The Performance Backstage

It’s not often that one gets a glimpse of the efforts and intricacies of a successful endeavour.

Dear Reader,

Allow me to share with you account of the most pivotal point of my life, which has perhaps shaped the person I am today.

Disclaimer: The author regards this as a personal narrative and is likely to mention personal experiences more often than not. Also, the length of the article was not her concern.

All of this began almost a year ago. Or wait.

It began when I joined college and seniors introduced us to the social internship that was a part of our curriculum.

Initially, to be completely honest, it didn’t strike a chord with me as I had never pondered about this side of life.

But when they introduced the Young Changemakers Programme, that really caught my interest, purely because it pertained to the management side of the initiative. Our seniors extended the opportunity to us to volunteer in the programme as student mentors.

So in December ’23, there were selections for this acclaimed programme I desperately wanted to be a part of. I was so sure that I would be selected as a student mentor.

However, my vices of overconfidence and a false sense of overassurance reinforced my belief that I would not fail to become a mentor.

That is when I learnt the first lesson, because guess what, I didn’t make it.

I was in denial and delusion. (the two most common GenZ sentiments)

It took me a great deal of time to accept it and watch all my friends do what I also wanted to. Special reference to Bibhuti Ghiya who shared this misery with me and watched YCP 2.0- The Global Edition from afar.

As the second edition concluded, I found myself in rage. Good rage. Rage to be a part of YCP 3.0, NO MATTER WHAT. If I may confess, I made this decision out of an injured ego and willingness to bounce back.

As soon as we went back home for the summer break, we started preparing for YCP 3.0. And as I mentioned earlier, I was very determined to be a contributor in the programme.

I still remember it was 28 April 2024 when we had the first online meet, not to discuss the programme but to rant about how our seniors criticized us for circulating a harmless google form.

Were we na?ve? YES

Did we know that? NO

One meeting after the other, we took baby steps, ruthlessly made excel sheets, assigned POCs, and ideated like crazy. Meetings had almost become an inseparable part of my day.

Until one fine night.

We were nearly done with ideation and we found out that the programme will be following a different tangent this year!

We were disheartened as all our hardwork had gone in vain and there was a phase when the entire team was demotivated to work. We slacked, we procrastinated, we cussed. This programme was suppose to be our baby and now suddenly it didn’t feel like one.????

But we didn’t completely stop. Those meetings still took place, but productivity was at an all-time low.

It was finally time to come back to college and face the reality. Because, everything was virtual to us till now, quite literally.

Planning picked up pace again as we gained acceptance of the new structure.

And time flew, more like it evaporated.

We were in December, almost done with the Impact Initiator and looking forward to kids coming to campus. They were super excited, and we were super nervous.

I mean, we are barely 19 and had the giant responsibility of taking care of 15-16-year-olds for 5 very long days. I expected those days to be chaotic, but by my team’s grace, they were nothing but smooth. The diverse facets of the programme (and the happy and satisfied kids) are a testament to the hard work and sheer dedication that the team showed to make this edition a pure success.

You might wonder, how was this a “pivotal point” in my life?

It is because I didn’t even realise when each contribution stopped being an act of ameliorating my ego. Instead, I grew emotionally close to it. Limelight no longer fancied me; ‘operational feasibility’ had become my best friend, and YCP was my side quest. ?

I can’t put into words the gratitude I hold towards this programme as it gave me infinite opportunities to work on my shortcomings and sometimes flaunt my strengths. It brought me to the ground while trying to aim for the sky.?

I feel honoured to have worked with the best minds of my batch and to learn immensely from them along the way. I intend to give a special mention to all of them for their impeccable work in YCP but I guess this author does care about the length of this article.