By Dhruv Sharma
To anyone who’s lived somewhere else for college or knows someone who has.
I hope this makes some sense to you.
Work |
You’re in college now and you’re expected to make use of your ‘summer holidays’ by getting a job, doing community service and other seemingly mundane tasks that constitute the act of figuring out your life. You look for internships because everyone else is looking for internships, and a word that once seemed like a distant ‘grown up thing’ is now smack in your face as an urgent need, and you’re absolutely terrified of not landing that said internship! If you’re in a business school, this particular part of summer is even more significant because you want to sit on Wall Street in a few years, don’t you? Or even better, you want to sit on Wall Street tomorrow. You might get an internship, only to realize that it isn’t what you want to do after all, but you’ll do it anyway. All your friends, relatives and peers think it’s the ‘right track’, don’t they? So you take up the internship, and make your parents proud and gain your peers’ approval. But that free time you once had in the summer to do absolutely everything and nothing at the same time is now gone.
Friends |
If your college isn’t where you grew up, you’ve probably left most of your friends back home, thinking it’s a good thing because you’ve now gained more exposure, learned more about the world, and maybe even found yourself someone special belonging to a species that’s unheard of in your middle class suburb. If you do manage to get home during this ‘summer that isn’t the same anymore’, you notice that everything is still exactly the same. Except for one thing- you. You aren’t the same. You have become a new person, your priorities have changed and you realize that this makes it impossible for you to connect with anyone who isn’t like the new you back home. The places you hang out and your childhood friends may be the same, but the people they make you meet may not be. You’ve been replaced; maybe not in the same capacity but it seems that your entire group has grown to three times its size, and you hope, miserably so, that your friends did this just to make up for your absence. When you realize this isn’t true is when you realize summer isn’t the same anymore.
Family |
Growing up in an area with most of your family around you gives you a sense of belonging in those first eighteen years of school. But what will get your goat when you come back from college will be that your family, just like your friends, are still the same. This means that they treat you the same- as ‘that nephew’, grandson or cousin that you were before you went to college, which culminates in an ultimate mismatch of your new personality; someone who’s outgoing, independent and possibly reckless. This is when you feel a little suffocated, for no fault of your own or your family’s, and realize that summer isn’t the same anymore.
Money |
Growing up, on getting some cash from your relatives or parents without having asked for it equated to winning a lottery- you’d think you had made it. This time when you go back, you’ll already have some money in your bank account {yes, you have one of those now!}, as opposed to under the mattress or in a metal box in your drawer. Money will still matter, but will lose its value because of how easily you spend it now.
Purpose |
In view of all the above revelations of yourself, you start thinking of why you even came home. Or for that matter, why you left in the first place. Then that leads you to the question of why you’re thinking about this and what led to all the situations that changed summer so significantly. Frustrated and somewhat disillusioned, you attribute all of this to the two words you never knew the true meaning of: ‘Growing Up’. Yes, you are growing up, and you realize it. The thought pumps a sigh of relief through your entire system. You resign to allowing life take its course and are injected with a bolt of confidence that tells you: “Its fine, everything is in fact fine”.
From here on, no summer will ever be the same again.
About the Author | Dhruv Sharma is a Dilliwaala, studying in Singapore and wishes nothing more than to be home right now.
