A take on life...

So I don't know what to say, I am living in my early 20s, working in a start-up as a Software Engineer, that being said, leaving some less time on hand to do all the things you dreamed of. Whether it be, starting a YouTube channel, hitting the gym and working out, maintaining a blog (I am struggling to), or it be a side project, or studying for a higher degree. It just goes down the drain. But somehow we were able to pull this off during our school time.

And let's try to break it down, why?

So just after we are born, we are sent to school once we reach the age of 4, I guess, kindergarten and all. And soon we move to proper school, and then to middle school to high school and you get out of there, after grinding of 12 solid years. 12 years of competitions, and all. Especially in the last 4 years, here students have started to prepare for all sorts of nonsense exams which actually are useless, utterly useless, I am talking about NTSE (only meaningful when you are going to pursue core science, which 99.99% of them don't). So why students are being burden up with all those stuff back in the years?

Are parents nowadays gone that dumb enough?
Or is it how society or 3rd party has structured our education?

And soon enough, then comes, the preparation for the Entrance exam for the college, which could be anything, (JEE, NEET, naming a couple of famous ones), and that itself is just so big of a burden that students themselves take even if they are not forced by their parents, due to the environment, the peer pressure, the social media, all these factors just adds up to the mental burden. And sometimes just extends to 3 years(taking a drop year for the 2nd chance).

And that being said, those years used to be advertised as the last 4 years that you have to ever work hard. As if life ends up once you get the admission in a good college. And that's it. You never have to study again ever.

But that's hardly far from the truth as we all know.

Once you get into a college you start another 3-4-5 years (depending on the degree) on the rough path, that usually has been advertised such glamorously in the movies and the TV-shows, that students end up thinking that's it.
Once we get into a college, our life is so sorted. No tension and all, and we will end up getting a pretty good package from some renowned company like Microsoft and all.

We all start just watching the videos on YouTube about how to get into companies like Microsoft or Amazon and all...

But what they don't tell in the videos is the amount of preparation and the effort that is required to be put in to get into the companies.

And soon after probably one starts to write some code and all, but as soon as it feels difficult they give up, saying there are 4 years up ahead, and we just got here, and now its time to chill the fuck up and relax, we already worked very hard to get here for the last 4 years. We earned it and all.

And that's a very much-needed break for all of us. But getting out of that relaxed comfort zone is even more.

Because there is so much to learn after 12th class. Those things that you learned are just going to play a very small role up ahead.

We just touched the water on the beach with our toes and there is the complete ocean before us, but that's something we don't consider. We end up creating sand castles and all that stuff that for the time being gives us happiness and pleasure, but that's not permanent, it gets washed away by bigger waves (for us, the fun ends when exams are near), but we laugh over it and start afresh and aim to create a bigger one. Not realising that it's not going to be permanent, however far in the beach you create it.

That's the same with us in college, once we pass the 1st semester just like that, without studying much, we start to assume, we can pull the next 4 years like that. Why study the complete semester when I can just clear by studying a week prior?

And that's the attitude that ends up killing and making us very reluctant to do anything that requires some effort. Because we forgot what studying means? We stopped pushing ourselves and started to just chill around.

And this goes on for the next 3 years until placement season arrives, and then we suddenly realise that we don't know shit. Literally, we don't know shit. All those dreams we saw at the start of our college just shatter like fragile glass. And that ends up hurting a lot. And then we research the web into how to get into Amazon and Google? And not seeing the same videos after ~2 years, and it just hits us, how much we have to learn and we have just wasted our last couple of years (not saying, actually wasted, but that's what it comes up when you are screwed). And then all kinds of thoughts come to mind.
e.g. What would happen if I didn't get that package, how would I afford my dream car and all? What if my arch-enemy gets a better job than me?
This goes on for a while until we all reach the acceptance state, the state where we all accept our fate, and start seeing our life accordingly.

But that's something far from the reality, from the actual capability of that person. We just get lazy. We start to fear the failure. We start to see ourselves as if we failed in some other thing as well, we are a failure.

But that's far from the reality, we keep forgetting that, Thomas Edison, the inventor of the bulb failed over 10,000 times but he succeeded in the end. And yet we remember him as "the inventor of the bulb".

People will not remember you if you fail(except a few), but mainly remember you if you succeed, whatever the field it might be. Be it studies, arts, anything.

Just set a goal, and start doing it. No matter if you fail, no one will sue you or hang you to death if you do, unless I don't know if it's life-critical, but yeah, I can assure you, for the 99.9999999999% of us, it's not. Most of us have the freedom to explore other paths, along with the one we are currently pursuing.

Speaking personally, this small blog of mine took 2 sittings and over the span of 2 weeks to finish it off. And I had aimed to publish a blog a week, and I am far from that goal. But yeah I am trying to put a conscious effort into that.

And that's what is required, some conscious effort to be put into the aim you have. It's not necessary to have to put all your time into that, and just screw up the rest of your life, as going forward soft skills and overall growth end up being more needed than hard skills. Just a conscious effort.
And eventually, you will achieve your goal.

Ending the blog with a quote from, the Inventor of the bulb, Thomas Edison:

Until next time!