The real cost of getting into a good college

This blog is specifically for all those people who missed out on their love stories of school days to get into IITs or any other premier institute. The story starts from the early days of our childhood, just like every other kid, we were also engaged in all kind of fun and mischievous activities. Punishment for the unrest created by us used to be sitting in a girls group or vice versa. We absolutely hated the idea of sitting with girls and I still don't know, why that was the case? We were so little and naive but still, the company of the same-gender is something all of us desired. We grow a little bit and adolescence hits us, all the hormones are forcing us to notice all the subtle changes in the physiology of our batchmates, from the increased breast size to newly growing facial hairs. I don't know about girls but for boys tearing the pages of school magazines with a sexy girl in it was fairly common before the abundant arrival of porn. Phones were scarce back then, the internet was extremely slow and costly and video quality used to be extremely bad. This was the age when few among us started dating, curiosity grew in us as well, but we chose to sacrifice on the part because studying was more important to maintain our top positions in class. Tuitions were the primary place where most of the love stories flourished and prospered. Girls did come to us but only to ask their study-related doubts and that used to be our only chance of interaction. Till date, most of us never understood the importance of experiencing a love partner at the tender age of 15. All we said seeing other couples was "look at them, all day long, busy with each other at the cost of their friendship with other people".

Within next year or so, IIT-JEE preparation occupied our minds, and that marked the end of the possibility of having any relationship in school time. Even thinking about such activities started seeming an utter waste of time. There was hardly any topper among us who was having any kind of relationship in class 8th or 9th, but JEE preparation got even the luckiest ones, once they entered class 11th. The next two years were hell, from school to tuition and from tuition to home for self-study. We stopped having fun, forsaken our friends, stopped hanging out, basically gave up on the last part of our teen life. When we should have been more worried about building self-confidence and exploring the last bit of teen life, we were busy with getting the right answers to HC Verma's problems. This continued for 2 years straight and a year more for those who ventured to places like Kota to fulfill their dreams of getting into an IIT. Many among those toppers who never had an iota of love experience in school, finally end up joining the best institutes of our country.

College was no better, gender statistics was already depressing and to exacerbate the situation we formed our little gangs with all those people who had no experience of dating or in some case even talking to girls. I personally know that many of my friends have so little experience in talking to girls that they get super awkward every time a decent girl shows up to them. If you'll ask them to add a girl in an outing, the answer is a straight NO. The mere presence of girls forces them to behave in an unnatural way. Female proximity is something that they have never experienced thus failing to react in an apt manner. They do send the friend request over various social media platforms in the first year, but due to their inability to extend chats, they even fail in creating a friendship let alone the possibility of wooing. Few got their due chance in college but their number is marginal because of the low female-male ratio. And for other unlucky chaps, judging other couples seems the only option. Comments like "Uske waale se lakh guna better to mein hi hun" were fairly common, but in reality, they were too scared to ask anyone out because of their fear of rejection and low self-esteem. By the end of the third year, half of them turned desperate but nothing could've been done in that situation. People were scared to switch groups in the final year because doing so would've catastrophic effects on their social reputation. College ends, and there are these young adults of 22-23 years in age, with little to zero experience of handling female proximity. This problem of not able to talk to pretty girls persists in office as well but in the next two or three years it vanishes and they become comfortable with female proximity. Office romance booms for most of them after leaving behind their shyness and awkwardness. For the rest of the people who fail even at office-romance, arrange marriage is their last and only stop.

I know of all the positive things a well-reputed college generally brings, but this blog is not to outline those, it is to remind and tell us what we lose in the due process of getting professional and academic success. We miss the last 2 years of school life, becomes distant with our childhood friends, lack confidence to talk to beautiful girls, fail to experience the purest form of naive and innocent love between a couple. All the mentioned shortcomings are not applicable to everyone but finding such people in our premier institutes is pretty easy. I myself don't know much about all this, but hearing all the stories from experienced people and keen observation tells me that we definitely missed out on some pretty important and exciting stuff. Let me give you few examples of what experiences I'm talking about, we never got the chance to send love letters to anyone, never understood the concept of caring deeply for someone, never waited hours just to see the face of our love, never felt what it is like to go on a long walk while holding hands, never understood that people's heart skips a beat just by touching or seeing their love. For all those people who got to experience all this in later part of their lives, knows what I'm talking about, for others these experiences may seem extremely ordinary. Believe me, you may find ecstasy in these seemingly simple experiences. It is not like that people don't find love in their adult lives but the purity and naiveness that exist in teen love is something that can only be felt, describing it in words will do injustice to its purity. Adult love life is filled with a lot of practical decisions and people analyze too much before investing in it and this is the sole reason why teen love is different and a little purer in terms of its inception.