I came I saw and was conquered…

The day looked normal. The sun was in the sky, the sky was in blue, there was traffic on the road with people pushing and skeltering about. I stood in front of that grey coloured building looking down on the thousands of heads which bobbed in and out of its gates. I was soon going to be one of those heads. I was about to step into college. I was about to step into a life of freedom. The day could be all but normal. It was the most special day of my life.
Entering college is more of acceptance than adjustment. It is a life more dedicated to freedom while still maintaining your sanity. No more uniforms and no more diktats around attendance. No more raps on the knuckles and no more notes to the parents. But along with the freedom comes a sense of responsibility to handle studies and deciding on a career. The first few months in this vast sea of tee shirts was spent on accepting this new way of life.
I had come.
In the next few months, I realised that you had the right to choose your own friends. Over a series of incidences, I had made some of the best friends of my life. People who would be sticking around through all the ups and downs in my life. I also had the opportunity to see that it was easy to fall astray. Many wise minds had been blown away in tobacco’s holy smoke. Many others washed away in the sea of alcohol. It was easy to make decisions. It was difficult to stick to them. The first few months in college was more about seeing your future and deciding than to be blown away.
It was also the time for that first real crush…a serious love story which stays in the back corridors of the heart forever. It was more about friendship days and rose days. Those were the days of accelerated heartbeats, adrenalin rushes and deep red blushes.  If it wasn’t for those first few days in college, we would be devoid of so many love stories in our lives, wouldn’t we?
I had seen it all.
After the first few days, it was time to get into the groove. It was time to achieve the destiny for which I had enrolled in this well-known institution. It was time to make everyone proud. It was time to make me proud of myself. After a gruelling struggle understanding the nuances of physics s and maths, the exam results spoke for themselves.
A year later, I stood conquered.
And such is college life, a time we will all remember. A time when we grew from being kids to grown-ups in a single day. A time with lingering memories and a bunch of friends. Innumerable songs and stories have been written on the time but you have to be there to experience it. And at the end of it all, it makes you sit down and wish….for a rerun.

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