#GraduateStories – To Live As It Comes

Pawas Pratikshit is a student belonging to the graduating batch of Ashoka Scholars Programme this year. He has done an Advanced Major in Political Science with a minor in English

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After starting the Ashokan journey in the year 2018, Pawas Pratikshit is now ready to leave the campus with a heart full of excitement to chase his dreams, a huge trunk of skills and knowledge, and a truckload of exhilarating memories to cherish.

While his journey has been a special and unparalleled experience, it wasn’t a smooth ride by any means. The challenges faced by him were aplenty, subsuming both academic and non-academic dilemmas. Pawas believes that the academic and non-academic challenges he faced on this journey were not entirely different from each other.

Pawas had left the confines of a boarding school only to enter the liberal environment at Ashoka University. He says, “…in that sense, the transition from high school to Ashoka University was anything but gradual. The sheer pressure to fit in into a new, alien, and unrelatable-because-glamorous environment was overwhelming and I would often keep to myself.”

The academic challenges that he faced arose from the same reason: differences between his school academic environment and the college academic environment. He states, “The academic system, the credits and grades were so very different from the system that I was accustomed to in a CBSE school.”

These challenges took the better of Pawas in the first semester, but gradually, he managed to find his way around them.

While overcoming these challenges, important life lessons were also learnt. When asked to summarize his Ashokan experience in a single song, he said it would be the stirring Yun Hi Chala Chal from the famous movie Swades.

Just like the message that the song conveys, to live life as it comes, Pawas believes that at Ashoka University, one must not sacrifice living in the moment because of one’s urge to always fit in with the crowd, but to always retain their individuality and to live life to the fullest. After making memories of a lifetime at Ashoka University, ranging from his experience of winning the Ashoka Cricket Super Sixes league to spending time at the gym, Pawas Pratikshit has successfully managed to reach the end of a remarkable Ashokan journey.

(Extracted from a conversation with Zoya Sayeda)