First Semester

My first semester at my engineering college was a highway to hell. New place, different food (Constant bowl of sambar and an authentic dosa, idli, vada), different time table and strangers. Everywhere. Amidst all the chaos, I gained late admittance to college and missed out on a considerable amount of syllabus. There was one subject which I didn’t enjoy learning. Needless to say, I didn’t like any of the engineering subjects but this one in particular was giving me a hard time. To make matters worse, I didn’t do well in the lab because I almost slept throughout the demo class. Hence, I missed out on the instructions. As a result of my disinterest and ignorance, I was struggling to clear the subject. I had an immutable fear that I might have had to sit in college the entire summer, study this subject again and god knew how much I wanted to see and spend time with my family. I had no energy, I was mentally, physically and emotionally drained out. It was a do or die situation for me.

But no matter how bad my condition was at the first semester of a new college, my arrogant heart wasn’t ready to accept defeat in any way possible and sit the whole summer in Bengaluru.

The department had a record of not giving a good amount of marks in the assignment section. I was almost doomed. However, I had one quiz left. Just one shot. Either I score or I stay. I had 4 tests on the same day along with classes. I was tired, I was sleep deprived. I was already between the devil and the deep blue sea. I used up all the energy I could muster up and wrote the exam.

A series of prayer, promises of taking the future subjects seriously to the almighty and a mental preparation of accepting whatever that would come my way underwent my journey to the department during the finalization of marks. I reach there and the HOD (who is known to be super strict) looks at my eyes and says with a smile “You did it Achisha. You cleared it” I look at the paper and I see 9 and a half out of 10 in the quiz.

One of my professors once told me “Life will keep pushing you down. It will push you down 100 times but you have to get up 101 times.”

When the world keeps pushing you down, you absolutely do not give up and keep pushing against gravity until it doesn’t kill you.