Life at XLRI teaches you a lot: Rohit Paul

Mystory@Rohit Paul

As a boy who’s never lived out of his hometown of Kolkata, I had many apprehensions about hostel life, about the academic rigour and the intimidating feeling of competing with some of the best brains in the country. But all that washes away when you reach the gates. When you walk through the front gates of XLRI, Jamshedpur, you walk in to a campus full of trees and warm smiles. When you walk into your hostel for the first time, you meet people who will be your lifeline for the next two years and potentially for the rest of your life. I remember walking through the lanes at night, sitting under the famed Bodhi tree which exudes a sense of serenity, a sense of calm. The calm before the storm. A storm which makes you fly, higher than you ever did. A storm which makes you push yourself and unlock potential you never thought you had.

Describing it as a rollercoaster ride would be doing it injustice. Life at XLRI teaches you a lot. It teaches you the importance of deadlines as it throws a hundred of them at you, it teaches you to make friends and abandon your assumptions as you learn from everyone around you, it teaches you to be humble as you get to know how much you don’t know, it teaches you how sleep mode is only a thing your laptop has, it teaches you how to value that one cup of tea that you get after hours of work at 3 am, it teaches you how your seniors have seen it all, done it all and that they’re there to help you take every step and will stand behind you till you learn to run, it teaches you how the best of learning happens outside the classroom, but most importantly it teaches you how your definition of home is very narrow. 

In one month, the demarcations of BM and HR don’t matter anymore when you’re friends with every other person that you walk past, your age doesn’t matter when your teachers treat you like adults and you spend more time in the senior hostel than your own, your notions don’t matter as each one of them gets shattered to pieces. I sang, cried, cheered, laughed, vented, and cribbed more than I ever thought I would in one month. But at the end of the day, if I was given a chance, I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat.

XLRI seeps into your blood. It seeps into your thoughts. It seeps into your very being. And when it does, then maybe, just maybe, you will realise why they call it ‘XL meri jaan.’

About the Author:

I am Rohit Paul, currently studying at XLRI, Jamshedpur. I am a junior executive member of XLRI’s international students exchange programme, SIGMA-oikos and CEASE.