It's incredibly overwhelming, terrifying almost, that I'm a rising sophomore, through with my first year of college. It's unsettling, as though something just isn't right, like someone was writing a book and chose to leave out significant chunks of the story for the reader to imagine what could have been.
At eighteen years old, I can count my lifetimes' worth of achievements off my fingers. No, I am not the founder of three different tech startups, and no, I do not run an NGO that impacts thousands of lives, but I have finally succeeded in making a drinkable filter coffee, after multiple failed attempts. Of course it doesn't even mildly compare to the one appa makes, but at least it's a start. I am likely to invite controversy when I say this, but the trick is to eliminate the use of the coffee press altogether, and instead, pour hot water directly into the filter, close it, and wait for the decoction to emerge. Using the coffee press results in a muddy looking decoction that produces discolored, gray coffee with a disgusting sludgy texture.
And on those days when, for some inexplicable reason, I am unable to make myself a cup of coffee, I now find comfort in sipping lemon ice tea, a refreshing drink I love for its simplicity. (Yes, I say this after a lifetime of hating tea drinkers for their choice of beverage).
I've managed to find my way around the kitchen reasonably well, having whipped up lunch every Sunday for about a month: a decent veg biryani, (Please don't get started in the comments section. Of course it's biryani!) simple jeera rice and dal makhani (Life was easier when Jira was just a spice, if you know, you know), delicious chili gobi, and a miserable paneer biryani even the crows didn't deserve to eat.
Finally getting braces (after years of procrastination on my parents' part) has made it a difficult task to eat even the simplest of foods, so my Sunday lunches have temporarily been put on hold, and instead of chaining myself to the kitchen, I've resorted to writing a blog post. I still find it difficult to comprehend that something as simple as a little wire round my teeth will correct the extreme misalignment and forward inclination I've grown up with.
Apart from my tomfoolery in the kitchen, a small day trip to Mahabalipuram with family occurred, in which the car ride was far more entertaining than the actual tourist attractions. Accommodating eight peoples' music taste that spanned across two different languages and three generations was certainly challenging.
Coming to the point after all the unwarranted digression: if anything, moving out for college has proven to be a remarkable learning experience, be it dealing with mediocre food and housing, the nuances of community living, navigating through complex social situations, or balancing difficult coursework while also working an unpaid job. Going to a start-up university after a haphazard college decision has been a unique life experience that deserves a blog post of its own.
I went into my freshman year of college ambitious, so ambitious that I might have even come across as naive. My aspirations were grand: to finish the sem with a 4.0, make the (non existent) dean's list, work a tech internship, get my name on a research paper, eventually graduate summa cum laude and land a spot in a top grad school, I wanted to have it all.
And somewhere along the way, amidst the all the chaos, tears and inevitable burnout, I realized that I was being ambitious for all the wrong reasons, and by trying to mold myself to fit into the conventional definition of success, I was only setting myself up for a vicious cycle of failure, constantly feeling unhappy and overwhelmed.
That brings us to the present moment, a quiet, breezy, summer evening, almost a solid year since I first moved out: very soon, I will pack my whole life back into a single suitcase and find myself at university, in the midst of it all. I am learning, albeit slowly, to be a little more forgiving of the fact that I am human. I am learning to identify burnout before it hits me headfirst like a speeding truck and I find it difficult to even get out of bed. I am letting go of several of my most deeply rooted belief systems, while also attempting to hold on to the one thing that I absolutely love about myself: being ambitious in my pursuit of knowledge.
As I sit on my bedroom floor, making piles of things that I want to take with me, and tossing other things into a pile that I want to throw away or leave behind, wondering how I'm going to fit all of these things into a single suitcase, I can only go into yet another academic year embracing trust, and hope that it will all work out in the grand scheme of things.
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