I walk through the empty halls of the college, the abandoned basketball court, the silent mess and the lonely common room. It’s the end of the first year and everyone has left for their internship, a handful of us are left as we are the last ones to leave, the hostel feels haunted and there is a deathly silence, we watched our friends leaving, packing their bags, bidding goodbyes, excited, sad and curious all at once.
The lecture halls have done their jobs, they have spent hours witnessing us change, seeing us through hours of knowledge as it was transferred from professors to us through lectures, books, quizzes, cases and assignments, our seniors have done their job preparing us throughout, making us ready for the internship, and the batch is ready as it is eager to put thoughts into actions, all the piles of books in the hostel are testimony to the hours spent in training ourselves for what lay ahead.
Internship is an opportunity more than anything else, it is not a destination but a journey said our wise seniors and we believe them, but the pressure to make it count is evident among few while there are those who just are concerned with the city, and the places to visit and things to see.
While for Freshers it is a peek into the corporate world, for several of us it is a journey back to where we came from, except now we are a bit wiser and are associated with tag, we are the old wine in the new bottle, we are not as excited as the freshers, but for us it is a chance, it is the next step we always wanted and to unlearn and re-learn many things. Talking to seniors what we figured out was that a PPO at the back of the mind creates undue pressure, a lot of times PPOs are not rolled out because of openings not being available in the company, in the end, it is not a test of our calibre, but that does not mean we shy away from giving our best, it’s just that we are not ridden by constant fears as we work on our projects. Curiosity, anxiety and uncertainty are common and is a part of every intern’s journey, how we overcome it and not get bogged down by it decide where the internship will take us.
When we return after two months we will be the ones handing over our Gyaan to the juniors, making them ready for what we are about to see, and so the saga continues, but there is always a Peter Pan that wants to loiter and holds on to the Junior hostel refusing to budge to the senior hostel, wants to hold on to being a student and not work, wants to make friends rather than making money , but the time has come to let go of him and embrace what we have worked so hard for.