As I cracked my brains over what exactly to contribute to my branch magazine, I realised I could not even bring myself down to string together a single sentence that isn’t weird or verbally challenged or that wont drive you a hundred pages away. My fingers seemed to be a major victim to the force called friction. They felt retarded enough to type a single word. All I could type at the end of fifteen long minutes were the words ‘My college’ and no sooner did I realise that it is practically impossible for me to spill paragraphs over paragraphs on this topic. When you are left with tones of assignments wanting to chew your brains, the nerve breaking internals, the deadly vivas and the semesters lurking round the corner, the concept of engineering does not exactly seem utopian right? Under all the forces trying to pressurise me from all angles and compelling me to drown 1000 miles deeper into the musty pages of the ugly fat books , the only word that skips my mind about my college is B-O-R-I-NG . And the only word I can associate with the course called ‘engineering’ is F-R-U-S-T-R-A-T-I-N-G !
I paused. I took a deep breath. On second thoughts, thinking of our Big Boss Sir Ranchoddas Chanchad; the three magical words flashed in front of me . The words that probably motivates all the helpless engineers today. “Al iz well”. I realised that life surely does not come with a ‘how-to-avoid-frustration’ manual. Neither does it always look like a perfect fairytale. Sometimes it throws you surprises . When it hits you, you figure out that the best way to deal with it , is just to sit back and laugh before you bounce right back. Being an engineer is not very easy. Yet it isn’t all that difficult either.
Engineering is not just a course. It is in fact a way of life. A sort of life that teaches you not only how to make an electrical transformer work but actually ends up transforming your entire being at the end of four years of constant brain grinding. It is a part of life when you learn to take immense joy out of simple things. You learn to turn every dull moment interesting with just a bright smile . You acquire the laugh-a-lot syndrome. You realise it is more important to live for others. It is indeed the four years of mindless fun, the canteen treats, the scary professors, the head breaking assignments, the Friday nights, the bottles of vodka, a tinge of carelessness, a dash of madness, the randomness and most importantly the mast kalandarness that turns you into a perfect engineer.
You know you are a major victim of this thing called ‘engineering’ when :
- Even after the deadly suffering in a prolonged day without any trace of electricity and water, you jump really high and scream ‘YIPPPI!!’, when the fans start working once again.
- You think bunking classes is a part of your syllabus.
- You stare at an orange juice container because it reads ‘CONCENTRATE’
- You can write 70 words per minute but can’t read your own handwriting.
- At least one of your jeans have a hole in it
- You have a guilt free pass to have random crushes on the ‘good looking’ ones. Even though you know that the specie called ‘good looking people’ is almost extinct in your college.
- Your calculator misses the ‘equal to’ button.
- You think your room looks the best when it is disorganised enough to resemble a dungeon.
- You think it is best to study at night. At night you realise it is best to not study at all.
- Though you are absolutely clueless about the subject, you still manage to face vivas with sky high confidence. Since you can’t convince the Prof., u think its best to confuse him out of his nerves.
If you are an engineer I am sure you could completely relate to all the Ten Commandments written above. It is not very difficult. Is it?
A candid confession: In a whirlwind of an year I am in a new place in my life. A place which was probably not even remotely in my cards. But for the record, I would just like to say, it feels really great. I just realised that engineering isn’t all that frustrating after all.