Does it always have to end this way? Seemingly endless mountains of work, notes to go through which would technically be drilling through the entire mound, the feeling of restlessness coupled with worry but not to such an extent that we would sacrifice our precious dreamy reverie to actually start focusing? Before my tryst with the hostel life, I thought this condition was self inflicted by me and the few friends who were honest enough to discuss the actual non-progress of preps.
But then, it was Hello Hostel and Goodbye Presumptions!
Presumption no. 1: Everyone studies all year round.
Presumption no. 2: Time tables are meticulously followed.
Presumption no. 3: People sleep early the night before exams.
Presumption no. 4: People are so busy studying that they do not gorge on food (a personal trait of mine!) unless their mother’s force it down their throats.
Presumption no. 5: A very non-existent social life.
And there you see go my presumptions flying right out of the window with an unmistakable smirk. I guess this is one of the few times when conformity seems like a blissful state of affairs and not a single soul (bless them!) tries to even unthaw the frozen zombie-like mindless behavior preceding the exams. So on a not-so-detailed analysis of what actually goes on during those precious few days before the exams (and mind you, they are precious) here’s the bleak reality of the Incredible India generation :
Reality no. 1: NO ONE, and I really mean no one, studies all year round. Sorry to break the bubble Ma and Deta, but all those childhood stories of how people in your generation used to wake up at four (bloody!) a.m. every SINGLE day of your student lives and study for God-knows-how-many hours before going to school… well we don’t really believe them! My suspicion that all those stories might be rooted in the belief that one day we might suddenly stop behaving like night prowling creatures (as Ma never fails to point out) and hit the bed at 10 pm…has been gaining ground for quite sometime now. Alas, it never happened…poor souls!
Reality no. 2: Those old yellowed papers sticking to our walls/ wardrobes/ any-other-conceivable-place-we-take-a-fancy-to or found on the last pages of our notebooks or even as a flyer in between the pages of our notebooks….that is the sacrosanct timetable that we decide has to be religiously followed from the moment of its conception. Sad life it has though. It probably lasts shorter than the new year resolutions (and that’s saying something!). Are we really that good into deluding ourselves with impossibly long hours of hard labour (yes it is hard humph…) that we jot down in our soon-to-be-neglected Time Table when in reality we are fully aware of our attention-span-of-a-house-fly? Oh but still can’t forget the comfort of making a time table EVERY single year/month/month-before-exams/week-before-exams….somehow it felt like the job half done.
Reality no. 3: People sleep the entire week before exams notwithstanding the amount of syllabus but never, and I mean honest to God never, sleep the night before exams. They even sleep the evening before exams because ‘oh, of course we have to stay up the entire night studying so its better we catch some sleep now’. Which of course means real panic starts settling in at around 3 am when we finally realize the futility of our plans and with dejection on our faces (and a wee lil bit glee) we decide to resign ourselves to our fate and snuggle up in our beds convincing ourselves that we’ll not sleep for more than 3 hours (more than that would be a crime please). Another failed resolution!
Reality no. 4: The discovery of this reality came as a pleasant surprise to me. Even though my ex-roommate would vouch that no female and hardly a few males would be capable of stealing my oh-so-precious Glutton Crown (to that extent that my name is actually saved like that in her phonebook!) but I just found my fraternity, for the time being at least! ‘Eat to your heart’s content and be super-broke before 3/4th of the month is over’ seemed to be our motto for that month at least. And God am I glad to have found you people! For at least the time being (and considering we live in the size zero generation) it is no longer ‘Hog and you hog alone’!
Reality no. 5: Why are we suddenly itching to hit the road/ mall/ lounges/ pubs/ any-place-which-does-not-even-remotely-remind-us-of-books when subconsciously we know we should stay and study??? First comes the inevitable NO to any proposed outing, then the gentle tug at the heartstrings followed by self-reasoning about the benefits of going out for a breath of fresh air (overrated stuff I swear) and forming of another mental timetable (haaah!) after our supposedly much needed break. As we all are aware of, at this point, all hope is lost. The rest of the story is familiar…come back apparently too tired after wasting so much time, convince ourselves that the forty winks are ABSOLUTELY necessary at this point of time (because after all what refreshes the mind more than some good sleep) and not to lose heart yet…we WILL study as soon as the forty-going-on-to-god-knows-how-many winks are over!
And the same story goes on…. But in this case I do wholeheartedly agree that Reality is far better than fiction (or presumption in this case!). As I mentioned above… sometimes it’s a treat to be a conformist!
p.s. this is strictly for ‘average normal having fun yet managing to pass in college’ people.
