Tuesday 8 October 2013

Campus to Corporate: How life has changed?

College k gate k iss taraf hum LIFE ko nachate hai...tim lak lak te tim lak lak
...te college k gate k uss taraf LIFE hume nachati hai.....True lines said by Aamir khan in RDB!!

It’s not that I feel as though I have an amazing or inspirational success story to share. But I feel that over these past 2 years and 3 months there are certain things I have come to understand about myself.

How the transition took place:

It all started from the day when I got selected in campus interview held in my college.
20 July 2011, the day when I joined my organization, I was so damn happy that I was feeling on the top of the world but I was not aware how this day is going to entirely change my life. I was not able to sleep the whole night as it was a very important day of my life - the day when I started earning, the day I became independent, the day when I entered in the corporate world and ofcourse the day when I first went to Noida!
At first, I was amazed by the office building. I have always seen these kinds of offices in Gurgaon and CP, I had only dreamt of working in such offices, so it was like my dreams are finally coming true. Then I entered the reception where I was given an ID card and then we were taken into a conference room where we were briefed about company and its hierarchy, we were explained about our roles and given a schedule for next one month. I was very excited about the things to come in next few days.

…but it would have been great if at least one person told me that I would mostly be using Excel — for the next year of my life ;-)


Change is inevitable, adapt it:

In the weekend I met with our college friends, some of them got a job who were just waiting for the offer letter, some of them were going for the masters and some of them were doing nothing! We went to Gurudwara Bangla Sahib to thank God for providing us such opportunities.
In College no one cared whether or not you showed up, flunked, or studied at all. Nobody cared if I went out of the college before timings or even showed up to class at all, but the time has changed now, I can’t wake up till late at night so I have sleep early as I have to leave early for office; during the early days I used to think how I’m going to go to work every single day at the same time and never be late? I used to commute via metro from Dwarka to Noida as we were not provided cab in the general shifts, at that time I realized how hard it is to earn money. It was very difficult to spend even 6 hours in college which even included breaks but now you have to spend 9.5 hours in the office, and 3 hours up-down in metro were enough to totally exhaust me when I reach home.

Complexity of Change:

After a few days I joined my team and started working and became an IT professional. From there on my life changed, now I just wake up every day and realize that things are gradually progressing to the point where I’m not bothered anymore. As the days are passing, you probably don’t recognize your day-to-day progress, the only way I could know what my friends are doing was via Facebook (thanks to Mark Zuckerberg!)And the only way we could talk with each other is via conference calls. Simply because I never had enough time, and when I had time my friends were busy as they also had their own priorities now, some found friends in their new college and some had commitments with their colleagues in their new office; even my priorities also changed with time. We were a group of 10 in college but it became very difficult to meet even two of them at the same time. Couple of them started working in different cities so the only point of contact with them was phone and whatsapp.

Change takes many forms:

We do have money in our pockets now but the best times were when we used to fight over small restaurant bills saying “abe aaj teri bari hai…tu dega!”.We carry iPhones and the Samsung’s with us but we always cherish the photos taken from our old Nokia phones. We have bought ourselves new cars and bikes but we can’t forget the time when used to travel 3 persons without helmet on the same bike.

What makes this relevant is that almost all things that connected me to college are now detached. Such is the course of nature and the curse of time.

Once everyone I knew and loved at my college had commenced into the world, it felt easier to let go. As the people I loved began to move on, it became easier to separate what I really missed (the people and the memories) as opposed to what I thought I missed (the people and the memories, insomuch as they were physically bound by time and space to a place we once shared.) So I finally understood the difference between what I had thought I feared on graduation day and what I realized I had actually feared all along. Only when the fog lifted could I see it clearly before me that I hadn’t been afraid of moving on as much as I had been afraid of moving on alone.

Embrace the change:

It’s been more than two years now since I have started working and we meet each other less frequently than we used to, but we forget everything else and all of us enjoy the moment together. Talk about what’s happening in each other’s life, get nostalgic and even make plans for the future.

My conclusion, therefore, is that college is not a great social experience in itself, but it becomes amazing once you find the right people to share it with. In the most beautiful of ways, we are all moving forward together. Realizing this, even unconsciously, became a defining moment in my now-slightly-less-enjoyable-and-less-messy life.

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