This one’s inspired from the TFI seminar arranged by Technovanza some time back. Not much relation between that and the topic, really; apart from one statement that was made there (one of the most abused statements, mind you) “…to not be a part of the ‘rat race’…”. Nothing wrong with that. Except that it is among the over-abused and cliched statements existing. Other variants are ‘dont follow the herd’ or worse, ‘think outside the box’.

So what is this rat-race everyone keeps talking about? The one where everyone’s in a mad rush to get marks, get a good college, get a good job and eventually get a lot of money? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Either ways, is it the only one existent? Seems that way, doesn’t it? Not really. Let’s see…

The first example would be the one I wrote about above. The speaker from TFI said something to the effect of ‘you join TFI, not be a part of the mad rush, be different, be a leader’. What then, someone asked. What after TFI? Fair question, you’d agree. So then we were shown told about how TFI fellows joined various different streams, or how TFI had connections with universities and companies, etc that would help your career. There, aren’t you back in the race again?

Another prominent example is the way the current young mindset seems to be shifting- with jobs seeming ‘boring’ (even without people having worked in a corporate to back that claim), startups seeming ‘cool’, and so for other similar options. I’ll be honest, I’ve myself had a similar outlook for far too long to deny it - without any reason to back it. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that the claim is true. Even then, what happens when you start up and it becomes successful? You work harder - to compete with other firms, to expand explosively, to grow, to get filthy rich - whichever. Sounds like a race to me. (and I must mention that dropping out to do this seems to be another fancy thing these days)

I can think of a couple of similar examples of dont-follow-the-herd mentality. For heaven’s sake, the idea trying to be conveyed is to do what YOU feel like doing. And that is NOT the same as leaving the main herd to follow another one. And ‘thinking out of the box’ is not the same as ‘ignoring box contents no matter how good they are’.

All I have come to realize is that no definition of the phrase ‘rat race’ can be used everywhere. Perhaps a rule of thumb would be to classify everything that you like doing as not-rat-race, and everything that you do out of compulsion as otherwise.

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PS: All of this hasn’t come from a third-person perspective. It all stems from the fact that I held a similar opinion (misconception, if you will) for long, and it has taken ridiculous amounts of thinking/researching about what I wanted to do after B. Tech. to decide. Bless the people who helped me with focus and direction.