Time moves on!

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun lustrous;
And all the clouds that lowered upon our lives
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths,
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments,
Our stern alarms changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
-(William Shakespeare , Richard III)

I confess, I have altered the Bard’s verse to suit my sentiments for this occasion. I am certain he wouldn’t mind.
Today was the last examination that I was obliged to give as a part of my engineering studies. Four years of torment at the hand of unforgiving teachers and even more vindictive a University finally brought to an end, this day calls for the grandest of celebrations. And so I am sure my friends celebrate.
Engineering was something I got into as an unwilling apprentice. After the 10th grade, I was keen to do studies in the humanities, fired by an idealistic urge to do something for the country. It took some persuasion by my parents before I agreed to renounce this desire, and took admission to the science faculty. There again, I would be required to take up studies in Computer Science, the most technical of technical sciences, or so I would like to believe. If there is one more technical than CS, then I really pity its students. CS was an all right experience, not too taxing, but not too enjoyable either. To my ‘good’ fortune, I would end up doing engineering in CS again. See how this lad, who set out to do something in the humanities, has ended up today giving his last engineering examination?
But to speak the truth, I have no regrets about my career graph so far. I have learnt much about the world, and all practical knowledge. I doubt I would have ever descended from my ivory tower had I pursued a career in the humanities. I met some of the finest and most beautiful people in the course of my education, people without whom I cannot imagine how I would have spent these last four years and emerged a sane man. And for that I am thankful, I really am. Maybe that’s the reward I got for being so patient with engineering, maybe that’s the balm for my wounds.

John Keats says in his poem ‘The Four Seasons’
Four seasons fill the measure of the year;
There are four seasons in the mind of man:
He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear
Takes in all beauty with an easy span:
He has his Summer, when luxuriously
Spring's honied cud of youthful thought he loves
To ruminate, and by such dreaming high
Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves
His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings
He furleth close; contented so to look
On mists in idleness--to let fair things
Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook.
He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,
Or else he would forego his mortal nature.

Our Spring has now concluded. The Summer now approaches. It is the change of seasons, it is the churning of the wheel of life.