An Outlet

3 July, 2017.

My college reopened today.

Honestly, I didn't know what to expect from today. The feelings I had the last two times I visited college were still dampening my spirit and making me feel less excited. On the other hand, having a comparatively better class (atleast on paper) was making me look forward to go to college.

And I'm happy I didn't keep any expectations from this day cause it went so good!

I got up at 7 AM, got ready and left house by 8 AM. Got into a train, which came a bit late and reached college a minute or two after 9 AM. The first lecture was by one of my favourite teachers in college. This teacher is one of the most practical teacher in my college, which is full of people trying to sweet talk their way through things. She is unfazed by the hype everyone creates for the simplest of things. She is also one of those unbiased teachers who will not let anyone butter her up. Which is why I admire her.

So it was her lecture and she continued with where she left off last academic year. It was a good revision class which lasted till 10:30 AM.

After that, we had a small break. Kristen, another friend and I had brought our snacks with us so we tried finding a place where we could sit and eat peacefully. I have no idea if the others buy their food everyday from outside or they just don't feel hungry. But I never see anyone with their lunch/snack boxes expect Kristen and I (and occasionally someone else). Good for them.

Towards the end of our break, Kristen, yet another friend and I met our previous Math teacher and spoke to her for sometime. All this while, we kept talking about how haughty some of the students were. Now we got to know about some of the faculty as well, courtesy our Math teacher. She is also another teacher who I like for similar reasons as the previously mentioned teacher. But this one is clearly more affected by the treatment meted out to her. I already knew about Ms. Martha and I personally hate some of the things she does but there were others in the mix too. College politics, you won't understand. Sometimes I don't too.

So after the break, my class was combined with Kristen's class so that was an added bonus. We had a visiting faculty come teach us about Consumer Behaviour and it was pretty interesting. Psychology anyways interests me so this was good class for me. The professor used a lot of media to explain his concepts and it was pretty cool. The class would have been slightly better if he didn't continuously look at his notes, as it kind of breaks the flow of the class. Hey, this is the nerd side of me speaking up. Anyways, we're going to be taught by him for the next three weeks and I'm excited for them.

This lecture went on for 2 hours and by 1 PM we had our break. Again, Kristen and I seemed to be the only ones with lunch boxes so we sat in one of the classrooms and had our conversations. I hadn't spoken one on one to her in ages so it felt really nice to do that. We spoke about our respective classrooms, about whom she should be more friendly to, about food, etc. There were a couple of juniors in the room but we didn't care.

Lately, I've been trying to give less shit about others. More about that later.

Another one of my favourite teachers met us. I like this teacher for a slightly different reason. She is the only teacher to acknowledge me, hug me and start up a conversation with me when we meet, even if I am with my friends. It's mostly my friends who get recognised, not me. I'm the invisible one.

Before the lunch break ended, I met with my most favourite teacher because of some marks issue. After sorting that out, I went for the last lecture of the day.

This was a CSR lecture. Now last year, CSR lectures were boring as fuck. We used to have corporates come, give a monotonous lengthy theory lecture, some irrelevant assignment and leave. But this year, things were looking brighter.

Our college has tied up with 4 companies and it's ultimately our job to help them in their CSR initiatives. So the teacher incharge told us something different about CSR. Our class was assigned to a popular spirit company so she gave a basic background about the company. Then she went on to talk about their existing CSR initiatives (which they had started only a year back).

Later on, we were divided into groups of four and we were given a task of coming up with a CSR campaign for the said spirit company, to be followed along certain guidelines. Our group had a healthy discussion about alcohol, especially underage drinking. Then, after some more research and discussion, we came up with a campaign directed towards recycling used alcohol bottles. It was a fun activity.

We had to share our ideas with our teacher as well as our class mates and the best idea could possibly be taken up by the company as a CSR initiative for real. Our teacher really liked our idea (even though our chart was shitty). The ideas of the other two groups who presented were good too. They were based on PUC awareness and creating a alcohol abuse victim society respectively.

I want to talk about this one speaker in my class. She was the girl President in the last academic year and she is apparently liked by many. When I watched her way of speaking and conveying her ideas to an audience, I understood why she had that impact on people. For one, when she speaks, she makes eye contact with the audience, which I horribly struggle with. The main thing that I noticed about her is that she portrays her ideas, regardless of whether they're basic or not, in a way the listener wants to hear them. She emphasises on the points that the listener is looking for. Which makes her ideas stand out. Also, she is very confident when she speaks and I desperately need that confidence in me. I still get jittery feelings when I have to talk to an audience.

The last two groups will have to present it in the next class because of time shortage. But all in all, it was good class. I like this division for now. They crack jokes but they're attentive too.

After college, we spoke for a while and then left. Just when I came out of the campus, I realised that I left my umbrella in the classroom. So I went back, took it and left. And that's when I noticed a difference in me.

A few months ago, I would have left the umbrella in college just so that I won't have to go back, see the same faces again and to save myself from embarrassment. But nowadays I feel like I'm making a constant effort to not be bothered about what people think about me. I do not want to be others' perception of me. I want to be my perception of myself, if that makes any sense. In other words I don't want to behave in a way others expect me to. I want to do what I want. In any case, I'm sure I'm not going to get close to anyone, including myself, if I'm not true to myself. So if people don't want to associate with me for the way I am, I want to be fine with it. And that's what my aim is.

Pretty deep ha?

Day 17 of driving: I will still bang into someone if left alone. My steering skills suck. I requested my sir to let me steer on my own today. The way I was steering made my car move like a snake.

So College Day 1 of 2017 was pretty good. Such a contrast from College Day 1 of 2016.

You remember that day? (refer to chapter 18 July, 2016.)