Every year, thousands of young people in Kashmir pursue the same careers, sit for the same examinations, and carry remarkably similar ambitions. Medicine and engineering continue to attract an overwhelming majority of students, as though the same path could naturally belong to everyone.
But somewhere amid this endless race, an important question is being forgotten: do students truly want the lives they are preparing themselves for?
This question began troubling me deeply during a recent visit to a library in Pulwama. With the NEET examination approaching, the atmosphere inside felt heavy with anxiety. Students sat surrounded by books, yet many appeared psychologically exhausted rather than genuinely motivated. Conversations carried words like stress, fear, pressure, sleeplessness, and depression. Some openly admitted they were unable to revise because the burden itself had become overwhelming.
How can a path pursued so intensely become emotionally suffocating? Why are so many students terrified of the very careers they claim to desire?
Perhaps because many of these dreams are not entirely their own. They are shaped by trends, comparisons, fear of failure, and the constant pressure to follow what the majority is already doing.
In Kashmir, where opportunities already feel limited to many young people, the pull toward a few selected careers has become even more intense. Students rarely pause to ask whether they genuinely feel connected to the subjects they spend years preparing for.
If only a limited number of MBBS seats are available, how can tens of thousands of students realistically believe the same path is meant for all of them? During conversations in the library, I repeatedly heard students say, “If not MBBS, then BSc Nursing.” It was this sentence that disturbed me most. Careers were not being chosen after discovering one’s interests or abilities, but as alternatives within the same socially repeated pattern.
Thousands of students graduate from nursing colleges annually. What happens afterward? Can all of them realistically find opportunities? And if not, what becomes of the emotional, financial, and personal sacrifices made by students and their families?
The tragedy is not competition alone. The deeper tragedy is the quiet psychological exhaustion hidden beneath it.
Parents spend enormous amounts on coaching centres, hostel fees, and repeated attempts. Students sacrifice peace, confidence, and sometimes their mental well-being. Yet many continue simply because they fear choosing differently from everyone around them.
I understand this not merely as an observer, but as someone who once lived through it.
Years ago, I too joined the race to become a doctor. Like countless students from Kashmir, I went to Kota carrying ambitions I believed were expected of me. But slowly, amid the pressure and exhaustion, something painful became clear: my heart did not belong there. Nobody had ever paused to ask whether I genuinely loved medical science. The focus was always on continuing along the path that thousands were already following.
Even when opportunities in engineering appeared later, the confusion remained. From a distance, those careers looked promising, but deep within I knew they were not meant for me either. A path chosen without emotional connection eventually becomes impossible to sustain, no matter how successful it appears from outside.
What changed everything was stepping into a classroom at Islamic University of Science and Technology where, for the first time, studying did not feel like punishment. Literature did not merely educate me — it transformed the way I understood life, identity, and purpose. I still remember listening to lectures on Doctor Faustus and realising, quietly but with certainty, that true learning does not suffocate the soul. It awakens it.
Today, students often ask how I study for long hours without growing restless. The answer is simple: when a path genuinely reflects your own interests and conviction, even difficulties begin to feel meaningful. There is a profound difference between struggling for something you truly desire and struggling for something chosen merely because everyone else is moving in the same direction.
The world extends far beyond the narrow choices many students are taught to see. Research, literature, psychology, languages, digital media, entrepreneurship, environmental studies, social sciences, and design are all creating meaningful opportunities. Yet many students never explore their real abilities because they become trapped within collective expectations before they have fully understood themselves.
Parents, too, must recognise this. Every child possesses different abilities, interests, and emotional capacities. Constant comparisons and forceful decisions do not create fulfilled individuals — they create anxious young people who gradually lose confidence in themselves.
A society progresses not when all its children run in the same direction, but when every child is free to discover a direction of their own.
The real crisis today is not failure in examinations. It is the quiet loss of self that occurs when young people spend years becoming what they never truly wished to be.
— Insha Abdullah. The author is a postgraduate in English Literature.
