Entertainment Magazine...
1. Endless trips to the registrar’s office. “Look, sir, I don’t care if this class is full. I’m a graduating senior and I need to get enrolled. This is my 739th trip to your office. Do you realise how many unproductive hours in the cafeteria I’ve sacrificed for this noble purpose?”
2. Losing friends. They promise you that they would stay in touch every hour, minute and second but the only kind of attention apportioned to you is in the form of pitiful “likes” on your Facebook wall.
3. What am I to do once the fortification of the university walls collapse and I’m shoved head first into the world? There is no one to give me extensions on projects based on my whiny emails, imagined dead relatives, and creatively contrived diseases.
4. The uncertainty. Should I go to grad school? If yes, then where? Should I run the mad rat race of the corporate sector? Or sit at home and wait for Prince Charming? No really, WHAT does this world want from me?
5. More uncertainty. Am I graduating? No, no. This is too good to be true. Have I finished my credits? Have I cleared my dues? Have I filled out this form? And that? And that other one? Have I taken all my compulsory courses? Oh no, I still have to take Politics of African Eskimos.
6. Rishta aunties. Well, yes I’m graduating from university. But that does not mean that I’m seeking a career in being the lifelong victim of your son’s fiendish ego problem.
7. Castles in the air. Huge, grandiose, grotesquely unrealistic ones. You know something’s amiss when your Anthropology major friend says: “I’m going to get rich doing field work in the Rann of Kutch after graduation”.
8. Fear. It took four years, gigantic sacrifices of your ego, and lots of tears and rants to come to terms with this place and its people. Will the real world be as patient? Do you have the nerve and energy to replicate your endeavours?
9. Regrets. Tender troubles suddenly turn grave. After four whole years, you realise that you really did like him in ‘that’ way after all. But it’s too late since he’s scampered off with that scantily-clad, fish-lipped sophomore. Haye!
10. Last semester laziness. Since you’re a graduating senior, you decide that you’re too cool to attend classes, buy your reading material, turn in any assignments or even care. Five hours before the final exam, you decide to log off Facebook, unpack your books and curse the “education system”, and regret your laziness.
Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, February 26th, 2012.
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