All my focus was on one university, one department. In my mind, DU had to happen for me, and I think that condition was its own kind of trap. By the time the result came out, I had no social life left to return to.

I remember writing in my diary, “When one door closes, another opens, but what if all doors are closed and there is one window you don’t want to open?” That was exactly how I felt. I personally felt like I didn’t live; I only breathed during those days.

Around that time, I sat for a reputed private university, got in, and only the admission formality was left. It should have felt like relief. Instead, I noticed my sister and my family weren’t very happy about it, and that mattered more to me than the admission itself, simply because I live my life for their happiness, sometimes more than I’d like to admit.

Then a cousin said something quietly devastating: that I deserved a better subject and a public university, and that I should try again. She wasn’t telling me anything new. She was just saying out loud what I’d been too scared to say to myself. That was the wake-up alarm.

I chose to reset, even after knowing that this reset meant giving up something already secured for something uncertain. I was lucky to have a family that never pressurised me. I remember asking my parents for six months, promising that whatever they decided after that, I would accept.

And in September, I started preparing for Bangladesh University of Professionals (BUP). I researched online, went to Nilkhet alone to buy resources I’d found, came home, and shoved all my physics, chemistry, and biology books into the storeroom, simply because these names alone haunted me like a bad nightmare I didn’t want to feel again.

After enough surfing online, I decided, journalism it is! I started planning for the FSSS (Faculty of Security and Strategic Studies) admission test, and sat for FASS (Faculty of Arts and Liberal Science) as a backup.

For both, Bangla, English, and General Knowledge (GK) were the three main subjects, split 40/40/20: 20 marks for Bangla, 40 each for English and GK. Bangla and English were subjects I hadn’t touched since HSC, and my general knowledge was thin, but I still chose to jump into the fire.

This time, though, I prepared differently, and it was not just academically, but emotionally as well. I didn’t say BUP had to happen for me. I said if BUP didn’t happen, I would go abroad, which my parents originally wanted, but it was never really my plan, because leaving my parents in Bangladesh was something that I could never do.

So, for me, it wasn’t really BUP versus another option. It was BUP versus a life against my will. That distinction changed how I studied. This time there was calmness rather than firm stubbornness. I simply knew the only convenient public university in Dhaka was BUP, and that became the goal: BUP and journalism, nothing else on my mind.

It was 19 January 2024. The FASS exam didn’t go well, but the FSSS exam felt different. After the exam, there was a different kind of ease and calmness. I stood at the upper plaza; the sky was calm and there was a cold breeze. I looked at the campus covered in the setting sun, and something in me already knew that this was going to be my campus.

About a week later, at 11 p.m., the result was published. My whole body trembled, because one PDF file was going to decide what my future held. I opened the FSSS result first: rank 181. I hadn’t made it into FASS, but that was never the real goal, just a backup.

When I went to BUP to get admitted, I was placed in Law, though my first choice was Mass Communication and Journalism, simply because Law was the top department in FSSS. When I went to the office to request a change, they were visibly surprised, because Law was simply the first priority for most students, and here I was trying to leave it.

I didn’t have a persuasive argument prepared. I just knew what I wanted, and that was enough to hold my ground in a room full of people assuming I’d made a mistake. Even after classes began, I watched several batchmates who’d sat through the departmental orientation quietly switch departments or leave for other universities altogether. I understood the pull. I just didn’t feel it myself. I stayed.

I’m in my third year now. My first admission attempt was for DU A Unit, and I failed. My second was solely for BUP Journalism, and I succeeded. Both times, I’d allowed myself only one option in my mind, but the difference was in how I held that certainty. With DU, I didn’t pray to Allah; I simply demanded, and with BUP, I pleaded, I hoped.

My failure the first time and my success the second taught me something no book or scripture ever could. It taught me humbleness and acceptance, helped me understand my family’s perspective and the quiet miracle of Allah’s timing, and, above all, it taught me to live a life where nothing happens according to plan.

I watched my friends get into public and private universities, moving forward with their lives, while mine hit pause, though the world did not pause with me. But luck was on my side: because of Covid, I only lost six months academically, and that year happened to be the first time BUP waived the viva, shortening my wait.

The DU result came in June. I watched batchmates post admission photos while I avoided my phone, sitting without any sense of what my future was going to look like. I had lost the possibility of a life I was already living in my head. By September, things started getting easier, and finally, almost miraculously, I found a direction. After exactly six months, my life restarted, and by January, I was a BUPian.

People still joke about BUP being “a private university”. But the jokes miss what’s actually true: BUP doesn’t operate like a typical public university. No session jam, well-facilitated classrooms, a supportive faculty, a beautiful campus inside the cantonment area, and now, tuition fees similar to most private universities, two separate campuses, and our own hall facilities. Honestly, I could not imagine a better university campus.

Through both phases of my admission journey, I held onto a lesson from 3 Idiots: that we should study what we’re passionate about, that education shouldn’t feel like a chore. In DU, I wanted to study psychology; in BUP, it was journalism. Looking back at both choices clearly, I’m happiest with the one I ended up with. Writing and creative thinking give me ease. And now, after seeing the course outline of Psychology, I am literally grateful to Allah because I personally believe that a mind like mine would lose its sanity if it learned how to truly observe other people’s minds.

Through everything, my family’s support never wavered. Right now, I have a CGPA I’m proud of and a clear sense of direction for my future. My courses feel more like entertainment than academics, because I’m finally studying something I love. And at the end of the day, the same diary holds a verse from the Quran that says, “Allah is indeed the best planner.”

And if I ever had the opportunity to do it all over again, I would not change a thing, because the lessons I gained are what made me who I am today.

“If nothing goes according to your plan, then simply stop planning. Leave things in the hands of the Almighty; he will take care of everything in a way you could never even dream of.”