This is a kind of prompt that isn’t really helpful to me at all.
Prompts like these are harder to write for me, because in any real-life situation where by the way, this is a very legitimate conversation starter, I would end up with a factual dry answer: I studied at IIT Kanpur. Sometimes if I am not too socially unaware, I will follow up with a question of my own: Where did you go?
As most people who know me will tell you, I am a person of very few words. It is no brag, and in fact, I think it’s a significant failing on my part. In a world where authority, leadership and projecting that you-know-your-shit-even-if-you-may-not are often valued more than humility, curiosity and doubts-that-you-could-be-wrong.
It is actually funny in a sense. I am currently in product marketing. I have been a consultant before. And a customer success manager before. In all these roles before, I have had to use my communication skills – written and verbal – to influence my customers and internal stakeholders to get them to agree to a vision, a purchase, or simply aligning them to certain tasks. All these roles required me to speak up, write more even when there may be a pretty dry answer to many situations.
But I have still done pretty okay. Hiding behind the excuse that that I am doing my job, I felt less guilty of taking up more space in the world. I am trying to shed this reticence now, and using these daily prompts as a tool. So if I go on a self-involved monologue today, blame the WordPress daily prompts.
So today, let me dig up some things about the college I attended.
How did I end up at IIT Kanpur?
I am recently back from holidays at my hometown in India. When there, I ended up in very involved discussions with two of my young cousins, one year apart, and both due to graduate from high school in the next couple of years. They are preparing for their college entrance examinations, and I was surprised to see how focused they are on getting into one of the IITs, the top engineering universities for those not familiar with Indian universities. I had a much less defined goal.
I grew up despising the conventional path. I saw my dad start a business, leaving a reasonably comfortable job that promised stability and amazing pension. I was sure I didn’t want to go the conventional engineering at IIT + MBA path. I have only managed to keep one half of that goal.
Well, when my first attempt right out of high school got me into a college that was less than 15 miles from home, I took a gap year and tried again. This time, I looked at the Indian map and decided to find the best university furthest away from home. That was supposed to be IIT Bombay. I tried once again, and landed at IIT Kanpur. Not as far, but far enough from home that I won’t have any obligation to spend my weekends at home.
What did I enjoy most about my college?
I want to go back to my cousins once again. I was again surprised to hear from them that one reason that motivated them the most was what they have heard of campus life in IITs. From YouTube channels.
It amazes me to no end that youngsters today have access to so much information at their fingertips. When I was preparing for my college, I had no clue what this meant aside from the fact that people take entrance exams, get some marks, and choose colleges in some order based on what their immediate family and the newspapers tell them about college rankings.
At least they are on the right track. My favourite thing about my college was my life back then.
I was fortunate to be surrounded by some of the most talented yet fun-loving group of people.
I entered college prejudiced against rock music, because I thought everything rock was metal music, and I didn’t understand metal. One fine day, a friend of mine made me listen to Time by Pink Floyd on a Nokia E65 with a QWERTY keyboard. I came out a man obsessed with Blackstratblues, Beatles and Pink Floyd to such a degree that they are always the Top 3 in my Spotify Wrapped year after year.
I entered college as someone who loved physics. It turns out that what I loved about high school physics was maths and statistics. At some point, I was so much in love with psychology as a subject, that I seriously considered dropping out to study psychology. I wasn’t courageous enough, and thankfully stuck it out. Still, my love for both these subjects still follows me around and has helped me in my actual job, perhaps more than my main engineering subjects.
These are just but a couple of examples that transformed so much in my life: what I knew about myself, what I liked and what I didn’t, who I hung out with.
It was not all hunky-dory though. There were (and still are) issues. But today, I choose to just focus on the positive so I can complete this daily prompt for once.
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