September 17, 2016 – My first road trip in US, Jersey City, NJ, USA

One more firsts to share with you guys!

I messed up with the timeline, so sharing this now!

This was the day when I took the first road trip and it happened with a few conversations over WhatsApp and some of the kind-hearted people graduated from my undergrad institute back home – SGGSIE&T, Visnupuri, Nanded, India.

So, SGGS, my undergrad institute, had been doing a lot of investments in the Alumni relations and due to this, they had been organizing Alumni meets over the globe for the past few years. The US, geographically, is a very big country, so they had to organize alumni meets for each coast and I ended up attending the East Coast meetup.

I was based out of Hartford, CT and the meet was supposed to happen at some place in New Jersey. Therefore, for me, the transportation was a big puzzle as I didn’t know how to drive back then and I didn’t know anyone living near me who could drive me roughly 100 miles from where I was.
That’s when Manik chimed in and helped me. I remember him coordinating with most of the East Coast buddies to figure who lived near me and managed to bring at least 5 of us in a car and made sure I didn’t have to worry about any transportation difficulties.
I am not sure, I ever thanked him for that or not, but Thanks, Manik!

This was taken during one of the gas stops.

During the drive, there were so many breathtaking scenes. Experiencing my first road trip and accompanied by some of the highly distinguished individuals, who graduated during the 90s from my college, I felt a little bit nervous and shy, so I didn’t click that many pictures. However, when I saw Manik clicking a few, I put my embarrassment aside and clicked a few too. I really liked this bridge and was lucky to capture it in a frame.

It took us nearly 2 hours to reach to the venue. I remember being on cloud 9 when we reached the place, as New Jersey was the first state after Connecticut that I was visiting. I knew the states have 50 states, and vowed to visit all 50 states during my stay in the US, and was glad to bring the count to 2.

Upon entering the banquet hall, I snapped this selfie but made sure that I was alone, as I didn’t want any weird stares from my fellow alumni. Such a stupid guy I was!

Anyway, the event started on time and I was glad to see some familiar faces in the crowd, especially, our beloved college professors and lecturers and our director sir too. It was really refreshing to see everyone gathering around, sharing the progress of the institute and what promises it brings to new students and what kind of advantages one gets if admitted to SGGS.

In the picture below, you can see our director sir, Joshi sir, giving highlights of the achievements for the past year to the fellow alumni. When I was in India, I never imagined our alumni relation was so strong. I was empathetic to see so many people in the crowd. I never knew so many people made it big after graduating from college. It was refreshing to see so many people doing so well and it was kind of motivating too to be honest. I could picture myself at their place after an X amount of years.

And off course, there was some amazing food to taste. As I mentioned here, I am a connoisseur of free food. Well, this wasn’t free technically, but still. I remember tasting almost everything they had to offer and filled up myself quite nicely. It was awkward to carry so many plates around, but, didn’t bother much.

These are some of the snapshots that I could capture when the ceremony was taking place. You can see many people catching up and bonding over food and drinks.
The only thing that I regret not doing during this alumni meet was to talk to as many people as I could. This was a perfect opportunity to build a rapport with some of the alumni as I was the *only student* present at the alumni meet. I must mention that I did talk to at least 10 of the alumni and enjoyed the discussion.

I am not the one to complain, so I felt lucky to be a small part of the SGGS Alumni community. I learnt so many things from this visit. The most important lesson for me was that the life in the US is entirely different than the life back home. In the US, we were more responsible as compared to Indian Alumni meets, when we were more carefree and still students, am I right?

One of the learnings that I will value the most during this visit was to always talk to people and build connections. By talking, smiling, and paying attention to what the next person is saying help a lot to build connections, so you must always follow these if you want to be a successful person here in the US.

Many more trips coming your way! 💪🏽