Captain Galifrey to the Rescue

So, I consider myself to be a pretty strong person who doesn’t need to show weak emotions in front of other people because that is somehow a display of strength. This year taught me otherwise, but I’m afraid the lesson isn’t ingrained fully in my head. I had my 12th board exams this year (the final exams you give in schools in India). I had my study-pressure because ‘this is your final chance to go to a big college and get a big job with a big salary’, but this was nothing new. What really hurt my brain was the thought of going to college. No, it wasn’t anxiety of getting to know new people, it was money. I belong to a pretty well of upper-middle class kinda family in India. My parents have struggled hard to get here and I couldn’t be more proud of them. So, just like my hardworking and ambitious parents, I decided to apply abroad, specifically, the UK. Why? Because I saw a youtube video of an acapella group of some hot guys from Oxford. That’s how my dream of studying in the world’s best uni began. That was 4 years ago. When the time came; I applied; got rejected; didn’t get fazed. Failure is common and didn’t affect me at all. What really caught me off guard was the acceptance letter from other GREAT colleges/unis like King’s and Warwick. I slowly fell in love with King’s and made friends on a ‘BA History+other subjects’ chat group. It wasn’t until I looked at the fees and accommodation rent pages of their website that it dawned on me that we don’t have the money. We don’t have the money and we don’t have any scholarships. Ergo, I can not study abroad. Although, I kept imagining scenarios of me studying in a gothic cathedral type building, deep down it started to set. My mother advised me to apply to the National University of Singapore because it’s also a pretty good university for history. And, it was on that fated day, in the middle of my board exams, as I was going through the documents upon documents required to be sent to Singapore within a week, while my brain kept converting GBP to INR and SGD to INR that I snapped. I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t take the boiling feeling in my stomach as I opened a university’s website, or the boiling feeling in my stomach as I talked about colleges to my friends, or the boiling feeling of my stomach as I woke up every fucking morning thinking about converting money into my currency which was lower than the depths of the oceans and my dream of studying in a high profile university flying away from the clouds into space.

I didn’t cry,

I walked up to my mom and said ‘I can’t take it. My mind is going to break.’ She looked at me from her kadhai and tried to get me to explain but I broke down and I cried and cried and cried. She sent me to my papa in his office attached to our home. He saw me and smiled and gently asked my mother to go. And then he got me to explain. I just said that I will go crazy and I can’t take this. How will we ever pay for my education abroad if it will even be there because there are no scholarships that apply to me? He said a lot of things. That he is there and he is the one who has to think about it. He has a lot of projects and he manages them in such a way that he is able to take on spare projects on the side if needed. But, the most important thing that he said to me was ‘You are not a liability. What are you thinking?’, and just laughed. I still choked on my tears but they were not there anymore. I walked back into my room, still shivering, heaving , and letting out tears. But, it was over.

It’s been about 3 months since that. I got into University College, London, and applied for a scholarship that could potentially half my tuition fee. But, it’s not going to happen. The living costs and the other half of the fee add up to an unseemly amount with too many zeroes at the end. I have got admission in Lady Sri Ram. Quite literally the best college for humanities in India. Again, with everything in my life, it wasn’t my first choice. I got on a waiting list for St. Stephen’s (another equally good college, but also co’ed). Haven’t heard back from NUS (probably the end of the month), and will not hear from UCL till August. So yeah, I will be going to my 6th choice. Do I really have a problem with my college? No. I just didn’t get where I wanted to be, or the next, or the next, or the next. Money.

I AM ALIVE