Four
years has passed and now he was at the end of his time being in that university.
It feels like he has just registered a few months ago. His life could have been
boring and flat if he were rich, clever, and a bit more extroverted—the adjectives
that he always wished for. He now realizes that even the worst things conspire
to color every moment in his life. It is neither black nor white, but it is a random
spectrum that he—or even anybody else—cannot explain.
***
Finding
out that the tuition was too expensive, he went home thinking, ‘who need
college? I can find a job and help my parents instead’. At midday, he got into
his home, threw his bag, and said to his parents that he preferred to work than
study.
“Do
you know what you are doing? Thousands of people out there desperately want to
go to college and you just blew out your chance”, his dad said.
With
a sigh, he explain, “well, we currently do not have ten million, right?”
After
a long debate, he went to his room, threw himself to the bed, and checked his phone. One of his high school friends
texted him, ‘have you registered yet?’
‘No.
I cannot pay the tuition. I will look for a job instead’, he replied.
She
wrote, ‘do not give up man! Here, call this number’, then she gave him a phone
number of an academic directorate in the university he was registering.
After
calling the number, he rushed to the university. At 3 p.m. he got into the
university and met the directorate.
With
a smile on his face, he went home and told his parents that he was a university
student. Little did he know that meeting and knowing the directorate would be one
the best things that could ever happen to him.
Later,
he would be grateful that he was not rich.
***
In
the first days on college, he felt so little and desperate finding out that he
was surrounded by clever people. Moreover, he was so clumsy and shocked for the
different customs, cultures, and mannerism that he had never known before.
His
thought of being inferior materialized into his reality. He was both shallow
and non-exist in his own mind and [probably] in campus life. Miracle, however,
came; that was when strange things happened. His friends started saying that he
was clever. That was quite a motivation to him. If he were really clever, he
could have thought, ‘yes I am’, and then drown into the sea of pride. However,
he was not clever, that was why he felt the pressure when his friends said so.
Being
said ‘clever’ produced a grand responsible for him.
Later,
he would be grateful that he was not clever.
***
He
did not have many friends. Most of the time, he was seen to be alone, waiting
in the gap of classes for hours. Unlike people who could easily get along with
others, he was weird and somehow unsociable.
However,
he was never found weeping. In fact, he enjoyed it. He thought, ‘I am what I
am; and I will be what I must be. I will not be people pleaser’. He was a
nonchalant and thus, he was sure that whoever wanted to be his friend, was his
real friend. That was quite easy. Being a weirdo, moreover, made him really
sensitive so that he could understand other weirdoes.
Later,
he would be grateful that he could graduate because of his weirdness.
***
If
he were rich, clever, and more extroverted; everything would have been too easy.
He knew that good stories are those that have conflicts, ups and downs, turning
point, or whatever the term is. He started having a really weird thought—quite
an obsessive madness, perhaps—that when bad thing happened to him, and even when
he looked so depressed; deep down inside him, there is always a roaring joy.
It
is like in a hospital, as long as there are ups and downs, you are surely
alive; but when it is a straight line, you are dead.