When a child is born he see everyone around him happy and laughing, some with tears in their eyes but I always wonder why the child cries when he see all these happy people with over inflated smile on the faces, because may be in the slightest way possible he has already realized that he is born in the world with an "excess baggage" if not "burden" of expectations. As we grow up we slowly but very steadily realize that this burden will only grow along with our age and the only way to deal with it is to get strong enough to carry it forward. Then there are people who are not satisfied with this baggage and add on the burden of aspiring to be an IITian because this is truly worthy of being a burden and not just some excess baggage. As soon as an individual decides he wants to be an IITian unless he has been one of those students who sits on the first seat of the classroom for his entire school life and has never seen an iota of red in his report card he is just being over ambitious because in order to get into IIT you either have to be average5 or as I call it waste some precious years of your life with just one goal and that is to get into IIT. I have seen students completely change as soon as they are tagged as "Preparing for IIT" as if they are involved in some top secret mission to save the planet and are not allowed to share any information with the layman, as if it is a sin to be away from books for more than 2 hours and even bigger sin to be engaged in social events like going out with friends, attending parties and meeting relatives. Is it really worth it to sacrifice all this for something where your chance of succeeding stands at a ratio of 1:200.By now most of you must be thinking of me as just another individual who could not get into IIT and is living the same old story of "Sour Grapes" but this is not true because the things that needed to be sacrificed in order to get into IIT are too precious and close to my heart to be given up and maybe that's the reason why I was the one with that irritating smile in the hospital and not the people around me when I was born. Smile was the only way I could communicate and I did as loud as I could that "I am sorry but I am not going to prepare for IIT". But now let me introduce you to the third and rarest kind, these are the individuals who know exactly what they want and more importantly how to achieve it without sacrificing the other joys of life. These are the distinguished few who are involved in other relationships also apart from just books , do not sacrifice their social life to the extent that they become socio phobic later on in their lives but still manage to get into IIT, and these are the people who truly defines being an IITian and that's the message I wanted to convey with the last 539 words, that it is good to have a goal in life and channelize all your efforts in attaining that goal but it is equally important to keep track of the things you have lost on your way to achieve this goal and is it really worth all the sacrifices you have to make.
It is very important that you have a dream as it gives life a purpose and a meaning but what's more important is not to let that dream take life away from you.
