College Life != Best Years of Your Life

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Everyone, literally everyone you meet will tell you that your undergrad will be the best 3 or 4 years of your life, and there will be nothing like it again. Those of us who are yet to go to college eagerly look forward to it, and those of us who have completed our undergrad go down the staircase of memories and nostalgia.

Having completed my engineering about three years ago, I can certify the notion that college life indeed is a lot of fun. You have independence but don't have to worry about the realities of life yet. Not quite yet. I myself have had a wonderful four years filled with Maggi, cheese garlic naan, lots of cheap alcohol in beach shacks and one particularly shady bar, road trips, and conversations on footpaths that end only when the sun shines at you.

But let's just stop here and think, if what everyone claims with such gusto is actually true, and estimating that our average lifespan is about 80 and college ends at roughly 21, that means the best part of our lives gets over within roughly the first quarter of our lives. And that is a preposterously morbid thought. If the best part of my life is what am I supposed to be doing for the next three-quarters of my life. I mean say you went to see a test cricket match and the first team gets all out in a mere 20 overs, will you sit there and see the whole match? Of course not! You will get up and leave!

So, in all fairness, college is awesome and everything, and yeah you have a lot of fun, you make friends for a lifetime, maybe meet the love of your life and maybe you guys are too young and the two of you screw it up, haha, me no way! And that is where I am, three years out of college, on the second foot fracture, the other leg this time. But I for one refuse to believe that the "best years" of my life are behind me.


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