The Emoji Crime Scene!

I genuinely thought I'd be cooler by now. Not Zendaya kinda cool.  But at least the kind of cool where you don't spend twenty minutes analyzing a text message that ends with a thumbs up.

A normal person sees a thumbs up and thinks, "Okay." I see a thumbs up and suddenly I'm conducting a criminal investigation. Is it a friendly thumbs up? A passive-aggressive thumbs up? A "got it" thumbs up? A "please never contact me again" thumbs up?

This is especially concerning because I am twenty years old.

TWENTY.

At twenty, my mother was probably making serious life decisions. At around twenty, Raj Malhotra from Ddlj was juggling a cross-continental love story, manipulating a traditional Indian household, and trying to win over Amrish Puri without getting his bones broken!!

I once reopened a chat six times because I couldn't decide whether adding an extra emoji would make me seem friendly or weird. The most interesting thing is that I can handle actual problems. Yet the moment life presents me with a harmless social interaction, my brain runs at the sweaty, hyper-ventilating speed of a student doing rapid matrix calculus to figure out exactly how many classes they can bunk without falling below 75% attendance.

The same person who can sit through the most gut-wrenching viva of the century becomes incapable of functioning when a crush views her Instagram story.

And don't even get me started on movies. I think they permanently damaged our entire generation. Somewhere between romantic comedies, Bollywood montages, and every Noah Centineo movie Netflix released during a very specific period of history, I became convinced that life would come with clear signs, dramatic moments and background music.

Looking back though, most of my expectations had the structure of a government project. Lots of planning. Lots of observation. Very little actual execution.(Sorry for this.)

If only this behaviour had been exclusive to crushes. Which brings me to group presentations…

Every semester would begin the same way. The professor would announce a presentation. Somehow, despite having an entire week to prepare, all the preparation would happen approximately two minutes before presenting. Those two minutes before a presentation deserve a research paper. One teammate is speed-reading the slides for the first time. One is fixing formatting issues nobody can even see from the audience. Then there's me staring at the PowerPoint presentation as though I've just discovered it was written in Latin.

The presentation begins. Everything is fine. For exactly two minutes.

Then comes the question.

There is always a question.

Not from the professor. It's always from that one guy, Every class has one. The Human FAQ Section. The man who hears a perfectly normal presentation on something and starts his question with phrases like "considering the broader implications" and "market volatility"?? Meanwhile, my brain has officially lost all network coverage. I'm just standing there looking like an old Nokia phone displaying "No Service- Emergency Calls Only."

The moment his hand goes up, time stops. My brain immediately transforms the entire classroom into an Indian television serial. The camera zooms in on his face. Then my face. Then the professor's face. In the background, dramatic music begins playing. The kind usually reserved for somebody discovering their long-lost twin or exposing a decades-old family secret.

My teammate suddenly finds the floor fascinating. The classroom collectively leans forward. The vibe is exactly like Chathur's speech in 3 Idiots. Everyone knows something is about to go horribly wrong. The only mystery is how badly.

Eventually somebody answers. Usually not well. But answers nonetheless.

The class moves on. The professor moves on. The guy who asked the question moves on. The only person who doesn't move on is me. Three years later, I'll be staring at the fan at 2 AM and suddenly remember the incident in full HD.

The presentations end. The semesters end. The degree ends. But the embarrassing memories remain fully employed. They're salaried. I swear to god they have better job security than I do.

For a long time, I thought growing up meant becoming a different person. Someone cooler. Someone who always knows the right thing to say, But somewhere between school, college, crushes, presentations, friendships and all the other little moments in between, I've started to suspect that growing up is actually much less dramatic than that. Maybe it's not about becoming someone else. Maybe it's just about learning to laugh at the versions of yourself you used to take so seriously.

And honestly, when I look back now, those are the moments I remember most clearly. Not the days when everything went according to plan, but the days when I was confused, overthinking and completely convinced that the world was ending over something that seems ridiculous now. Those moments definitely gave me better stories.

So if you're in the middle of your own version of all this right now, hold onto it a little. Not the stress. Not the anxiety. Just the moment itself. Because years from now, the things that feel messy and awkward today might become your favourite stories tomorrow. Think about them. Laugh at them. Tell them to your friends. Let them become part of the collection of strange little moments that made up your life. After all, the best stories are rarely about the times we were cool. They're usually about the times we were just simply human.

Until next time (hopefully before another year slips by), this is Ramya Ch, Signing off