The Trap

I heard this phrase in my freshie year. We had our department intro (a typical intro at IITB where the first years are asked silly questions so that they get to mix up with the others) where some passing out seniors were asked to say something about the department, etc. The thing which fell into my ears the most was, this department is awesome and you're just going to love your stay here. So true, perhaps the most awesome and home like department in the institute.
In the same intro, there was some senior whose words I remember fresh as if I heard them just a moment ago, he said, "CPI is a big trap, don't fall for it." I think that I could not really understand it right then but something it contained which made me remember it till today.
CPI is perhaps a tag associated to us (IITians, I mean). From the very beginning of my freshie year, I have heard people talking about others like, 'oh, she is a 9.8', 'that chap is perfect 10!! :-o' Agreed to the point that, to an outsider, the only thing that reflects your sincerity and caliber is CPI. No objection to this. Had I been a professor and given a time constraint, I would have considered the student's CPI on whether to take him for a project or not. But this all doesn't mean that the criteria is generalized and that we work our asses off just to shoot up the pointer and do not bother to learn or enjoy the course. The fact that everything ranging from the day0 jobs to good postgrad univs, you are told that a good CPI will take you through and that you should not even put an attempt at it if you have a messed up CPI. A two figure digit that defines you.
Almost all of us have a past of stardom, being the topper of class since Ist grade, topping in every course, etc and then coming to the premier institute of the country and this CPI crisis, we are like kicked off from the well molded position we had been holding till now. Only a few of us know how to handle the situation, the rest suffer a psychological setback. The worst part is, our environment doesn't help in coping with the same. The initial poor marks of the first MA105 quiz would just make us study more. I remember ditching the line follower competition in my freshie year just because the quizzes were drawing near and I had already messed up the part till midsem. Well, it was not really a worth regretting decision in first place because I recall well that I enjoyed the courses I had studied post ditching that event. But that might not be the case always. As fresh as yesterday, I also remember the course MA 205 (yes, at IIT, the course code makes more of your memory than the course name) whose every lecture I enjoyed thoroughly, loved solving the tutorials as well as the beautiful literature the course was made up of. But starting with the first quiz, I messed up bigtime and given my already dull CPI, it got me nervous over the grade the course will render me. And by the time the semester ending exam of the course was nearing (it was a half sem course, unfortunately), I had already stopped enjoying the
course and forced myself to prepare in the grade oriented fashion. And to add to this all, I did mess up with my grade in the course, despite all that forced effort, which all made me feel more helpless than ever. A few weeks after the result of this course was out, my memory took me back to that freshie intro moment and I whole heartedly realized how big a trap it was. The desire to build up a good looking CPI constantly kept me away from things I probably wanted to do hence leading me into a situation where I don't have a single certificate proving myself good at any particular thing. In such a situation, I am left with no option but to start afresh and that too from the middle.