duck duck go!

Basically, this is an investigation into why ducks have better life management skills than engineering students.

I saw a few ducks swimming in the campus pond today, and honestly, it was the most humiliating academic experience of my life. Not because I failed an exam. Not because I got rejected from an internship. But because a bunch of birds, with absolutely zero LinkedIn presence like me, seemed to have their lives more sorted than people with engineering degrees in progress.

There they were, floating peacefully, enjoying the water, minding their own business. No assignment submissions, no attendance shortage, no internal exams, no placement anxiety, and definitely no professor saying, "This is a very basic concept or This question will definitely come up in your end sems," before proceeding to destroy the confidence of an entire classroom.

Imagine being a duck. You wake up, enter a pond, and exist. That's your entire schedule. No five-year plan. No skill roadmap. No LeetCode streak. No GitHub contribution graph looking like evidence of a crime scene because you haven't committed anything in three weeks.

Meanwhile, we're paying tuition fees to develop anxiety as a transferable skill.And the worst part? Those ducks didn't even look ambitious. They weren't networking, upskilling, or building a personal brand. One of them was literally floating sideways, and somehow I was the one questioning my career trajectory.

Maybe they know something we don't. Or maybe we humans have simply taken a perfectly functional existence and added semester exams to it.

Look at how they swim. Nobody seems particularly concerned about whether the duck next to them is doing better. Nobody is checking who's reached the other side first. Nobody is comparing feathers and wondering why someone else's plumage looks more premium.

Now imagine an engineering college without comparison.
Impossible. The institution would probably shut down. There's always that one guy who has, solved 700 LeetCode problems, and somehow still has time to tell you, "Bro, you're wasting your college life." Thanks, bro. I was enjoying my five minutes of peace before you turned them into a performance review.

Then there's the other guy who hasn't opened a textbook since admission but confidently says, "Placement season is far away."
Far away? Brother, your placement preparation is currently a historical event. Archaeologists will discover your abandoned syllabus.

And us? We're somewhere in the middle, trying to decide whether to study operating systems, learn machine learning, build a startup, prepare for interviews, and somehow maintain a social life.

Naturally, we choose the most efficient option: watch a YouTube video titled "How to Become a Millionaire Before 25" and feel productive for the next eleven minutes.

The ducks, meanwhile, have moved approximately four feet. And they're still winning.
But career anxiety is only half the circus. There's also love, the one subject where even the university topper suddenly forgets how basic logic works.

You'd think people who spend years learning algorithms would be good at identifying patterns. And yet, one accidental eye contact in a lecture hall is enough to make us construct an entire predictive model.

She looked at me twice today. hmmm, Interesting.
She laughed at my joke.
hmmm, Promising.
She asked me for notes.
Wedding venue: shortlisted.

Brother, she has an examination tomorrow. She needs the notes, not your surname.

Meanwhile, the ducks appear to have a much healthier relationship with romance. Some swim together. Some swim alone. Some hang around each other without requiring a three-hour discussion about what they are.

Nobody is asking, "What are we?" Nobody is posting cryptic Instagram stories to see if a particular duck reacts. Nobody is typing "haha, no worries" while internally drafting a 46-page emotional investigation. And nobody is checking whether the other duck was last seen online at 11:47 PM.

Honestly, the ducks should start a relationship counselling service. Their only qualification would be not being human, which already puts them ahead of most of us.

Of course, some students aren't interested in relationships. They're focused on their careers.
Respectable. Admirable. Until they develop a crush and discover that the human brain can run advanced machine learning algorithms but cannot process a message containing just "okay."

Our technical education has prepared us for artificial intelligence, cloud computing, data structures, and complex computational problems. Not for mixed signals.

The education system has failed us in one crucial area: there is no practical examination for emotional damage. Imagine the viva:

Professor: Explain your current relationship status.

Student: Sir, it is undefined.

Professor: Why?

Student: Sir, the other party has not returned a response.

Professor: Then why have you been waiting for six months?

Student: Sir, I am waiting for the system to converge.

Professor: Get out.

And honestly, fair enough.
The funniest thing is that we're trying to build stable futures while simultaneously being emotionally destabilised by people who don't even know what they want for lunch. We want financial independence, career growth, healthy relationships, and peace of mind. Basically, the complete premium subscription to adulthood. Unfortunately, we're currently using the free trial, and several features are unavailable.

Peace of mind? Requires payment.
Emotional stability? Server error.
Career clarity? Under maintenance.
Romantic success? Not available in your region.
And yet, we keep swimming. Or at least pretending to swim.

That's the other thing I noticed about the ducks. They're not exactly motionless. Beneath the water, their feet are probably working overtime.

Which, now that I think about it, is the most relatable thing about them. From above, everything looks peaceful. Underneath, there's a lot of paddling.

Much like a student who says, "Yeah, bro, everything's sorted," while having three incomplete assignments, a half-built project, and a resume that looks like it was written by someone describing a stranger.

Much like the person who posts a romantic couple picture with the caption "My forever" while privately wondering whether forever includes surviving the next argument.

Much like that classmate who says, "I haven't studied anything," and then scores 94%.

That person isn't a duck. That's a government conspiracy.

Maybe the lesson isn't that ducks have no problems. Maybe it's that we don't see the paddling beneath the surface. Everyone is working through something, even the people who appear to be effortlessly floating ahead.

But humans have somehow turned this perfectly normal experience into a competitive sport.

We don't just want to succeed. We want to succeed before everyone else, look good doing it, document the process, receive public validation, and preferably make our ex regret everything.

We don't just want a job. We want a prestigious job with an impressive salary, a respectable title, a comfortable work-life balance, and enough money to post a "humbled and grateful" LinkedIn announcement.

We don't just want love. We want someone who understands us, supports our ambitions, communicates properly, remembers the small things, and doesn't make us question our entire existence over a punctuation mark, and we don't just want to enjoy college. We want to make unforgettable memories, maintain a perfect GPA, build an impressive portfolio, develop our personalities, and graduate without emotional damage.

Naturally, we achieve all of this by sleeping at 5 AM and waking up with the enthusiasm of a phone at 2% battery.

Meanwhile, a duck has probably achieved its daily goals by lunchtime. I genuinely wonder what would happen if ducks attended engineering college. Would they compete for placements? Would they form project groups and let one duck do all the work? Would they spend an entire semester arguing over a project title before building absolutely nothing?

Actually, that last one sounds suspiciously familiar. Perhaps they'd be better at teamwork. Perhaps they'd simply leave the group chat and go swimming.

A revolutionary concept.
And maybe that's what we need: a little less panic about everyone else's progress and a little more attention to our own direction.

Not because ambition is bad. Please, by all means, chase your dream job. Learn new skills. Build that startup. Fall in love. Get your heart broken if the universe has scheduled that particular character-development episode. Work towards the life you want.

Just don't turn every single day into an emergency meeting about your future.

You can be ambitious without treating your classmates as competitors in a survival reality show. You can love someone without making them the CEO of your self-worth. You can take a break without feeling that your entire career is collapsing because you spent twenty two minutes watching ducks.

Although, to be fair, those twenty two minutes were probably more peaceful than the last three hours you spent studying , and so after observing the ducks, I returned to my very important student responsibilities: unfinished assignments, uncertain career plans, questionable romantic prospects, and an alarming number of tabs open in my browser.

The ducks continued swimming.
They didn't congratulate themselves. They didn't post about their productivity. They didn't announce that they were entering a new era of personal growth.

They just existed and somehow, that looked like success.

Maybe one day we'll figure it out. Maybe we'll get the job, find our people, fall in love with someone who actually likes us back, and finally understand the subject we've been pretending to understand since the first lecture. or maybe we'll spend the next ten years figuring things out one mistake at a time.

Either way, the pond will still be there. The ducks will still be swimming and somewhere on campus, another student will look at them and realise that the creatures with absolutely no career plans, no romantic complications, and no academic qualifications might just be living the dream.

So here's my proposal: let's stop treating life like an examination we forgot to prepare for. Study hard. Work smart. Love wisely. Compare less. Sleep occasionally. And remember that the person swimming ahead of you might not be doing better. They might just be closer to the food. Because at the end of the day, life is a pond, college is a circus, love is an unpredictable software update, and your career is a project with an unclear deadline.

And the ducks?
The ducks are probably just happy they don't have internal assessments.

Duck Duck Go, where the ducks have no degree, no deadlines, no relationship drama, and somehow a better work-life balance than the entire engineering department.

(caution) If you see me staring at the pond again, don't disturb me. I'm attending a career counselling session with the ducks. Their placement record looks more promising.