My Musings, Your Perusing

PACE : Part I

Hello, again! Today, I'm gonna post something that would always be a big and a lovely part of my life. And that is my journey of two years. PACE was the name of my coaching class that I had taken for the last couple of years. I had already explained some things that happen only in India In Physics: From Foe to Friend. So, if you get stuck at something or wonder about anything, you can go back there or comment down in the comments' section. I hope you'll enjoy this!

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I had secured good marks in my tenth grade which is really important in India for further studies as we get into good colleges only on the basis of marks and nothing else. Well, sad but it is.

Engineering is one of the streams that everyone is dreaming of. In India, if anyone is an engineer, he/she is by default a smart person and won't have to struggle much to get a job. Getting a job with decent salary pay is what almost everyone aims for in India.

Every parent wants their child to ace in Life. Parents want their child to live a good future without putting much of a fight and there's nothing wrong in that. But what they think is they will lead a great life only by becoming a doctor or an engineer. They need to understand that true happiness and peace of mind lies in letting them do what they want. Earning is not a sole aim of our lives. I don't deny the fact that we need money in order to sustain in this competitive world but what is the use of that pieces of papers which are not earned by giving our whole heart into the work?

Many children want to be a cricketer, a footballer, an athlete, a professor, a gym instructor, a writer, an actor, a singer, and the list just goes on...But no, you aren't allowed to pursue that directly. First, get a decent degree and only then opt for it if you have time. Is this right? Those four-five years are wasted just because we are in need of a degree as a backup. But what if, we utilise that time-span in doing something more productive in what we like to do? I agree we won't have a backup plan but I also believe that if you love doing a thing and if you put your whole heart into it, if you do it passionately, you are meant to be successful. No one's gonna stop you from reaching at the peak of that mountain you have been climbing on since you were a kid.

But I originally wanted to become an engineer. I love to mess up with machines, break and join the parts. I was decent in literature, back in school. I wouldn't say I was good because I had many friends who were so much better than me. I loved reading a lot, initially. I also wrote some poems, not that good though. But, I tried and I was happy with the results, every time.

I had got good marks in my tenth grade and since everyone who wants to go to engineering stream is made to believe that good classes will assure you admission into IITs. It's not totally false as those who really work hard get into them. Not that I didn't, it's just that I should have worked a little harder.

It all started when in a lecture at school, one of my classmates sat beside me, on the first bench. Our teacher had given us a free lecture and she was talking to us while others were busy amongst themselves. That is the day when I came to know about IITs, JEE, blah, blah, blah! I started to talk to that guy often and we became really good friends. His mother provided us with all the necessary information and soon my parents got me admitted to PACE, one of the best classes for JEE in Mumbai. The two years demanded about a whooping amount of 400,000. But they were so worth it!

I used to stay an-hour-journey-by-train away from the classes. And it was an integrated course, meaning there wasn't any need for me to attend the college. We used to go just for practical. My lectures were scheduled from seven in the morning to one in the noon for the first year. I used to wake up sharp at 4, when most of my other friends used to sleep, LOL. My train time was of 5:33 AM so I anyhow, had to leave by 5.

I used to reach a little early at my college, so little early that I would be the first student to reach there. And it was located deep inside, away from the chaos of traffic on roads, shops and all. But it would feel really amazing there, cold and calm. I would so love being there.

I had two of my classmates of school with me so I hadn't needed to worry much about new people. I had company, thankfully. Eventually, I started to talk to the new ones, got to know them, how smart they all were. I made some new friends as well as judged others as well.

There was this pair in my class, a girl and a boy. They used to come hand in hand sometimes, or laughing and joking, which made us all to mistake them as a couple. And trust me, the girl was very pretty, beautiful! For almost two to three months their image was of a couple in everyone's mind.

There was this system in PACE that after every major test which was abbreviated as MT, the students were divided according to the marks, not that anyone liked it. So after the first or second MT, I was seated in a class with no similar-looking person around me. There were some whom I had seen but never talked. The most surprising thing was in that class there were only three girls and rest about sixty were guys. So this pretty girl happens to approach me to ask whether she can sit with me as her state was perfectly same as mine. I of course said yes, as I knew her a little as compared to the others.

In the break we met that guy who would always be with her and that was when I was made to realise that they were not a couple but first cousins. They shared a good belly laugh when I informed them that we all referred them to as a couple. From that day, our friendship just grew as after that, we were always together. We started to know each other, the likes, dislikes, differences, family, and everything.

From the very start, I had been blessed with good friends, may it be school, classes, college, anything. I always had great friends to which I'm really grateful to God.

Those two were among one of the richest families but never, never they would show it off! They would always be there to help me or console me whenever I would cry over not getting good marks. They were the most down-to-Earth people I had ever met. Not once did they show or made evident that they were much richer than me or had standards much higher than I did.

After few months, one day a guy came and sat behind us. There was a classmate of ours who would always bore us with his talks and that new guy was his friend. Initially, we didn't talk. And my beautiful friend was always shy of talking to new people so something happened and I initiated the talk with the new guy. And soon, in few days he had become our new good friend.

It was like, we three started to hang out, in PACE of course as whenever they would ask me to go out I would straightaway say no like a killjoy I was, giving the actual reason of studies. The new guy was a scholar in Maths while my beautiful friend and I would find chemistry easy and her brother would enjoy physics *scrunches the nose*.

In the first year, I had stayed back almost every day and have reached home by ten in the night. There would be so many scholar students, who would stay back and study sincerely, work hard which really motivated me to keep doing it, keep studying. There were doubt rooms allotted to the ones who wished to stay back. Almost everyone in the room would study with the earphones plugged and focus in the books to which I also soon got comfortable with.

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People, I had written it as just one document. So, I felt that it would be too long to post it at once. Ergo, I decided to split it in two. This is part 1 while in the next few days I would post part 2. I have so much more to tell you guys! Stay tuned to know more! I hope y'all enjoyed.