Inevitably, this is the time for board results. And some are celebrating and others wondering how life will go from here on.
I remember a different 'result' time that I once witnessed, visiting a friend in IIM(Cal) in the late eighties.

He took me to the 'jheel,' the main body of water on the campus, and showed me what he called 'the walk.'
What was the walk? It was first year students, mostly toppers in their previous institutions walking around in dazed silence after the first semester results.

The problem was that most of the batch were formerly toppers or near toppers. And after the first term results many students who were used to being elite suddenly found themselves mediocre or worse.
How they adjusted really decided how campus life unfolded after this.

Some just decided that they would never manage to top in this competition and focussed on having a good time and just doing enough to clinch a decent placement. Others resolved to study even harder and crack that top 20.

A few succeeded, but the majority neither got the results they wanted nor had the fun they could.
But the quality of their remaining time on campus and a lot of their later life often depended on how they handled this first brush with comparative failure.

And my friend. He decided to give it his best. He knew he couldn't crack the top twenty in their batch of 150, but if he stayed close enough, he would probably be called to some of the more coveted placements. He did decent, but that's for another day.