“Sometimes you can’t find yourself until you’re lost”, There was a time when I was hopeless about the future, depressed and genuinely lost. I thought that I had messed up everything along the way and there was no redo button for me to press in life. It was then at my wit’s end that I realised who I was and what I needed to do with the rest of my life.
I had left my boarding school, where I studied for 7 years to prepare for college. Like the majority of the students in India, I chose to crack IIT. Similar to all the parents in India, mine made me feel like I am the best out there and I can do anything. So, going with their flow I also took a seat at the high horse and started to prepare to crack IIT, confident that I would succeed. Surprisingly, just three months into the preparation, I realised that I was not cut out for this course and this is not something I want to do. That was the starting point of my life-changing dilemma.
To keep my image from being stained, I convinced myself that it's just a phase and I’ll move on from it, but I was far from being correct. During one of my Organic Chemistry classes, I don’t know what came over me, I just got up and left the class, leaving everyone dumbfounded. I called my mother up, and told her to come pick me up as I had something urgent to discuss. I told her everything from start to end, how I hate studying for JEE and that I’m not meant to do something like this. She didn’t say a word. I was hoping she would say something but she didn’t for the next 5 minutes. I’ll be honest, that was the longest 5 minutes of my life. Then all she said were 7 words, “Do what you want, I’ll support you.” This made me tear up because that is all I wanted to hear, I just wanted her support that's all.
From that point onwards I began searching for what I wanted to do
In hopes of finding my dream career path and setting my sights on a good college, I visited a career counsellor. He asked me what I wanted to do, I told him that I was more or less interested in starting my own startup. He then told me that I should prepare for IPMAT if I wanted to pave a startup path. I researched a little more about IPMAT (for IIMs) and took some demo classes and I was satisfied with it. Except for one thing, which was that I wasn’t interested in theoretical learning but wanted something more hands-on. As the saying goes, you can’t get everything you want, so I shut myself up and started preparing for it, while I was still taking my JEE classes as I didn’t leave them because the fees had already been deposited (My bad).
Out of the blue, one day my friend from my boarding school called me up asking how everything was going on with me etc. I caught him up to my story, and then he told me that we are both similar, we both wanted to get into the startup field and we both had no hopes for cracking JEE. I suggested to him, that he should also try for IIMs but he rejected the idea. He then went on to tell me about a college that was teaching their students, that they should learn business by doing business. The minute I heard about it, I decided that this was it, this was what I wanted. A college-focused more towards practical than theoretical.
I started to apply for it as the college was only accepting 120 students. I cleared the first round but unfortunately, my friend did not (He got into BITS Pilani). Then I proceeded to clear the second round and then I got a call for the Interview. I aced the interview and even got myself a scholarship. Now I’m studying at Masters’ Union and it has been going better than what I imagined. I have started working towards my own startup and met many CEOs of companies like MakeMyTrip, Noise, Akasa Air, Livspace, True Beacon etc. All I can say at the end of the day is, that just by taking small steps towards your dream, fate creates a path for you itself. I’m grateful to my mother for supporting me throughout this journey.
Comments