University: UNI(ty in di)VERSITY

This blog is dedicated to my alma mater, the university which I attended for my graduation.
Many have had a college education associated with a prestigious university but few of us have had the good fortune of attending a prestigious university... But have we ever asked ourselves why it was named a university and not something else? Something like “Teacademia” or maybe more obscure as “Nerdtown”? 
In my opinion, university stands for many things, some of the more etymological ones are:
1) Universal City
2) Universe In The Youth
3) And one of my favorite –Unity in Diversity.

University is the place where you become who you really are. It is where you realize your potential and your power. It is the place where no mater from where you are, from what background you come, what language you speak , what religion you follow, what is your ideology…., everything melts away and merges with the common thread .. the thread of pursuit of knowledge and in the unwinding of that thread possibly to understand oneself better. 
Where nothing matters but your prowess. Your passion for excelling in your chosen field of pursuit, for fulfilling the many dreams that you have woven and strike every second of every day to achieve. An ideal university is a place where everything and everyone however diverse are united as one.
I have had a good fortune of being in such a university. 
I have met people with whom I do not see eye to eye with, professors whom I would like nothing better but misfortune to fall, situations I would rather not put myself into, deadlines that none can meet, languages that many can’t understand, incidents that you wish shouldn’t have occurred., decisions that seem very unfair....
But I have also met people whom I know I would remember all my life, people who are so like me that you don’t need to speak for them to understand, people who have become an essential part of your existence and maybe someone for whom you have become a reason to live. Professors who have the divine power of instilling in you, the same lust, thirst, passion, and fury that made them pursue the same course, situations that I have waited all my life to come to fruitition, incidents that have changed the course of your life, your beliefs and shattered your rose colored glasses, and making decisions which you never regret in your life.
But that’s life. You have your own good and bad days. But that’s what makes us realize who we really are in positive or in adverse situation.  
In one sense, university is a place which makes you united .. with yourself and with others. You enter it as a person who has many ideas about what to do and what not to do, you have diverse ideologies and thinking, you really don’t understand who you really are, something like water being spread over the ground. It goes where it finds least resistance.
But the alma mater has the task of collecting that water and turning it into an icicle. That will stand tall and firm.

I have had many regrets in the years I have been here. But I don’t have any regrets about feeling those regrets. Because I am what I am because of that.

I pay my tribute, homage and obeisance to the place where I found myself.
Adieu.