and is followed by hours of meaningless sharing of pictures, links and what not with friends. Sitting there, refreshing the web page every single minute, expecting something to pop-up, for me to witness something interesting but alas! Soon the time passes, and the mind comes up with the most clichéd self-introspective questions, ‘what am I doing?’,’ Where am I going with my life?’, ’Why am I wasting precious time?’ ‘I must do something about this!’ and so we do.
Hours of convincing myself later, I’m motivated enough (motivation that lasts almost 5 minutes) to e-mail my resumé to companies who might be looking for ‘freshers’ or maybe interns. Also checking with friends if they have any ‘contacts’ doesn’t seem that bad an idea. Viewing the company profile takes a minute & checking the resumé for errors takes another. Then comes the most difficult part; coming to terms with the fact that you have no qualifications whatsoever. “What about my vast experience of facebook-ing, tweeting, youtube-ing & google-ing? That should account for something, right?” Not Quite! Also the fact that you are awaiting your final year results and technically still just a '12th PASS' shall demotivate you to a new low.
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| Photo credit - Indrajeet Deshmukh |
So what does someone like me do? What are they good for? Well nothing yet! Yes, you may want to do something creative, you may want to earn big money & yes of course you may want to be respected for what you do, but why are we unable to strive forward to do so? What’s stopping us? Well, we don't know, do we? Perhaps you don’t have what it takes, perhaps it’s not meant to be, or perhaps you haven't found the right opportunity. Maybe we are meant to sit at a desk and do a clerical job all our lives and that fact is something most would be unable to digest. Here you are on the verge of graduation having no idea where you are headed. During such moments one can relate to a goldfish in a little fish-bowl; you can see what surrounds you, have little idea what’s going on, and all you can do is look around and survive another day, just to go through that confusion again.
But then again we are not gold-fish! None of us want to depend on others to get fed. We don't want to swim in your own shit till someone gets us out just for pity’s sake. I’d want to make my own path or at least find one where I belong. Perhaps discovering my strengths is the way to go. After more than 15 years of formal education amongst different kind of individuals, I have realized that we are not born to fit in, we need to make our own place & only then can we stand out. For that purpose we must capitalize on any and every opportunity that comes our way. Till the time it does, all we can do is be patient & be prepared.
