Choosing a college is serious business indeed. The list of expetations from a 'good' college is never-ending. Is it an A+ college? Are the faculty members competent? Do they provide good accomodation? Is the premise healthy? Are the lecturers friendly and helpful? And then there's hoards of relatives, starting from Chachi, Mami, Dada, Didi to all the web spinning 'friendly nighbourhood' well wishers. Different people, different opinions!! And in between, poor little me, facing the momentous task of taking a decision... Maybe the best idea will be to send a form to all the colleges and wait for one of them to accept me. But what if more than one college send acceptance letters?? Chachi Mami, welcome back!!
But whatever the queries and worries, they are age-old. I mean as far as I am concerned, I guess even my Mom and Dad sat with flimsy leaflets and their career decisions in their hands. But what intrigues me is the brand new (though not very shining) list of questions that pop-up during college analysis these days. Earlier, the faculty was the determining factor. These days, its the students body. No matter how good their accredition is or how high the rank in the India Today's list of Best colleges, they are just not enough to hide the dark underbelly of activities taking place away from the prying eyes. True, it took a nasty MMS scandal from the very reputed DAV school to draw the world’s attention to this fact, but Indian parents have finally come to face with the facts that their kids are not chaste angels and score a 101 on 100 in morality. Their ‘good family values’ notwithstanding, kids can go seriously wrong, considering their peers and the company they mix with. Parents have finally had it thrown on their face that the Indian Idolisation bug, where anyone can be famous has bitten the teenage group. So no publicity is bad publicity. Thankfully parents have finally realized that saying “My child can do no wrong. We have given him good ‘sanskar’” wont work anymore. Teenagers have never been the best decision makers in the world. So expecting them to do things right when you don’t even discuss what the difference between right and wrong is and how callous mistakes at this age can affect students adversely later is no more in. Parents (although grudgingly) have finally come to accept their child’s vulnerability. They have accepted that their 18 year olds are after all kids, who can make mistakes. Thank God.
At this age when we begin senior college, we start everything afresh. And at 18, it’s a lot tougher to make friends as compared to when we were eight. Going out of our comfort zone and finding acceptability among new people is a major nightmare for every teenager. At such times, parents need to address their child’s concerns and comforts VERY SERIOUSLY! Ragging is NOT chalta-hai. Its never going to be ‘regular college stuff’. We don’t want any more Aman cases, do we? (Dunno who’s he? Open the newspaper, for God’s sake or do me a favour. Just google it!) Our fears are not unfounded. We are not hysterical. We need to be taken seriously.
And yet, it depends on you and me to chart our future. We always have a choice between what is easy and what is right. We need to take up responsibility. We must understand that at the end of the day, whatever we are, its because of our own actions… our own decisions. So folks, carry on with mission admission. Like someone once said… The best way to predict the future is to create it…
Hold that thought!!
No comments:
Post a Comment