You have been gifted a box of shadows. Maybe you’ll get all that you wished for. Maybe you’ll get more than you could have imagined. Or maybe you’ll expect the wrong things out of it. Nonetheless, you’ll stand there, armoured and shielded when the box will open and it will leave you wondering if anything so full of life actually exists. It will be liberating yet terrifying.

It is often said that college changes you in fascinating ways and by the end of it, you walk out as a better and wiser version of yourself, and never have I felt words more truly. As the curtains to graduation draw to a close, I can say that I have changed, not only as I had hoped I would, but also in ways I could not have imagined then. I have realised that I can work harder and with more discipline than I had suspected and I found out that I am not very scared of heights. In a way, college has been a long, circuitous and unpredictable journey; the right mix of sweet and bitter.

Everyone has heard a little about life at college, whether through family, friends or films, it is rather difficult to know what it really does involve. However, unlike most, I walked in with a blank canvas and saved myself from a fair share of disappointments. Instead, I was very motivated to try out something new hence there were absolutely no times that I missed home during my initial days. I managed to attend most of the classes without dozing off and I realised that there is always one golden professor who made the classes more interesting. Group recruitments were the most energetic time of the year, as a result of which I showed up for a few auditions and interviews in spite of my inhibitions. By the end of my first year, I had acted in a street play after days of rigorous practices, attended several hour-long discussions outside library, went on a rafting trip and painted my hostel wall. As freeing as it was, stepping away from home, I also began to realise how much I value my family, having conversations over dinner with them and their absolutely unconditional love and support.

And so my first year was an exciting ride. It had its ups and downs—mostly ups—and I didn’t expect it to impact me the way it did, in fact, I wasn’t expecting anything. And that’s the thing about college or anything new you have to do in your life; it impacts you in a completely different way than you can think.

On the onset of my second year, I began to understand more about college. I learned more about the immensely talented people I am surrounded with, about the many opportunities that come and go, and the infinitely many possible directions in which I can direct my life, each with a promising end. Ironically, the more I understood, the more I felt lost. I was filled with self-doubt more than ever before. I questioned everything, resented every opportunity that I had missed and the people around me were constantly changing. It became difficult to figure out what mattered most to me, what marked my time in college and what goals I wanted to work on. To worsen things, my sleeping and eating habits went out for a walk for a long long time as I juggled between academics, theatre and writing.

The thing about college is that at times, you run out of personal space and time. Library was a relief from this constant humdrum. I made it my go-to place to take out some time for myself, whether I was reading a book, catching up with the news or finishing my to-do list for the day. I think it’s not very normal but most of my favourite days were spent in the library, with my heart pounding inside my rib cage after drinking and eating too much coffee and constantly ignoring how heavy my eyes felt at the wee hours of the morning.

Over time, third-year rolled by, and with it, came a whole slew of new responsibilities and expectations. Consequently, I became obsessed with making to-do lists. Not that there were no deadlines, but a list was somehow a better reminder that there was always something to-do. That might not be the most encouraging thing that you’ve heard of late that there is always something to be done, but it is not necessarily a bad thing. It’s easier to have a concrete list of things that you really have to do while your mind wanders off to answer a set of hypothetical, unsettling questions. There were some days when I couldn’t strike off even one item out of my list even after completely exhausting myself, some days when I only got close to fulfilling it half. And then there were the days when things happened that I did not foresee. They were not in the list, but well, they turned into some of the most exciting library breaks.

For the last year, I believed there’d be plenty of time left until there wasn’t. During placements and the post-placement celebrations, time flew. With a rare combination of great luck, personal initiative, a lot of help from people around me, towards the end, it felt that everything was fitting perfectly together like a jigsaw. Well, almost perfectly.

After four years, I still have a lot of questions unanswered and often wonder if I’d be more content had I done certain things differently. Where I am and where I want to be, continue to be two different places. Probably, it is a tad-bit unrealistic to believe that one needs to define all their goals and discover themselves during these four years. Maybe, it is possible to gather all of that wisdom and insight later, when one has had a particularly hard or brilliant year, a year that was not supposed to be good or bad but was one of them nonetheless. Maybe there is no such single eureka moment, but everything falls in place in the long run.But then, who knows?

The things that I have learned and experienced in IIT Roorkee are undoubtedly numerous. If someone had told me that I could perform a self-written piece under a spotlight four years ago, I would have choke slammed him/her for the misguided sense of humour. There were so many things that I never believed I could have done even before starting them. Take, for example, writing four long years of your life in some hundred words; a nightmare yet exciting. And here I am now, almost wrapping it up.

Roorkee has given me what I could not have asked from other institutes—a space away from the city where thoughts can flourish. Here, what you do in college matters more than what you have done before. I have learned to keep faith in the power of working hard and working honestly. I have found people who reminded me to go out on good weather days and shared icecream with me on my bad days. I have seen a sky full of stars and identified all the constellations that I had read about in Geography textbooks. I have seen the Main Building change its colour from dusty brown on rainy days, to bright white at convocation, warm yellow in the middle of the night and rose pink during prom. I have had my share of embarrassing moments, have made a lot of mistakes and received more love than I deserve.

Most importantly, in these four years, I have realised that my learning has only begun. There are wonderful memories behind me and a thousand dreams before me. The only sad part is that, as time marches forward, the charm of walking in front of the Main Building will wear off and the memories will fade away like the last notes of evensong.