Degrees Without Direction: The College Gate
The college gate is painted a tired blue now. It used to feel larger.
I stand outside it again, not entering. Just watching.
A group of students rush past me, laughing, arguing about attendance and internal marks. One of them holds a file too tightly, as if it might escape. I recognize that grip. I used to hold my future like that.
Inside, the guard barely looks up. He never did.
I had once believed that crossing this gate meant something permanent. That it would turn me into someone else. Someone certain.
A horn blares behind me. I step aside. The moment breaks, but not completely. It lingers, like something unfinished.
Corridor on the Second Floor
There was a corridor on the second floor. Long, echoing, always slightly dusty.
I used to walk there with Raghav.
“Placement season will fix everything,” he had said once, leaning against the railing.
He said it casually. As if careers were scheduled events. As if clarity had a date.
I nodded. Everyone nodded in those days.
We spoke about packages, cities, roles we didn’t fully understand. We practiced confidence like a language we were still learning.
A professor walked past us once and paused.
“You all seem very sure,” he said, smiling faintly.
We laughed. It felt like a compliment then.
Now, I am not sure what he meant.
The tea stall outside the college still smells the same.
Strong tea. Burnt sugar. Damp wood.
I step closer, almost without thinking. The vendor looks older, or maybe I do.
“Same?” he asks.
I nod.
He pours without waiting for more words. The glass is too hot to hold for long. I shift it between fingers.
Someone behind me says, “Bhaiya, one without sugar.”
That used to be Meera’s line.
She had joined our group late. Quiet at first. Then suddenly everywhere.
We once sat here after an exam we all thought we had failed.
“I don’t even know why I chose this course,” she said, staring into her tea.
No one replied immediately.
It felt like a forbidden sentence. One that could undo everything if spoken too often.
“I’ll figure it out,” she added quickly.
We all said that. Often.
Not because we believed it. Because we needed to.
A bike passes too close. The sound pulls me back.
The tea is finished. I don’t remember drinking it.
I look again at the college gate.
It doesn’t promise anything now. It simply exists.
Degrees Without Direction: Degree in a Folder
At home, my degree is in a folder. Neatly kept.
My father had framed the mark sheet for a while. It hung in the living room.
Guests would glance at it. Some would ask questions.
“What next?” they would say, smiling.
I always had an answer ready.
MBA. Job. Maybe abroad.
The answers changed depending on who asked.
The certainty stayed in my voice.
Later, in my room, the answers felt heavier.
Not wrong. Just borrowed.
There was a classroom on the ground floor where the fan never worked properly.
It made a clicking sound. Rhythmic. Distracting.
One afternoon, during a lecture no one followed, Raghav leaned over.
“What if this is it?” he whispered.
I turned to him. “What?”
“This. Classes, degree, job. Done.”
He wasn’t joking.
I remember looking at the board, then back at him.
“It can’t be,” I said.
But I didn’t explain why.
The fan kept clicking.
The present feels quieter than those days. Not calmer. Just less noisy.
Messages have slowed. Groups are silent.
Raghav works in a city I have never visited. His updates are brief. Numbers, mostly.
Meera moved somewhere south. I heard she switched fields entirely.
No one said how.
Or when.
Or why.
We don’t ask each other those questions anymore.
A Poster on the Wall
I walk a little closer to the college gate now.
A poster is stuck on the wall beside it. Coaching classes. Government exams. Guaranteed success.
The faces on the poster look confident. Almost rehearsed.
I wonder if they feel it too.
This pause. This gap.
This space between finishing something and not knowing what begins next.
Degrees Without Direction is not loud. It doesn’t announce itself.
It sits quietly in rooms. In conversations that end too quickly. In plans that remain flexible for too long.
The library used to be my escape.
Cool air. Wooden tables. The soft thud of books closing.
I rarely studied there.
I watched people instead.
Some looked certain. Focused. Already somewhere ahead.
Others stared at pages without turning them.
I belonged to neither group fully.
One evening, Meera sat across from me.
“Do you ever feel like we’re just moving because everyone else is?” she asked.
I shrugged.
It felt easier than answering.
She smiled slightly. “That’s not a no.”
A bell rings from inside the college.
For a second, my body responds automatically. As if I am late.
The instinct surprises me.
Some rhythms stay, even when their meaning fades.
At dinner, my mother asks gently, “Any updates?”
I shake my head.
She doesn’t press.
The silence that follows is careful. Not empty. Just measured.
My father nods slowly, as if processing something unsaid.
“We’ll see,” he says.
It is not advice. Not reassurance either.
Just a placeholder.
Degrees Without Direction: The Farewell Day
There was a farewell day.
Photos. Speeches. Promises to stay in touch.
We stood near the college gate then too.
Raghav said, “This is where it begins.”
Meera laughed. “Or ends.”
We didn’t know which one to believe.
So we chose neither.
We took pictures instead.
Now, standing here again, I notice the details I missed before.
The cracks near the base of the wall.
The faded letters of the college name.
The way people enter without looking up.
It no longer feels like a threshold.
More like a place people pass through.
Career confusion after graduation does not arrive suddenly.
It grows slowly. Between expectations and experience.
Between what we studied and what we understood.
Exactly between what we say and what we hesitate to admit.
Degrees Without Direction is not about being lost entirely.
It is about partial clarity. Fragments of intention.
About knowing some things, but not enough to move.
A student stops near the gate, checking his phone.
He looks unsure for a moment.
Then someone calls his name from inside.
He turns immediately and walks in.
The hesitation disappears.
Or hides.
I stay where I am.
Not outside. Not inside.
Just near the gate.
The blue paint catches the light differently now.
It doesn’t look tired.
Just worn from use.
Like something that has seen too many beginnings to hold on to any one of them.
REFLECT FOR A MOMENT:
When did certainty become something you performed rather than felt?
Which decisions in your life were truly yours, and which ones followed a quiet script you never questioned?
If you removed timelines and expectations, what direction would still remain?
This post is a part of Blogchatter A2Z Challenge 2026.
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