Responsible Boy

This boy aged 21 years is a very distant relative of mine.
He studied well enough through out school and college in Chennai.

His family has been in a financial mess for the past 20 years so they all had to depend on their maternal uncles for each and everything in India. His uncles would repatriate amounts to support their family and agreed to finance his study abroad once he was accepted at some university.

Once he finished his engineering last year, he applied to a university in Texas for his M.Sc. and got accepted. It is a 2 year course but could be finished in 1.5 years too.

This boy struggled with preparing food on his own. Struggled with a non-cooperative (a foreigner) room mate who would not bother about any team work for upkeeping their shared accommodation.

Most of his time was spent at the university. Many tempted him to go out and enjoy weekends and special holidays. But he was determined to finish his course within 1 year and get on with finding a job soon. His philosophy was to work very hard in the present as there was always time to enjoy once he passed his exams and landed some job.
He din't just confine himself to his usual subjects and courses. He enrolled himself in 7 different computer courses as he wanted to learn anything in computers. He din't have that opportunity in India while doing his engineering graduation. He must have had to work really hard.
He was able to finish all the courses including the computer related ones too inside of 1 year!
His is a story every parent would dream of for their own kids.

Why did he take computer courses all of a sudden?
It seems, he checked out the campus interviews which were taking place when he just joined his M.Sc. course last year. He came to know that companies were happy to engage people who had computer language and applications skill.
Therefore, he took those computer courses to stand a better chance to land himself a job in USA sooner than later.
During the past one year he had to be admitted in the hospital's ICU for frozen feet, fever, etc., because he din't either have money or time to buy those winter shoes. Most times he went without proper food too which is bad but he has managed to cross all these expected obstacles in an alien land all by himself.

After successfully finishing off all his courses, he started applying to companies nearby. He got selected in an upstart IT company in Texas, which was willing to pay him $95,000p.a. Then came a call from Microsoft, Seattle.
Microsoft flew him to and fro for the interview. The interview went on for 7 hours. He was offered a job with an initial pay of $83,000p.a.
After thinking a lot, he decided to join Microsoft for reasons of job security.
He is overjoyed and so is his family. His family is relieved and very happy.

His single minded focus to work hard in the present and postpone all his temptations to enjoy outings, surfing the net for hours, etc., at the cost of his course work has finally paid off.
Time is the essence and this boy has understood the importance of time.
Focus and time management are two things which all of us need to concentrate on if we take up any project.
We may come across many ups and downs yet we have to keep on at it until we finish what we have taken up.

We can save money, we can accumulate materials things in our cupboards. Unfortunately we can never open a savings bank account for time and spend it later.

Now this young boy can relax and enjoy life from now on without worrying too much about finances anymore.

Cheers!
Mahalakshmi.