Higher Studies

It was always been a dream for me while I was in college to persue some higher studies. But all that dreams were busted when I was halfway through my Under Graduation in Engineering. I felt how hard it is to even get through my semester subjects. How am I going to study more and more and more.... if studying a subject is this hard! But sometimes we feel that our lectures are responsible for our subjecto-mania. Those are the times when we sit and study for our final exams, we called that era as Study Holidays. The complex subjects will be tamed by our buddies and will be preached to us as a gist rather than hours and hours of boring lecture. After we went through such a cycle of boring lectures - fear of semester exams - productive study holidays - daunting exam days - enjoyable holidays - Ok results, we decided not to worry too much during the term and enjoy as much as we could. So that the secret of our enjoyable college days.

Our terms are 6 months (we call'em as semester) and we will be forced to take some (6) theory courses and some (2) practical courses. The system I studied gave 2 electives during the final year of our college but that too we all in the class have to agree upon some electives and more than anything there should be some lectures who can teach that courses. So it was technically electives but not though. So having gone through such a forced learning system for 4 years I was daunted to go through them again.

Being a moderate student my dreams about higher studies were deteriorating when I reached the finaly semester of my college studies. Also my sharp classmates (paruppus) scared me with the corridor talks about GATE, MBA etc. So I finally made up my mind not to pledge for "No Higher Studies". So I compromised for postponement - I will start working for a while after my graduation and will think about presuing some higher studies (I was not sure what I wanted to do then) after a while.

Many friends, philosophers and guides volunteered a set of advice to me - "Once you start earning you will never think about persuing any higher studies", "If you see some money in your hands you always want more, it will be hard to leave your job for anything" etc.
But it all said the same moral to me - "Do it now or never". I tuned myself to be deaf enough to avoid what everyone said.

To support my decision I was recruited by a firm during the campus interview. Campus interviews are ritual in Indian colleges. You college is considered good, bad or better depending on the number and standard of companies that visit to recruit outgoing students. We always envy other colleges around us as we are not used the campus interview rituals. But we were told that our super super super seniors had such rituals. But our batch tried their ass off to bring some companies to our college for recruiting and there were sucessful too. So long story short I took my campus job with mechanical engineering firm and put my dreams about my higher studies in a pigeonhole.

After I took my job and started to earn some money(good for my bread and butter) we started to discuss how we can achieve this higher studies without all the pain that was daunting us. Some friends were generous enough to give some advice about persuing the higher studies in foreign country especially USA. They said that the education system in USA is so flexible that you can pick you subjects and you can even pick you own professors. I was so excited about the fact that I can pick my own lecturers/professors. So I further postponed my dream of higher studies. I decided that I will reach USA and will start my higher studies.

I can keep continuing what happend after then and now. But I want to do that on another post. So here I am 8 years after completing my under graduation living in USA still haven't persued my dream. I am living in USA for almost 7 years. But things changed a lot in the course that I forced myself to be away from my dream for a while. But I sure will persue my dream at some point of time. Also little bit of personal information about me if you are wondering where this guy is from and where did he go to school. I was born and brought up in India and I went to Mookambigai College of Engineering, Keeranur, Tamil Nadu, India for my Under Graduation in Engineering. :-)