An Outlet: Part 2

1 December, 2017.

Birthday Month! Yay!

Nah, I'm not really one of those who keeps reminding people when their birthday is or has a very public birthday countdown. But recently, I've realised that I liked having to call one day as my own, not expect anything but feel really special.

I don't know if it is because of the month but I have been in a really good mood today.

Mom woke me up at 6:30AM but I was really sleepy so I ditched my plan of going early to college today. Why early you ask? Because of Career Day preparations.

We had a management lecture and I answered quite a lot in class. I have a faint feeling that Mr. Strict professor (the one who seems to give me a lot of chances) looked happy as well. I think I'm getting my motivation back. Then we had Law where we learnt about the Salomon vs Salomon case. I'm loving this new practical cases based Law lectures so that was a plus. Then we had an Accounts lecture. I'll admit that I hadn't been paying much attention during Accounts lectures and thus didn't know much about the current chapter. But today I got a hang of it. I was so content!

I think somewhere in the back of my mind, I'm still super happy about the fact that I my parents feel proud of me.

After Accounts, there was a confusion whether my class had a lecture or not considering the professor- who was originally supposed to take the lecture- was out vacationing in Netherlands. I met Paul and we decided to go to the canteen instead.

We spoke a lot. I don't know how I've become so comfortable with him but we shared a lot of things during lunch. I spoke about a lot of my problems/frustrations I was facing. He spoke about how he felt happy about how his life is going. He did mention an argument with the President but that was a minor issue. I learnt that we have different opinions on Indian clothes (I love them but he doesn't own a single piece of Indian clothing). He also told me about his embarassing clubbing scene where he took a mirrored selfie on the dance floor because his then girlfriend wanted to see OOTN. We spoke about horror stories for a bit. In general we were having a good time. I think one of the guys in college thinks there is something going on between us cause he has recently started coming back to college and has seen us together on multiple occasions. Idgaf tho.

Our conversation then went on to more dark topics. Rape. I am honestly completely terrified of this aspect of humanity. I told him that and inturn he expressed his general anger over the fact that we have to constantly live under fear of being violated in the first place. We spoke about how ridiculous the 'sati' practice was.

While we were on this topic, I told him about this scary/careless incident I had a couple of months back. I don't think I've documented that here so I'll do so now.

One late evening, after meeting up with Kristen and Venus, I was getting really late to go back home. It was a peak time so I wasn't getting a single ride. After a lot of time, one driver beckoned me over and agreed to take to me to the station. The only issue was that he already had a couple as passengers. The couple didn't look that decent to me but I was desperate to get home on time so I just went in. Somehow in the confusion I landed up sitting between them. I didn't care. It was still taking us a lot of time and at one point the driver took an unfamiliar route. I still didn't care. Then when we rejoined the main road, the couple wanted to get off. We hadn't reached the station yet. I didn't question and let them leave. Then when I (finally) reached the station, I was in such a hurry that I think I paid twice the money I was supposed to pay. It was only after I caught the train that I realised how dangerous that situation could have been. I got into a vehicle with strangers who could have done anything to me. The driver took me through an unknown road and I couldn've landed up anywhere. The fact that I overpaid him added to all this and I had a break down on that crowded train. I had been so irresponsible. Anything could've happened to me.

I haven't told this to my family and I think I might keep it that way.

Coming back to today.

Later, I had to go my Career Day meeting 1 and 2. Meeting 1 wrapped up quickly but the one with Ms. Paula took A LOT of time. In the beginning of meeting 2, one obnoxious post-graduate student came up to us and rudely went "Can you people not talk, we're trying to make an important video here" or something like that and Ms. Paula got super pissed. She swore to "fuck his life over". Lol, I had never seen her so pissed where she didn't mind cussing in front of students. But yeah, serves them right. Just because these PG students had a 'business to run' didn't automatically make them more important than us.

Anyways, Career Day Meeting started at 2:30PM and went on till 7PM. Yep, I told you it was a long ass meeting. We had to prep and be fully prepared for tomorrow's event.

This preparation included making several presentations, preparing a playlist, getting our art work done (the artist girl actually drew the moon, mars, an astronaut, a spaceship and stars on the huge glass wall of the classroom assigned to us. It looked so good!), checking if we got all the materials we required for our activities, making chits for a particular activity, making a final check list, etc. In the middle of all this we learnt that our Dean and her husband really liked one of our reports. It felt really nice to get a praise for once when everyone else seemed to think our club is dead.

My Dad sent me couple of really encouraging E-mails and I felt really emotional when I read them.

Dear Ava,

I am proud of you for this continued success. Your sincerity and hard work has paid off once again. This should give you confidence and increase the belief within you that you are an achiever. You should engage in something which interests you and what you enjoy doing. Outside feedback is important as a reality check if things are seen the way you want them to be seen. But do not judge your performance solely based on outside feedback. Most important is inner happiness and satisfaction. Any negative feedback should only alert you to pause and to think how you can improve your approach. 

Please do not get disheartend by comments such as "......... is a failure". 

Cheers,

Always with you,
Dad.

After getting another E-mail that I'm receiving another award for my contribution to my club WORD, I got another Email from him:

Dear Ava,

Congrats once again. See..... what did I tell you. Your contribution in word has been recognized. The comment that you overheard is to be ignored. Be positive but be ready to take on criticism - but only for enabling improvement. 

Always with you
Baba

I love my dad.

After coming back home, I saw that my first online purchases had finally arrived! The packaging was kind of disappointing. The shoes fit me well but I can tell that they're going to give me some serious shoe bite. They looked good on me tho. The bag turned out to be much smaller than I expected and the material didn't match my expectations. It is a cute looking bag tho. I might still get some use out of it.

At night, I saw the 7th episode of Riverdale. I don't think I liked the way they told three different stories tho. Point of views are better to read than see.

Overall I had a very happy day. I haven't that in a while so cheers to that.

Yay!