Your parents give you dating advice, our parents give us career advice.
You know everything by the age of 13, we know almost everything by 18.
You can buy a phone from what you have earned, we can either beg to our parents or maybe after doing well in exams… our demand will be fulfilled (maybe).
Your teenage struggle is about staying away from distractions, ours is Board Exams, JEE preparation or AIPMT preparation or whatever preparation.
If you tell people about your depression they’ll try to discuss about it and find solutions and further advise to get professional help, if we tell this, the only reply we’ll receive is: “Dimaag ghum gaya hai? Jaao padhai mein dhyaan do, unit test aa rahe hai”(“Have you lost your mind. Go and concentrate on your studies. Tests are approaching”)
Your parents imagine you as an independent, social, solvent person with a sober view of life in future, our parents imagine us as a Doctor or Engineer…..or maximum as a Chartered Accountant or Lawyer in future.
You can wear makeup and sleeveless tops in school, use smartphones in hallways, put the books in locker, eat apple in front of teacher while she’s teaching, serve pizzas as part of your job and come home at 2 am. We have uniforms (Hell yes, morning nightmare comes everyday!), tie braids, polish shoes in morning, can’t bring phones in school premises, need permission even for going to washroom during the lecture, carry the massive burden of books on our shoulder, solve math problems whole day and the list goes on…
The embarrassing detail of your teenage is getting rejected by your crush or pimple in class photograph. For us it’s either poor grades or parent teacher meetings.
You have yearbooks, homecoming queens and prom nights. We have only one thing organized by school for “fun” apart from picnics - Farewell. Still it’s awesome.
You watch uncomfortable movie scenes in front of your dad. We fast forward them.
You can cope up with divorce issue going on in family and even balance studies with that. That doesn’t happen mostly here but if that happens then we’ll simply blame our parents for a bad grade. (exceptions exist)
You play football, basketball, baseball, lacrosse or ice hockey! We play cricket. No further discussion.
If you want to become a painter, you’d join an art class and try to expand your passion. If we want to become a painter, we’d join a science coaching class and try to treat our passion as hobby.
You take student loans. Unless scholarships are awarded, our parents fund our education.
You have high school cliches. Here we have a plus point :) We have rock-solid unity. Or maybe diamond solid. (If that’s the hardest thing to break…)
