What do you want to be?

While I was in my 10th standard, almost everyone I met wanted to know what I wanted to be. This question always perplexed me. From the lens of a fifteen year kid who was not yet sure of the changes which awaited in the near future, this question gave me nightmares.

I would constantly sit by the mirror and ask myself, what actually would be my answer. My friends always had fancy answers at their disposal. They would confidently chirp whenever any one asked about it. What amused me most was, my friend who had no inkling to study Biology wanted to be a doctor and another friend who detested the idea of even cooking noodles, wanted to be a chef!

But whenever they spoke about their wishes, they would always sound confident. And there I was, fumbling for words which refused to escape my lips.

It was not until I entered Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya to do my plus two, I found my voice. The teachers there have a different way of viewing life. For the first time, I no longer felt the classroom environment suffocating. The formal, tense environment of classrooms was replaced by charged, interactive sessions. Learning became fun. We had classes underneath trees, in playgrounds. The idea of classroom was not limited to the four concrete walls which at times is limiting.

Rather than asking what we wanted to be, they always encouraged us to learn being ourselves first. The idea of becoming an individual and not a crowd. The whole campus was left to our care. Students there tend to plants, look after the cleanliness of the campus, clean their hostels. They say, once a Navodayan, always a Navodayan. And I now know what it exactly hinted at. It's been years since I left J. N.V, but the spirit is still the same.

Rather than learning to believe what I wanted to be, it taught me to be myself first, and that has been the best thing that ever happened to me. For everyone they taught us to believe is one of a kind.