Admittedly, life gets more and more complex as we get older. We dream and aspire, chase our ambitions, and then get involved with different activities and events that may or may not align with what we desire for ourselves. It gets tough on some days; others, well, are pretty amazing days or simply okay days. One thing that can keep us going is the people that we have around us.
At this point in my life, I am going through experiences that aren't new under the sun but don't exactly have people going through similar ones at the same time that I am. For some reason, that somehow makes things seem easier—when one has a couple of close people that are going through it all with you.
Many times when I was in secondary school, there were days and nights when I got into trouble. It was a military school, and so the kinds of trouble were not exactly fun. There were punishments that I did deserve, and a whole lot more that I shouldn't have been a part of. I had my classmates through most of them, and I would say that we still found joy in the chaos a lot of times.
One time when I was in senior secondary school, my colleagues that were in my hostel (out of four) were supposed to spend many hours into the middle of the night punished for a long time. I do not remember what it was we got into trouble for, but I remember how easy it was to spend hours sweating and going through pain because we were all going through the same thing and only had one another in that moment. There were moments when we laughed, and it was memorable.
Going to class rooms, learning the same things at the same time, undergoing tests and examinations, and having similar experiences is something special about being a student. Unlike now that I am out of school and more out there in the real world, I do not go through experiences with people like those days while I was in school.
When one wasn't aligned like everyone else, one would have colleagues to turn to and then have them guide one through. On days when examinations would draw near and it would seem like I had only just started the semester because I just didn't understand certain courses, I would have my friends who were equally students of the same problematic courses teach me, and we would all succeed together.
The camaraderie one has with people in school environments that's peculiar to being a student is something I deem really special. There's this oneness that we sort of have when we go through certain experiences simultaneously. Oftentimes, there are special memories formed during those times that may somehow shape one.
Certainly, there are people in my life who make life easy. Everyone that's important to me contributes to making my life better in some way. My point of this post is about something that made being a student in my years of being in the academic system special.