if only students realized that faculty members are often just as looking forward to those holidays as they themselves, or maybe even more, because after all a student can skip a class here or there with a self-declared holiday but a faculty member must wait for only officially announced ones.
I so wish I was (back) on the other side of this teacher-learner divide. why couldn't there be a profession of a student, someone who keeps learning different things, of interest of course, and maybe makes that learning available to others with least cost to herself. but I guess that is the idea of an academic, except that the cost is not small, and it keeps growing with competition for academia. and there are rungs on the ladder, and you find yourself in a place based on where you went to school essentially, and you keep dreaming of climbing up. but if you are in the lower rungs, the lower rungs being the slipperiest, their precise function is to keep you tired maintaining your position so nothing is left in you to climb. plus, there is a growing crowd for those waiting below to even get a hold of that ladder, and those far higher ups are not troubled by this because for them they are specks of dirt, but you can see better, you can see that it could be worse for you, you could be down there. or yet worse, you can still go down (rather than up) and then what?
or, on the other hand, given that you have in your life made only one or two choices ever, for the rest - simply either embracing what you found or rejecting it to meet the next thing you bump into, maybe something rejecting you would be a blessing in disguise (if you are still in denial of the more than partial rejection already from those upper rungs).
there was once in my life before that I was resoundingly rejected. from all the top Indian MBA schools. I was good but not 'good enough'. this is also the time, when I was dying to leave home, and an MBA education seemed like the only recourse that would take me away from the city that seemed to have all possible options of education on the face of it, but none too-good MBA schools. I remember those days, when I cleared the CAT and XAT cutoffs for some interviews, although not the IIMs. After each of those interviews I would come back home feeling scared and anxious, only to be met with questions and accusations from my dad of how I was doing it all wrong, and how I was inherently a 'slow' person; unlike my sis apparently who was 'unlike me so much quicker and brighter because she ate raw green chilies as meal accompaniment'. I'm not joking. and ironically this sis of mine grew up throughout her childhood and teenage being judged against me and some cousins by those very respected parents and adults because we were class-toppers while she wasn't. I'll leave you to decide how convoluted this is.
anyway, now it is an understatement how thankful I feel for having been rejected then. oh and btw, I'm still slow, and yes I admit that bit had truth in it, but I no longer see why its always a bad thing, in fact it soothes me quite a bit, I feel its often my strength.
maybe, ten years down the line I will feel the same about these current rejections and defeats (both those denied and those conceded).
on that note, most people I know can give a more than vague idea of where they will be ten years down the line from now, if they are then alive and not ailing. I do hope this one thing, I do fervently hope that right now I have no idea where I will be ten years later.
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