Land of Opportunity

How many times have you heard the phrase 'Living the American dream'? And how many times have you wanted to actually take a shot and try "living it" ? Well, we are all suckers when it comes to opportunity and knowing that the US of A is the land of opportunity we all decide to head there and try and make the dice roll the way we want it to. Well I am pretty much a sucker (just like the rest of us) and I decided to give the "living it" factor a shot! I decided to head to the US of A to pursue my goals of achieving a Masters' Degree in Engineering. So I went through the whole ordeal of writing the GRE and TOEFL. Wasting loads of money applying to universities that would never even give me a call. And then going through hell to get my VISA approved! So after all this torture I thought I'd see the light at the end of the tunnel but boy was I wrong!

I took the flight to the US and it was filled with my own people! Thats when I realized how ironic my plight was! (Lets take a look at why I wanted to do an MS in the first place) .

The main reason I decided to do a Masters' outside my country was for the following reasons:

1) to get a better level of education

2) to get industrial exposure which would complement my education

3) to avoid the intense academic competition that was present in my country

4) in order to achieve goal no. 3, obviously meant I would have go to a place where there weren't too many of my people around.

(Back inside the flight) I couldn't stop thinking about these 4 reasons and when I looked around at all the people sitting around me I couldn't help asking myself in a very subtle manner: "IS THIS WHAT I SPENT ALL THAT TIME AND MONEY FOR?!!"

But as is always the case, just when I thought things were bad enough, they got worse. After a 22 hour journey to my destination I realized something. Out of the passengers (most of whom were my own people) 95% of them were new admits to the same university that I was going to! Okay, ignoring the fact that they looked a lot older and senile than I did, that didn't stop my conscious from striking me like a hammer on an anvil! And this is what it said: "THERE IS NO WAY THAT YOU ARE GONNA FULFILL GOAL NO. 3 ! RETREAT! DAMN FOOL! RETREAT!". Yeah I know, easier said than done. But I decided to go ahead with what I had come here to do ( as if I had a choice!).


At the baggage claim I decided to unleash the social butterfly inside me and decided to introduce myself to a few of the people there. After all I was in a foreign country and making a few friends wouldn't hurt. So I chattered up with a couple of people and the next thing you know we were talking about the reasons as to why we had come to the 'Land of opportunity'.


I started off by stating (my) goal no.1 and 2 (and for obvious reasons discarded goal no. 3 and 4) . But in the next two minutes, I spoke to 3 other people and they told me that they had only one reason to come here. I asked them what it was and they said: "Duh, I came here just to make sure that I get a large lump sum of dowry when I get married!"

At this point an enlightened thought struck me (as I realized the kind of company I was stuck with) and it whispered into my ear : "Dude, you are screwed!" .