6:30 am: The shrill ringing of the alarm clock declares an end to a troubled night’s sleep. A hand reaches out from under the blanket and hits the snooze button, as if in a reflex.
6:35 am: The boy finally jumps out of bed with a spine chilling, gut wrenching realization. It’s December 1, more formidably known as the “Day Zero” for the final year students sitting for the campus placements.
It is said that in moments of near-death experience, your entire life flashes before your eyes. Something similar is the case at the dawn of Day Zero. You revisit your entire four years of engineering - countless mid-sems, end-sems, night-outs, gaming sessions: everything has culminated to this very day.
Few hours later: Enter nervousness. The delirious mind makes you realize the importance and ubiquity of Murphy’s Law: “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong”. The boy gets dressed in formals, specifically kept aside for this momentous day constantly being weighed down by peer pressure, family expectations, the very standards that he had set for himself. It is then that he realizes the true meaning of the words “Failure is not an option” that he had carelessly scribbled across his whiteboard as an inspirational quote.
Countless questions are gnawing his brain as he makes his way to the placement office. What if today is not my day? What if I’m not able to give even a single answer? What will my family think of me? How will I ever face any of my friends? No job, no money. No money, no girls. No girls, no marriage and no marriage, no happiness. The butterfly effect of the day’s outcomes does not help in soothing your nerves one bit.
The “boy“ in the above anecdote may not be fictitious. He could be any one of us. Placements season, that too at a prestigious institute like the IITs can be a daunting nightmare, even for the well-prepared. Preparations for this fateful time of the year start months in advance. Students can be seen revising concepts and solving questions that are most likely to come up in the written tests and interviews. Some rush to their seniors seeking company specific advice.
It’s a mad rat race. To be honest, no surprises there, everything in our country seems to be a rat race: school admissions, coaching classes, engineering entrance exams, C.G.P.A, internships and finally placements. I seriously doubt Darwin could have found any better example to prove his “Survival of the Fittest” theory, had he sneaked a glimpse of the life of an undergraduate in IIT. The worst part is: no matter what you do in the rat race, success is not certain. But if you do nothing, failure is.
Don’t let nervousness, anxiety and overthinking sabotage your four years hard work, dedication and the efforts which you have put in. Emotions of few minutes cannot spoil the future. First and foremost, overcome these small psychological battles to win in the real battle of Life.
Everything said and done, can the trauma, anxiety and sleepless nights be avoided? Students must understand that in spite of what you feel, despite what your friends, family or relatives might tell you, this is not the end of the road. What is important is self-confidence and hope. Just enjoy the challenges of life and face them with courage and smile. Overthinking about future may lead to failure. Focus in the present with utmost sincerity and surely SUCCESS will not be far away. Re-iterating Andy Dufresne from Shawshank Redemption: *“Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies”.