The Gen Y Conundrum

I am a Millennial. Generation Y. Born between the birth of AIDS and 9/11, give or take. They call us "the Global Generation." We are known for our entitlement and narcissism. Some say it's because we're the first generation where every kid gets a trophy just for showing up. Others think it's because social media allows us to post every time we sneeze or have a sandwich for all the world to see. But it seems that our one defining trait is our ability to fight.

We fight with our neighborhood aunties, who keep comparing our Engineering exam scores with the 10th standard scores of the kid next door.

We fight with uncles at social gatherings who keep asking us "so, what next?". We fight with our relatives according to whom an alternate career option means Chemical Engineering.

We fight with a random stranger on Facebook who doesn't "agree" with our opinion.

We fight with with our moms who think nobody will marry us if our rotis are not round.

We fight with our cousins over the choice of cartoon shows. But honestly, SWAT CATS will win over Ninja Hattori any damn day!

We fight with the popular opinion of being politically aware and active.

We fight to have a conversation with our parents. Despite the clashes of ideas. We crib about the widening generation gap. Yet we cringe at our parents' WhatsApp presence.

We fight with our patience and sit through an episode of Balika Vadhu and Saraswati Chandra because our moms think we don't spend much time with them.

We fight with our monthly budget to make enough room in order to buy a Vero Moda dress.

We fight for percentiles. And then we try our hardest not to fight during GDs! :D

There's always a fight between motivation and laziness when it comes to getting up early in the morning and going for a jog. Mostly, laziness wins.

We flaunt our confidence, but the moment we're in a social event, we chicken out because everything is "awkward" for us.

We fight with our dreams and ambitions in order to make a realistic yet satisfying future for ourselves.

We fight with our tears and broken hearts just to appear "normal" the moment we enter our house. Shh... parents must never know!

We fight against the strata of society which doesn't understand why we update our Facebook status to "Winter is coming!" in the middle of a blistering summer!

But we fight. We struggle every day. Just to survive. We may give in, we may give up, but we survive. To make a place for us in this world. And that's what makes this generation special. :)

PS: Credits to American Horror Story for the first paragraph :)

CATing the Bell

Because I blogged about the placement day too.

Being drastically under-prepared, 29th october seemed like a fairly normal day. Dad kept asking me to prepare as hard as I can for CAT. I said I was having problems certain kind of questions in quant section. On insisting, I showed some to dad for he was always an ace at math. He came, he saw, he tried and then said "theek hai, jitna hota hai utna solve karke aana."

I thought I was possibly the most unprepared CAT aspirant, until Nitin called. We both agreed on "strong beer peekar sabhi sections strong ho jaate hai." The test center was located at possibly the most interior corner of Ahmedabad. Suddenly, I felt good about the location of my college. A minute or two past the reporting time, we were split according to our respective exam center codes. What happened next was a series of secutrity checks, just one less than me saying "aunty, please stop groping me". We were then escorted to our respective computers by a bunch of not-so-pretty looking invigilators. I understand the prometric ID card, but what was up with the horrendous waist coat like jackets? Most of them spoke english in a made up accent. I looked at the system clock there was another one hour to kill before we could start the test. And azeetees, we were having difficulties logging into the system. The invigilator (ohbtw, there were around 10 of them in our room) tried multiple times but wouldn't happen. I looked to my left and saw a guy who was kind of staring at my computer screen. On striking up a conversation, I came to know that the guy was also an engineering student who got placed in the same company as I was. Normally, you'd go 'OMGWTF' at the chances of something like this happening. But then, 80% of the CAT aspirants are either engineers or engineering students and TCS recruits fuck loads of people. (if you're a true CAT aspirant, you'd be thinking about the actualy the probability of the event right now) But still, for a moment I OMG'd. To kill time, we talked and talked and talked a little more. Till one of the invigilator politely asked us to keep quiet. I'm pretty sure in her mind she'd be going "Shut the fuck up, bitches!". I observed some students in the room and wondered if they were as unprepared as me. I saw a guy who was constantly yawning. Didn't care to think why. A girl who was sleeping on the keyboard. After which I thought I should stop. Panic set in when I realised my phone is with dad. I almost imagined him going through my inbox which to be honest made me slightly uncomfortable. But then he's Dad! He wouldn't even care. Test started. We were first shown a 15 min test tutorial. A somewhat intense moment for me and as always a foolish song got stuck in my head. This time it was 'ooh la la ooh la la' from The Dirty Picture and just when I was about to click "start test" I went in my mind "Dude, vidya balan is actually busty!". test started. test ended before I could know it. All in all, I was pretty happy with the performance I'd put up. (no pun)
I waved Avanit a goodbye and saw my Dad waiting for me. Normal exchange of words happened. While returning back home, I kept thinking about the replies I was going to give to my relatives who'd ask "Beta, CAT kaisa raha?"
I haz a sad because a cat picture on a CAT blogpost is so fucking obvious.