What happened during our years of schooling was barely in our hands. We had weekly timetables until we graduated from school. We had textbooks that told us what to learn and exams that tested what we were able to remember from them.

Then the famous 10th boards happened. We chose the science stream, and ensured textbooks for Physics, Chemistry and Math. We had coaching and tests. Eventually, our lives turned into a series of successive goals. We maintained a check list; ‘Finish this topic by tonight’, ‘Finish these chapters by this week, ‘Clear the cut off’.

In time, we took admission either in IITs, NITs, Government or Private engineering institutes etc. Our selection criteria had to meet the following: Which field has better ‘scope’? Which college is more ‘reputed’? Where scope and repute meant ‘placement’.

Until now, what we did with our life was done by thousands before us and will be done by thousands after. Some of us chose engineering by choice, others were forced into it and rest of us had no clue about any of it.

It is a universally acknowledged truth that engineering is easier than what we have been struggling with during class 11th and 12th. Yet most of us feel obliged to continue the ‘series of goals’ even in college. We have four years of engineering to relax and figure out what we want from life. We didn’t have an aptitude to do that in school.

But we cannot lose the habit. We start worrying about mid-semesters, end-semesters, CGPA and SGPA. When the third year comes, it converts into Summer Internships and Winter Internships. And in final year we will worry about placements. We face a dilemma even then; to choose between a public sector undertaking or a private company, a technical or a management firm, or to go for a Rs. 4 Lakh Per Annum (LPA) package or a Rs. 8 LPA.

In addition, there will be some students who absolutely cannot shed the JEE-effect. “We must start preparing for CAT or GRE and now we’ll make charts and lists about which MBA institute has the best ‘placement’.” While few will be, “We’ll prepare for GATE to enter PSUs. We will once again join coaching and use well defined text books with well defined courses. We will suddenly start reading newspapers and solve Sudoku to improve ‘aptitude’.” They will spam the internet with questions like ‘Which electives should I take if I want to study in Canada?’ or ‘Where should I apply for internship if I want to get into IIM-A?’.

After more than sixteen years of rigorous education, are these the life goals we want to set? How long are we planning to extend these ‘series of short term goals’? Get a great ‘job’ with particular LPA, and then ‘settle down’.

We are content to filter our ambitions to particular Lakh Rupees Per Annum.

But we could have avoided this the day we entered college. We had enough maturity to think beyond a job. In school, everyone around was a kid brought up more or less like we were, but in college we had an opportunity to learn from other different minded adults. We had time to develop skills besides those that college recommended. We had internet to our disposal, and the potential to have ‘career goals’ and not ‘job goals’.

For college students, ‘Parental pressure’ should not an excuse anymore. If we are still making choices everyone expects us to make, still doing things that everyone else is doing, still working on a series of endless, meaningless goals, then we never left school at all. 

This article is part of PaGaLGuY’s innovative Internship programme for engineering students. Currently, two such programmes are on – one on Creative Writing, the other is a Certification on Digital Media. If you are interested in partaking and  bagging a certificate, besides learning the nuances of effective writing, mail us at wordslingers@pagalguy.com.