Sometimes when any one of my roommates walks in late in the day, I am reminded of how my father came back home from his trips across India and always brought something for us. I foolishly hope they might have brought something for me too! Little do I realise that I should not expect that from anybody apart from my parents. How our aspirations change as we grow older, but the little things that we hope for and make us happy, remain the same.
Even when I think I am old enough to be philosophical, to be taking decisions of my own and advising my parents themselves on what I think I see that they do not, ironically, nobody takes me seriously. It is difficult to be childlike and still hope to influence others’ thoughts significantly. Nobody wants to know what I think of their resolve to be regular to the gym or how they should go about not wasting water and electricity. How easy it is to sound smart and advise others!
While I ought to be preparing for an onslaught (hopefully) of interviews which would decide how life will be for the next few years at the least, I am caught between analyzing why I did not make it to an interview that most of my friends had and if I should stop thinking and take things as they come, which is much harder than it sounds. I refrain from mentioning any progress in this regard to my parents, because I would not want to disappoint them later. A hint of maturity in my otherwise naive zeal for life, perhaps. They tend to overestimate my abilities, and I do the opposite. As I stood in the queues at the career fair for hours on end, I wondered what someone spoke when the conversation lasted for more than a few minutes and pondering if I was really at the right place. I am not a people person after all, barely able to stutter as I proceeded from one prospective employer to the other. The news of some of my friends already having secured job offers does put my mind at ease and I experience a strange sense of calm, the feeling that everything will eventually work out.
If talking lesser is any indication of becoming a sensible person, I have not got there yet. Not only do I talk unnecessarily and irreverently, I am also verbose about the minuscule details that I notice, usually about others. I seem to remember what someone might have mentioned in passing, without giving too much thought. I wish I had this uncanny eye, rather, the ear for detail when it came to coding. It is tough to keep up with the sheer number of competitive programming platforms available online, an indication of where we are all headed. The stage is set, all I have to do is take advantage of everything that is within my arm’s reach to get to where I want.