Monday 1 July 2013

College students: Who are you??


“There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond and to know one’s self”
                                                                                          ~ Benjamin Franklin

My sister starts her college life today. We are all very happy for her to get a place in one of the best law schools of the country and hope that she does extremely well in her course. Though more than doing extremely well in her course, I asked her to do well in being a good human being and really take the time out to find who she is.

During school we have minimal responsibilities and also minimal freedom making it very difficult for us to define who we really are. Most of the times, we are an extension of someone who had the privilege of being born before us – we are someone’s child, someone’s sibling, someone’s grandchild. Working life gives us total freedom but also a lot more responsibilities which may bog us down and make us forget what really matters to us. College life provides the right balance of freedom and responsibility to really find out things which make us tick, things which resonate with us, things that put us off. Try out new things and see which hat fits ‘YOU’ the best – with a special emphasis on You here as you don’t want peer pressure to make you biased towards certain things. Take out the time to do some volunteer work to find how you can contribute to the society, do some part time to understand the value of money, take part in extra-curricular activities and most importantly build great relationships - relationships that will lay the foundations of your network and impact your college life to a great extent. Read a lot and experiment a lot. Challenge the status quo and learn to fail at convincing people otherwise.

Go there and rule the world or at least lay the foundation of creating your own world!!

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