What category should I chose?

I have planned on writing this piece for quite a while. Ever since I started with the engineering college in July, I had this one on my mind. And now I would say I got busy and there was no time but if you are a fellow engineering student you know that’s a lie!

Let me start from the beginning. The first half of 2011, now seems to have gone out in a jiffy with the endless number of entrance exams. And in spite, of doing above-average in all of them I had set my hopes only on one, the MHT-CET,  which fortunately did not let me down.

So anyways, the gist of the first half of 2011 was, that I was enabled to get into College of Engineering Pune for Electronics and Telecommunication rather easily than I would have expected.

When I got in, in the first few weeks, I saw an opportunity. An opportunity to start from scratch. You see, all my school life I have lived and grown up with the same bunch of kids. Now was the time, when I was exposed to a completely different crowd. I could be whoever I wanted. It was like writing out my personality fresh, on a new slate. So what I did, was observe the general environment around me and decide who exactly I wanted to be with.

There is another advantage of being exposed to a completely new crowd of students. You get to classify them easily into different genres by their first impressions (strictly first impressions, cant stress that enough!) like they show on those cheesy teen Hollywood movies. So, on the same lines, I classified the general crowd in these classes…..

• The Geeks: Being in one of the top colleges, this category can be filled in easily. You look around for people scoring unbelievably and you have your list. Don’t be surprised if in colleges like mine, this category is the most populated.
  
  
• The Nerds: I know what you are thinking. What’s the difference? But in my point of view there is huge one. And in places like CoEP, it can be quite evident. For e.g., a geek will be the guy topping a class. But a nerd is the guy, answering questions, asking trickier ones to the teacher. He might not be the one to complete an assignment perfectly, but will be the one suggesting and making improvements on the same. A great way to explain will be to take into account the characters of ‘Chatur’ and ‘Rancho’ from the movie 3 Idiots. ( I am sure you got who is what.)
  Personally, I thought myself to be in this category. I don’t anymore
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• The ‘Savitri’s: This category basically has been named this way, because the according to the Hindi cinema, the woman named Savitri will generally be the conservative, perhaps old-fashioned types. This category can be filled quite easily solely by the first impression of a girl. But that, like judging a book by its cover, is not fair. Most people would think, this category would be looked down upon by the ones coming up later. But the fact is, you gotta respect these girls cause they are the ones who know exactly what they are and what they want to be. Unlike me, in this scenario. They more often than not are the ultimate girls-next-door that movies tell us guys fall for.
  
  
• The ‘Prem’s: If you have seen the Rajashri movies and the characters portrayed by Salman Khan in them you know exactly what I am talking about! In my college, this category can be used to describe some guys perfectly I might say. They could be the geeks or the nerds of the extremely shy types., who completely deny the existence of the fairer sex in extreme scenarios. (They might be quite different when not in the vicinity of women, but there is no way for me to know that!)
  Note- It is not necessary for a guy to be as cute a Salman Khan (of the 90s) to be in this category.
  
  
• The “Jocks” : Please note the double quotations used. Yes, these would be the guys who think of themselves a quite the LadiesMan. And since its CoEP and everyone fits into the geek-nerd category, I would not be totally wrong if I referred to them as the ‘Howard Wolowittz’s (ignore if you are not familiar with a TV show called The Big Bang Theory) of the CoEP universe. Although they can be quite smooth sometimes!
   
• The “Babes”: Again, note the double quotes. These will be the chicks that most of the guys would hit on in the first few weeks (exception: the ‘Prem’s of course!) itself. The ‘Savitri’s may hold them to be the “sluts”. But that, again is not the same category.
   
• The Desirables: Now this is somewhat an ambiguous category. The definition and the criteria for this category are different for different people. Some may think the dudes and the babes fit into this, while some may go for the nerds. It is basically the category in which you put the person you either you want to be like, or want to be with.
  
  
• The ‘Oh-I-see-him/her-everywhere’: This category consists of people who are outgoing and basically multi-skilled.  They could be the people whom you see everywhere with everybody because they have the ability to befriend any category I can mention. Or they are the ones, who are involved in all the extra-curriculars and even all the campus gossips! Which brings us to…
  
  
• The Gossip girls/guys: Yeah, you will be surprised how many guys can fit into this category! And when it comes to girls, most of them, whether the ‘Savitri’s or the ‘Babes’ could fit in. You could also have occasional gossip-girls/guys. They gossip only when it comes to their interests. An observation, the ‘Jock’s the nerds or the geeks may dislike this category on the surface, but they know, deep inside, you gotta have a gossiper among your close friends. What’s campus life without gossip eh?
  
  
• The Goths/Emos: This quite a rare category. At least in my campus. But it is fun to categorize people into this one when they are going through tough emotional traumas and behave all detached.
   
• The ‘Pain-in-the-Ass’es : This like the Desirables is a category which everyone fills in by their tastes and opinions. Some might not have anyone they could put into this list. But the others (like me) will have easily figured out whom they should list here.
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• The Mr./Miss Popular: Again a vague category. But there are always a few names and faces that can be recognized by almost everyone on the campus for both good and/or bad reasons. You can love’em or hate’em but you cant ignore them.

That’s about it. Those were the classes I drew out observing the people around me through the first semester. As you read you might have thought of one or two I missed. You could add them yourself.. Just comment!

In the end, what I learnt categorizing people like this was--- It was wrong. As I mentioned above, they are in no way mutually-independent. And it may sound cheesy, but each person is unique when you get to know them better. It is true! We think we can try to be someone new when we start afresh, we think we can chose our friends in a way that would allow us to be somewhat different than what we were. Just because we want to experiment with ourselves. But more often than not we find ourselves in the company of the same type of people we have been hanging out with since we were kids. No matter what, we can’t just change ourselves. No one wants to befriend “The Fakers”… Ooh that could be new category then!!!..........................