Yeah a pretty long and heavy title but so is the reason behind it. As a 4 year old I always saw my father take a laptop bag leave early in the morning and come back late in the evening. When I saw my father’s office for the first time I thought of him as the richest man in the world. He always enjoyed building things and I enjoyed the fact that he was getting paid for doing what he loves, the office he worked in and the fact that he was the only earning man in the family. Since then he was my ‘ONLY’ hero. He is still my ‘ONLY’ hero and I always wanted to have a life like him. The formal attire, the tall building with a kick-ass view, the desk, the parties, the office gossip and obviously the money. So i went for it after graduating I got my first job as a Risk Analyst in one of the big four of the world Ernst and Young i.e. EY.
It took me 2 weeks to figure out what all services the company offers, who is who and what exactly I was suppose to do. To be honest I think half of the people still don’t know what they do in EY. But these one and a half years in EY were the best year in my life. Not only because I was living my childhood dream but also because these years made me realize that dreams change when you grow up. Yes after experiencing the corporate galore I realized that as a child you want a toy in your fantasy land but as grown up you want direction which my childhood dream lacked. The life in EY is a perfect example of how an ideal ‘settled’ life should be. But what I wanted was to never settle. Carve my own direction and walk on it. And I would never had the courage to do so if it wasn’t for EY. So all that crap about how experiences change you. Believe it or not all of them are true!
My life at EY was perfect according to everyone I knew, my parents, friends, relatives, colleagues and also the people who stalked me on Facebook. And why it shouldn’t be i was getting paid well, I partied every weekend, I was working with my best friend, I was getting to travel and above that I wasn’t even a part of politics like other people. So why wasn’t it perfect for me? Because that life lacked purpose and it was never mine. When I say that it was never mine I meant that I would never be able to make it my own. Or as Harvey Spectre (from Suits) would say “have my name on the door”. Working there made me realize that I would be stuck and caught in that rat race for the rest of my life. Instead why not find my new path. So I did and found Teach for India (TFI). This is what I meant when I speak about purpose. I decided to be a 2016 Teach for India Fellow in Pune.
As normal people I myself wasn’t sure about this decision until the full assessment day and the idea which me and my friends were thinking about started to look quite achievable. So there I was from one day crying about the fact that how I don’t see growth and development in the firm to the next day where I have decided to go in a sector which is close to my heart – Education. There it was me finding my direction with a purpose. But everything comes with a price.And here at risk were so many things like “What if the idea doesnt work?”, “Will I be able to donate time to this during my fellowship?”, “How will you live alone and manage your expenses in such a low salary?” (This one coming from my parents. Obviously!), “What after this fellowship?”, “Why you want to leave your settled life?” and all that which anyone making a drastic shift or I should say any one who decides not to follow the normal course of life would face.
But what exactly are all these question. These are fears hidden inside ones mind of not being successful or fear of not making enough money like your friends or the fear of not being able to travel to foreign destinations and post them on Facebook. So technically the fear of failing prevents you from achieving your success. And that’s when you have to become a stubborn bitch in front of this fear and believe in what you really want to do. Yes its true that with TFI that my life will change I will no longer have the comfort of partying, shopping, travelling and all the things I could do before but the only reason a sane person would give up these things only because she believed in something which was more important that all these things. Yes it sounds like bullshit to most of the people and may be I’m a loser who couldn’t survive the corporate world but the fact that I have found my direction with so much of passion itself makes me the biggest winner. I had an opportunity to join TFI before I started working in EY and I chose EY because I wanted to follow my childhood dream. I couldn’t let this opportunity of joining TFI go away again when I know that this will help me achieve my 20’s dream. I’m not sure whether things will turn out the way I want it to but I know for sure that I will be an evolved person after these two years. Till then I will keep working on my 20’s direction until I find a new or may be a better one.
But one thing is for sure I won’t damn settle!
TheSinghStory 