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“Advice I’m Glad I Ignored” — A Writing Challenge
And some things, you just know. Even when everyone around you is telling you otherwise.
We all receive advice from family, friends, teachers, colleagues, and sometimes even strangers who think they know what’s best for us. Some advice protects us. Some guide us. And some… almost makes us abandon the life meant for us. But sometimes, maybe just that one time, something inside us paused. Questioned. Resisted.
This is my story of that one time I trusted my own voice.
The Advice I’m Glad I Didn’t Take — “Marry a settled doctor. Don’t complicate your life.”
By now, if you’ve read my previous pieces, you might have a clear idea about me. I belong to that traditional, disciplined middle-class Indian family where fear and expectations always overpowered love and confidence.
I was twenty. Just entered an all girls medical college. Just entered a strict girls’ hostel after years in an all-girls school. Anxiety, curiosity and somewhere deep inside, desperation — for friends, for independence, for exploring myself and the world around me.
Helicopter parenting hadn’t let me develop the art of reading people well in time. So I kind of just believed…
