IIT isn't the only institution

I ended up not going to school today because I wasn’t well, something I probably incurred as a result of the stress from yesterday’s excruciatingly hard test. We have tests every Monday and I missed last week’s because I wasn’t well. I’m not malingering. I’m just not the kind of person who does such things. It’s just a weird coincidence that I fell sick again in such a short period. I still suspect that it has something to do with yesterday’s test, in which I skipped around 50 fucking MCQs out of a hundred. That doesn’t put me in a very good position score-wise. The only consolation I have is that a lot of other people I know who usually do well fared the same as I did, so my relative score is not going to be that bad.

So apparently I’m not going to have school on Thursday because they’re hosting a program with some ex-students of the school who are presently in IIT. After all, my school is IIT-centric. So anyway, I called up one of my friends, who gave me this information, adding right when I was in the process of heaving a sigh of relief that attendance to the program (which is going to be held in some weirdass auditorium in some shitass corner of this pathetic excuse for a city) is apparently compulsory. Listening to people talk at length about and give you tips that are supposed to help you get into a college that isn’t on your list of preferences is the last thing I want for myself.

This leads me to the next topic, which is the almost ridiculous and passionate desire people have for getting into IIT, which can be accurately compared to that which a man who hasn’t eaten or drunk water for a month has for being in a restaurant. People are so insanely, annoyingly obsessed with the idea of getting into IIT that one begins to wonder if that’s the only thing they ever think about. I mean it’s good and all, being serious enough about your career to dream of getting into one of the best engineering institutions in the world, and the best in this country, but not to the point that everything else in life loses meaning and the feeling of Do or Die kicks in. I’ve heard of people who have committed suicide just because they didn’t manage to get into IIT. This shit is even worse than contemplating suicide over depression or any of the usual reasons, or even actually doing it. I mean, in the standpoint of these so-called IIT-aspirants, or at least the greater part of them, IIT is not just the best college, but the ONLY one. Now that’s Stupidity singing opera for you.

At the stage I’m on, the supposed turning point of my life, I get to hear of all these people who actually got into IIT, having spent the whole of their 11th and 12th grades studying like there was no tomorrow. Sure, that earns them satisfaction, self and social respect, and most probably a guarantee of getting a good job that pays well, but that doesn’t mean that people from comparatively inferior universities don’t have as good a chance of achieving all that. And besides, it’s not like these ex-IITans (as they call them) are thoroughly enjoying every second of their life, either. They probably have to work their butt off every day, leaving for work in the morning and returning only after sunset. They don’t actually get a chance to indulge much in all the money and luxury and what not that their being from IIT gave them. In the end, he has to work as much as someone who studied in and graduated from an inferior institution.

The intention of this post is not to justify irresponsibility and a carefree attitude toward studies, but to highlight how people in India think, how they place their goals almost unreachably high, work their butts off for them, miss them in what is very often a game of chance, and end up having never enjoyed life at all when they lie down for good in their coffins. In fact, I think this is the case with the world in general today. Science and knowledge are ever expanding, but the human mind’s ability to keep up with them is limited.