Privileges and Failure

I am not old enough to give life lessons, but I am old enough to think about things that happened with me in the past and what I think and what I learned from them in retrospect.

I have failed multiple times, but my privilege was there to back me up. My 10th std. was a pivotal moment in the last decade, I didn't score enough in the boards to get science with CS, had to move to Tamil Nadu where my father lived, didn't face any problems during the admission, just got what I wanted easily, this was just a start but, it was a new phase in life, new friends who happened to be great, new school, new teachers and everything was just like a small family there, closely connected.

I was very happy with the change, I had my room and all that's some King shit boi. I liked how everything turned out to be, started loving subjects I hated till 10th. Things were good, but all good things have to come to an end. The end was 2017, the end of my high school life. I failed miserably in all the entrance exams I gave. My ideology was taken from a lot of random people on the internet who said that IIT's are not everything, you can achieve great things in other places too. I took the entrance exams lightly and eventually took admission in an Engg. college which was the exam centre of one of my entrance exams.

The problem was, my whole concept of achieving success was revolving around "IIT is not important hard work matters", which is kinda false on multiple levels.

I got admission to an engg college without much hassle, I was against taking a drop because my goals weren't strong enough to back that decision. So I took the engineering route. 3 years went by in a flash, I developed some hobbies and none of them was related to my educational background, I took CS and didn't code much till the 5th semester, after that a 100 days of coding event helped me developed a habit of coding regularly.

My journey wasn't so rough, but some of my close friends had some tough times which helped me understand emotions and I've been quite empathetic since 2017. I can relate to problems faced by people, some people trust me with their problems, and after hearing a few, I realised most of us go through the same problems daily. I was privileged enough to not go through most of the problems some of my close friends faced, be it money or the loss of a close one, I didn't go through any such problem during my engineering days, and being with them in their tough times helped me to stay grounded.

The last year of my engineering degree was completely online, I was lucky to have unlimited internet, developed a habit of coding, learnt a new language and started developing web applications. I couldn't have done it without this unlimited internet, all the little knowledge of certain topics that I have is because of the privilege of unlimited internet.

But what is the point I am trying to make? It's just that when we compare our journey with someone, we see the result and not the privileges that have helped someone reach that goal, Privilege alone does not take you to new levels, you have to put in efforts, and when we suffer from something like imposter syndrome, or when we compare ourself with other we should also keep in mind, hard work alone won't take someone somewhere, a Lil bit of luck and some privileges are also involved, and the chances of being lucky increases with the amount of effort you put in.

For example person A has great knowledge of a subject but doesn't put much effort into the job search, Person B has limited knowledge of a subject but puts a lot of effort in the job search, whose chances of getting lucky are higher?

As the saying goes, talent can only take you so far...In my opinion, Privilege can only take you so far, you must know how to convert that privilege to your advantage, I learned it the hard way, I took most of the things for granted, in retrospect all I feel is 'where did my 3 years of engineering go?', could have made better use of it, but there is a reason why we call it the past, can't be changed, looking forward from now on.

P.S I know many underprivileged people have achieved great things in life, but apart from them being separated from basic privileges of life, I would like to know more about how their day looked like, which will give me some good data say something about it. Someone reciting their day on television is most of the times well-crafted sentences for publicity, I would like to spend time with someone to understand more about underprivileged people achieving great heights.

I compared my privileges to people with whom I studied and lived; which gave me an idea to write about it.

Let me know if something doesn't make sense, would love to have a chat about it.

thanks :)