u/_Iam_god

Before starting, I'm 21 years old and English isn't really my strongest point. I used ChatGPT to fix my grammar so people can actually understand what I'm trying to say. The thoughts, experiences and feelings are mine, only the grammar isn't. So please don't call me a karma farmer or some AI-generated story.

I am 21 years old and for the first time in my life I genuinely don't know what I am chasing anymore.

Most people have a story where they always knew what they wanted to become. Mine is the opposite. Every major decision of my life happened because everyone around me was doing the same thing. After 10th I took PCM because my friends took PCM. There was no grand dream of becoming an engineer, no love for physics, no obsession with IITs. I was just moving with the flow.

Then COVID happened. My entire 11th got wasted. I attended classes but learned almost nothing. When 12th started, reality hit me like a truck. Suddenly everyone around me seemed serious. People were discussing ranks, coaching tests, cutoffs, advanced problems and future plans. Around that time I watched Super 30 and for the first time understood why people were obsessed with IITs. I remember sitting alone one evening and feeling genuine fear. It felt like I had slept through the race and everyone else was already near the finish line.

From November onwards I started studying like a madman. Not in some motivational movie way. I mean genuinely crying, panicking and studying. I had no mentor, no senior, no strategy. Quora, Telegram and random YouTube channels became my guidance counsellors. I downloaded every course I could find and consumed preparation content endlessly. Chemistry was a nightmare because my 11th fundamentals were practically nonexistent. Teachers were teaching advanced concepts while my brain was still struggling with basics. Somehow I survived those months.

Then somehow, by luck, effort and reservation, I got into IIT Delhi without taking a drop.

People expect that sentence to sound like a happy ending. For me it wasn't. The moment I got in, another feeling took over. Guilt.

For years I kept feeling that maybe I had taken someone else's seat. Maybe I didn't deserve to be there. Maybe a general category student who worked harder should have been sitting in my place. Whether that feeling is rational or not, it followed me through college.

The funny thing is that people think getting into IIT changes your life overnight. It doesn't. You take all your insecurities with you.

I entered IIT Delhi and realized how small my world had been. I am from NCR and before college I had never travelled alone. I had barely used the metro. I had never visited Red Fort, never seen Qutub Minar and never explored my own city. My entire childhood was school and home. My parents were extremely protective. If I was late, twenty phone calls would start. I reached one of the most prestigious colleges in the country while still feeling like a kid who knew nothing about the real world.

The first two years disappeared in classes and a relationship. Looking back, I still don't know whether she liked me or the IIT tag attached to me. Maybe both. Maybe neither. By third year things started falling apart. Internship season arrived & depression of my first breakup too, everyone around me became competitive and suddenly every conversation was about careers. Research, coding, consulting, product management, startups, foreign universities. It felt like everyone was moving somewhere while I was standing still.

Then came placements.

I genuinely gave everything I had. I solved Striver's sheet multiple times. I became a good rank on Codeforces. Hard DSA questions became muscle memory. Graphs, DP, trees, binary search, everything. For the first time in my life I thought effort and outcome would be directly connected.

Then placements actually started.

Online assessments felt easy. Questions were getting solved. I thought maybe this was finally my moment. Then shortlists came. I was shortlisted in none (6pointer cg). Another company came. Not there. Another one. Not there. I watched people who barely coded get shortlisted because of CGPA. I watched people openly cheat in assessments and still move ahead. Every shortlist felt like a reminder that there are parts of the game you cannot control.

Day 1 I somehow got an Amazon shortlist. I was informed only 12 hours before the interview(on portal). I panicked, messed up the HR round and got rejected. After that came weeks of silence. Entire days were spent refreshing portals. I don't even eaten for 5-6 days. The silence was too hard, broken parts of placement season. By the end of Phase 1 I had only three shortlists.

Three.

That's it.

Before Phase 1 I convinced myself that maybe software engineering wasn't happening. so I shifted towards ML also, so for Phase 2 i started on better ML projects, learned RAG, learned agentic AI and tried to reinvent myself. Months passed. December, January and February felt like one long depressing blur. Somewhere deep down I had accepted defeat. I genuinely thought this was karma. Maybe life was correcting itself. Maybe I never deserved IIT and now things were balancing out. I was feeling yeah thats the seat i stollen at there i has cast reservation, here making high cg is reservation for others I guess. as many no skill high cg got selected. (My jealousy speaking)

Then one random shortlist.

I didn't prepare much. I didn't revise much. I walked into the interview with a strange calmness that comes when you stop expecting good outcomes. The first question was about variance and I completely blanked. I thought it was over. But after that I just started talking naturally. We discussed projects, machine learning, SQL, ideas and whatever I knew. I left convinced that I had failed again. Thank fully he asked more on rag and agentic and good Questions of ml. i just forgot what is variance (lil nervousness)

The next day everyone was discussing another company's test shortlist. I casually opened the placement portal and saw that my portal access was blocked.

Selected.

That was it.

No dramatic movie ending. No dream company. No standing ovation. Just a random interview on a random day when I had already given up mentally.

Now I work in Mumbai. The salary looked amazing in college. Then I saw Mumbai rents. Suddenly numbers started looking very different. The package that once felt life-changing started feeling normal. That's when another realization hit me.

For years I had been chasing checkpoints. First JEE. Then IIT. Then internship. Then placement. Then job.

I reached the destination and discovered it was actually another starting line.

Now I sit in my room sometimes and wonder what exactly I am supposed to chase next. MBA? Data Science? Consulting? A bigger package? A foreign job? I genuinely don't know.

The weirdest part is that I spent four years in IIT Delhi and never visited Qutub Minar even though it was practically behind the campus. Maybe that's the perfect metaphor for my life. I was always preparing for the next thing and forgot to experience the current thing.

I don't know what the point of this post is. Maybe I just wanted to tell someone. Maybe I wanted to know if anyone else feels this way. Maybe I wanted somebody older than me to say that this confusion is normal.

All I know is that after spending years running, I finally stopped for a moment and realized I have no idea where I am going.

Before starting, I'm 21 years old and English isn't really my strongest point. I used ChatGPT to fix my grammar so people can actually understand what I'm trying to say. The thoughts, experiences and feelings are mine, only the grammar isn't. So please don't call me a karma farmer or some AI-generated story.

I am 21 years old and for the first time in my life I genuinely don't know what I am chasing anymore.

Most people have a story where they always knew what they wanted to become. Mine is the opposite. Every major decision of my life happened because everyone around me was doing the same thing. After 10th I took PCM because my friends took PCM. There was no grand dream of becoming an engineer, no love for physics, no obsession with IITs. I was just moving with the flow.

Then COVID happened. My entire 11th got wasted. I attended classes but learned almost nothing. When 12th started, reality hit me like a truck. Suddenly everyone around me seemed serious. People were discussing ranks, coaching tests, cutoffs, advanced problems and future plans. Around that time I watched Super 30 and for the first time understood why people were obsessed with IITs. I remember sitting alone one evening and feeling genuine fear. It felt like I had slept through the race and everyone else was already near the finish line.

From November onwards I started studying like a madman. Not in some motivational movie way. I mean genuinely crying, panicking and studying. I had no mentor, no senior, no strategy. Quora, Telegram and random YouTube channels became my guidance counsellors. I downloaded every course I could find and consumed preparation content endlessly. Chemistry was a nightmare because my 11th fundamentals were practically nonexistent. Teachers were teaching advanced concepts while my brain was still struggling with basics. Somehow I survived those months.

Then somehow, by luck, effort and reservation, I got into IIT Delhi without taking a drop.

People expect that sentence to sound like a happy ending. For me it wasn't. The moment I got in, another feeling took over. Guilt.

For years I kept feeling that maybe I had taken someone else's seat. Maybe I didn't deserve to be there. Maybe a general category student who worked harder should have been sitting in my place. Whether that feeling is rational or not, it followed me through college.

The funny thing is that people think getting into IIT changes your life overnight. It doesn't. You take all your insecurities with you.

I entered IIT Delhi and realized how small my world had been. I am from NCR and before college I had never travelled alone. I had barely used the metro. I had never visited Red Fort, never seen Qutub Minar and never explored my own city. My entire childhood was school and home. My parents were extremely protective. If I was late, twenty phone calls would start. I reached one of the most prestigious colleges in the country while still feeling like a kid who knew nothing about the real world.

The first two years disappeared in classes and a relationship. Looking back, I still don't know whether she liked me or the IIT tag attached to me. Maybe both. Maybe neither. By third year things started falling apart. Internship season arrived & depression of my first breakup too, everyone around me became competitive and suddenly every conversation was about careers. Research, coding, consulting, product management, startups, foreign universities. It felt like everyone was moving somewhere while I was standing still.

Then came placements.

I genuinely gave everything I had. I solved Striver's sheet multiple times. I became a good rank on Codeforces. Hard DSA questions became muscle memory. Graphs, DP, trees, binary search, everything. For the first time in my life I thought effort and outcome would be directly connected.

Then placements actually started.

Online assessments felt easy. Questions were getting solved. I thought maybe this was finally my moment. Then shortlists came. I was shortlisted in none (6pointer cg). Another company came. Not there. Another one. Not there. I watched people who barely coded get shortlisted because of CGPA. I watched people openly cheat in assessments and still move ahead. Every shortlist felt like a reminder that there are parts of the game you cannot control.

Day 1 I somehow got an Amazon shortlist. I was informed only 12 hours before the interview(on portal). I panicked, messed up the HR round and got rejected. After that came weeks of silence. Entire days were spent refreshing portals. I don't even eaten for 5-6 days. The silence was too hard, broken parts of placement season. By the end of Phase 1 I had only three shortlists.

Three.

That's it.

Before Phase 1 I convinced myself that maybe software engineering wasn't happening. so I shifted towards ML also, so for Phase 2 i started on better ML projects, learned RAG, learned agentic AI and tried to reinvent myself. Months passed. December, January and February felt like one long depressing blur. Somewhere deep down I had accepted defeat. I genuinely thought this was karma. Maybe life was correcting itself. Maybe I never deserved IIT and now things were balancing out. I was feeling yeah thats the seat i stollen at there i has cast reservation, here making high cg is reservation for others I guess. as many no skill high cg got selected. (My jealousy speaking)

Then one random shortlist.

I didn't prepare much. I didn't revise much. I walked into the interview with a strange calmness that comes when you stop expecting good outcomes. The first question was about variance and I completely blanked. I thought it was over. But after that I just started talking naturally. We discussed projects, machine learning, SQL, ideas and whatever I knew. I left convinced that I had failed again. Thank fully he asked more on rag and agentic and good Questions of ml. i just forgot what is variance (lil nervousness)

The next day everyone was discussing another company's test shortlist. I casually opened the placement portal and saw that my portal access was blocked.

Selected.

That was it.

No dramatic movie ending. No dream company. No standing ovation. Just a random interview on a random day when I had already given up mentally.

Now I work in Mumbai. The salary looked amazing in college. Then I saw Mumbai rents. Suddenly numbers started looking very different. The package that once felt life-changing started feeling normal. That's when another realization hit me.

For years I had been chasing checkpoints. First JEE. Then IIT. Then internship. Then placement. Then job.

I reached the destination and discovered it was actually another starting line.

Now I sit in my room sometimes and wonder what exactly I am supposed to chase next. MBA? Data Science? Consulting? A bigger package? A foreign job? I genuinely don't know.

The weirdest part is that I spent four years in IIT Delhi and never visited Qutub Minar even though it was practically behind the campus. Maybe that's the perfect metaphor for my life. I was always preparing for the next thing and forgot to experience the current thing, and still behind everyone.

I don't know what the point of this post is. Maybe I just wanted to tell someone. Maybe I wanted to know if anyone else feels this way. Maybe I wanted somebody older than me to say that this confusion is normal.

All I know is that after spending years running, I finally stopped for a moment and realized I have no idea where I am going.