First posts, years and impressions.

MUWCI is often referred to as a bubble, a description I find quite precise. When I am here, it is easy to forget that the outside world exists. In a way, the bubble we lived in through all of last year has already burst. There is no way you can take away half of the people who made out a community and still expect things to be exactly the same. In my opinion, this is a good thing. Change allows us to take a step back and evaluate the things we encounter. Our batch has been given the opportunity to readjust our way of thinking rather than simply continuing to act in the same way because that is ‘how it has always been’. Saying that the things we do are right just because we have been doing them for a long time is a passive and unconstructive argument. However, it is much simpler to think like this than to actually evaluate and change our behavior. Coming to MUWCI, my second years’ way of thinking and behaving heavily influenced mine. I think this is quite natural. It took me a while to adjust to being in India, and adapting someone else’s approach to things was far easier than completely building up my own from the beginning. I am not saying that I blindly accepted whatever my second years presented me to. However, having been here for a year did give them some kind of authority or at least knowledge about the place that I did not yet have. Thinking about it now, I realize exactly how much the attitude of the people around us changes our view on things. If each of us attempts to approach the people and situations around us with an open mind this will inevitably affect the general feel of the community. Also, I am wondering how this place will change along with the people in it. If it is true that we are really just an ensemble of relationships, to how great an extent are we ourselves bound to change when more than a hundred new people are introduced to our lives? And how prominent is a first encounter really? I have no memory of when and where I first met most of the people that I now consider my closest friends. I would like to think that a part of me is consistent no matter who I am around. However, over summer I found it hard to combine the person I used to be at home and who I felt I had become during the year I had spent in MUWCI. Maybe it is not true that the people around us completely make us who we are, but rather that every relationship we have leave some kind of impression that will inevitably shape our personality.