If you aren’t familiar with this quote, it came from a scene in the 3 Idiots movie. Yes, we are all fans of the movie. Who hasn’t been inspired by the stories of the characters? Farhan Qureshi uttered these words during his narrative when he and Raju found out they were at the bottom of their class while Rancho topped the exam.
What makes this quote memorable is how relatable it is for most engineering students.
We’ve all been there. We struggle to pass subjects in engineering school. We study all night to get passing grades yet we still couldn’t do it. We end up frustrated with our failing grades. When we find out that our friends failed too, we obviously feel bad about them but we hide our feelings by laughing about it. Sometimes, we even give each other a high five. But when we fail and our friends get really high marks, we just feel worse.
It’s not that we want them to fail as well. Admit it or not, whenever this happens to us, we feel a little jealous of our friend and we feel disappointed of ourselves that we couldn’t achieve the same thing than they did. We start comparing ourselves with the said friends and we end up feeling discouraged to study harder and fight. Once we start feeling this way, our jealousy may even cost us the friendship. When we feel inferior next to our friends, we may jeopardize the relationship we have with them.
Feeling jealous over a friend’s accomplishment should be avoided at all cost. The feeling may consume you and it may even bring out the worst in you. Remember Chatur Ramalingam the “Silencer”? Technically, he wasn’t Rancho’s friend but his need to get ahead with Rancho backfired. He was often humiliated throughout the movie. So, a word of caution, when your friend tops an exam and you failed, you could feel bad about it but don’t ever compare yourself to your friend. Don’t get jealous.
Instead, you can work on yourself. Use it as motivation to get better in class. If he can do it, so can you! Use your friend as inspiration to study harder. You could even approach him for help. If he really is your friend, you don’t have to worry about getting rejected. Friends who help each other out tend to achieve more in school and in life. So go ahead, approach that friend and ask for help.
