Year End Review - The Long One

Well, it’s that time of the year again, when retrospection is at an all time high, and people all around are reminiscing about the year that was, what they could have done and what they should have done. I am a big fan of retrospection, as is visible from my previous posts. Hence, I will do my review, but not of the whole year since I have done most of the first half here, but post 2nd semester.
The 3 months off after 2nd semester were the first time I experienced holidays in the true sense of the word. Ever since I remember, I have always had holiday homework or some sort of studying for the next year to do in the summer holidays. But it was also the longest stretch of boredom I have ever endured in my life. Time slowed down. On the academic front, my grades in the 2nd semester were bad. I screwed up big time. When almost everyone else had gone up from their first semester GPA, I had gone down by a huge margin. I traced the cause of this drop to the acquisition of the new laptop combined with a lot of extra-curricular activities in the form of Saarang, Lit Soc and football. This is not to say that I was disappointed with my 2nd semester. It was the best 4 months I have ever had, and much better than 1st semester. I learnt a lot on a lot of new fronts. However, I reminded myself to not go easy on my studies and be more careful in the next semester.
Towards the end of the vacation, I was really eager to get back to college (partly because I was living in a new city, where I didn’t particularly have friends). Oh, and yeah, I learnt driving in the holidays and got my license. I wasn’t particularly thrilled about this (unlike a lot of people I have met) and strangely enough, given a choice between a bike and a car, I prefer a car. This leaves my mother puzzled as she thought the experience of riding a bike with my hair flying in the wind should be thrilling for me. My hair is pretty rough, and the chances of me going at a speed to make it fly in the wind are pretty low, so it’s pretty improbable for me to fulfill that image. Coming back to the end of the holidays, it finally ended and I was back at the college. New semester, new room (right next to friends) and more importantly, no longer first years. I looked forward to …err…… ‘interacting’ with the juniors. In the meanwhile, after a huge debate (at my home, you don’t have arguments, you have debates) I convinced my parents to send my huge keyboard to me so that I can further pursue music. That happened, and I was thrilled and started widening my musical horizon, diverging from classical music. Apart from what I have already said in previous posts, the semester was largely uneventful. Shaastra saw me Vinayak and Advaith come 2nd in the Main Quiz, which was completely unexpected for me. All of us were convinced we wouldn’t even get through the prelims, but somehow we did, and we actually breezed through the semi-finals and the finals (we were 2nd in both by a comfortable margin. The team that won in our semi-final won the final too). A huge chunk of credit for this goes to Advaith, who was insane in the quiz and was responsible for more than half of the points we got. It was his show through and through.
After Shaastra, life was chugging along, till the last LitSoc event of the month came – WM Solo. Now, I had started preparing The Entertainer by Scott Joplin a long time ago, and realized that I can do it in time for this competition. So I started practicing more to put up a decent performance. I knew my chances to actually come 1st, 2nd or 3rd were actually really slim due to the presence of a lot of good instrumentalists, but I wanted to put up a fight. On the day of the event, my fingers froze up, I completely muddled up the opening to the song, and hence, the whole song. I was very disappointed. Glucon’s really awesome rendition of Within Attraction did a lot to bring me back up, but when I returned to my room, it struck me again that I had failed. The reason why this was so important for me was that I always used to think that I screw up something when I go up on stage. This has been true for every time I have gone up on stage, barring last year’s WM Group performance (for which we had practised for a month). I wanted to remove that burden from my head, but not only did it stay, it grew heavier. I still need to figure out a way around this stage fright of mine. I figure it is going to need a lot of practice, and I hope I am up for it.
After the semester, I went on a holiday to Munnar with my friends, where I had a blast. It was 3 days of fun. Also, since I was a Mallu, I was the one who did all the talking and planning, so I had fun doing that too. In the end, it was time and money spent in the best possible way. After Munnar, I went to my grandparents’ place and a lot of travelling ensued, the boring details of which I will not force you to endure.

So how has been my life this past one year? Pretty good, I say. To summarize it -

Highs:

Redemption in grades in 3rd semester. I got what I wanted at the beginning of the semester.
Setting up my keyboard and playing it in my room the day I got it.
SMQ.
Munnar trip.

Lows:

Fights with people that I shouldn’t have had.
WM Solo.
Liverpool’s performance in the league.

Resolutions for next year -

Try not to be egoistic.
Don’t lose the grip on studies.
Play a lot more music.
Improve my quizzing skills by exploiting Wikipedia and revive my lost reading habit.
Watch still more movies.
Watch more football, and try to improve my skill on the field.
Read Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy again.

So I hope you had a Merry X’mas and that you have an awesome New Year and success in sticking to your resolutions, atleast till the first month gets over.