Manipal means a lot of things to a lot of people. Many people I know love the place because of the freedom they get there. Other people love the place because its a whole new world, where they have a new identity... a chance to be what they can be... a chance to be what they want to be. To me, however, Manipal is a place where I have actually understood what its like to have people, to be around people and with people... all the time. I'm not saying I did not have friends at school. I wasn't that unpopular and some of the friends I made, will last me a life time (fingers crossed). But its still not the same as college is, where your family becomes a bystander, a spectator and your friends become your family.
I dont want to be sappy at the moment. I have next year to do that. right now. Sitting pretty in Kuwait, far away from the dirty, sweaty, energy sapping hellhole that is Manipal, I want remember all the good times I had. Try as much as I may to remain positive, I fear these days are fast running away. I just want to look back and reminisce. The first year was all about exploration- from making new friends, loads of new friends, to going on trips to waterfalls and hiking trails and dancing around tree trunks like fools, to finding boyfriends and breaking up with them, to falling in love with one's best friends and realizing how foolish that was, to loving girls to the point of being called lesbian and then saying bye to them as they drifted away, to getting one's first taste of the "bad habits", one first drink of whiskey, first shot of vodka, first time puking into a bucket, first time smoking, first time smoking up, first time a nerd fails a subject... The first year was all about the lose of innocence or rather a celebration of the innocence that followed us from high school and its subsequent swan song. The first year was an exploration, a challenge of one's ideals and one's self.
Parents cry, parents crib that their kids change when they go to college. I know a lot of people who have changed a lot, essentially lost the spark in them, their basic existence, in the sea of work, stress, debauchery. But most people have just become aware about the existence of a world outside of home and awake to the person they are going to be. I call that positive change. When you think about it, its more of a blossoming, like a caterpillar changing into a butterfly. Its who they were all along; its just that they need a channel to come out, to become what they were going to be eventually. Obviously there are exceptions: those people who either come in with a very strong sense of identity, those rare, questionably admirable individuals who always knew exactly what they wanted; or you have the other category, those who never truly find what or who they are looking for! For the majority, college is a journey of self discovery. Manipal makes this journey both easy and difficult. How, i'l tell you in the next part!
I dont want to be sappy at the moment. I have next year to do that. right now. Sitting pretty in Kuwait, far away from the dirty, sweaty, energy sapping hellhole that is Manipal, I want remember all the good times I had. Try as much as I may to remain positive, I fear these days are fast running away. I just want to look back and reminisce. The first year was all about exploration- from making new friends, loads of new friends, to going on trips to waterfalls and hiking trails and dancing around tree trunks like fools, to finding boyfriends and breaking up with them, to falling in love with one's best friends and realizing how foolish that was, to loving girls to the point of being called lesbian and then saying bye to them as they drifted away, to getting one's first taste of the "bad habits", one first drink of whiskey, first shot of vodka, first time puking into a bucket, first time smoking, first time smoking up, first time a nerd fails a subject... The first year was all about the lose of innocence or rather a celebration of the innocence that followed us from high school and its subsequent swan song. The first year was an exploration, a challenge of one's ideals and one's self.
Parents cry, parents crib that their kids change when they go to college. I know a lot of people who have changed a lot, essentially lost the spark in them, their basic existence, in the sea of work, stress, debauchery. But most people have just become aware about the existence of a world outside of home and awake to the person they are going to be. I call that positive change. When you think about it, its more of a blossoming, like a caterpillar changing into a butterfly. Its who they were all along; its just that they need a channel to come out, to become what they were going to be eventually. Obviously there are exceptions: those people who either come in with a very strong sense of identity, those rare, questionably admirable individuals who always knew exactly what they wanted; or you have the other category, those who never truly find what or who they are looking for! For the majority, college is a journey of self discovery. Manipal makes this journey both easy and difficult. How, i'l tell you in the next part!
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