Another Ordinary Day : Photography Assignment

Our first and most important duty and responsibility as students are to study and perform well. However, being a college student and living away from home necessitates far more duties than we could have ever imagined. Daily chores place a burden on us that students who live at home may never comprehend. Living in a hostel, where even the most basic task, such as eating, becomes a huge time-consuming responsibility because we don't always consider washing the dishes as part of that, is a very basic example of what we go through on a daily basis. Through my photographs, I have tried to demonstrate how college students who live away from home are burdened with so many responsibilities that they are unable to focus on our most important task and primary responsibility, which is studying.

Everyone comes from different places, families, and backgrounds, but in our home away from home, we are just ordinary college students trying to get through the day. I photographed my friend performing a variety of time-consuming daily tasks. She is washing her dishes in the first photograph. In the next image, she is making her bed, and in the last, she is drying her laundry. The daily hustle and bustle of college and chores make us crave home more than we ever imagined. Our day ends in the blink of an eye, but due to the never-ending list of chores, we end up doing nothing of actual value.

Fixed meal times, various class schedules, and being five minutes late for dinner mean we have to cook for ourselves. Our first thought in the morning is never, "I have to study," but rather, "I have to clean my room, do the laundry, or fold my clothes." Coming from the comfort of your home to being thrown into the deep end of a pool of responsibility is no easy task, but adults do it all the time; therefore, our age isn't what defines us as adults; it's our responsibilities.

I kept my subject in focus, but it was also necessary to highlight the tasks she was carrying out. While clicking these photographs, I felt nothing short of homesick. It reminded me of coming home from school and finding mom waiting in the dining room with hot food and the sweetest smile. Going to sleep in your newly made bed and wearing freshly ironed clothes. Returning from college isn't nearly the same. We're almost always too busy to miss home, but when we're sick, stressed, or overworked, we crave the comfort and presence of family, and while that may sound selfish, we don't have much of a choice. Our education is an extremely important part of our lives, and it does entail a new kind of freedom that we have never known before, but home is still home. Every morning, we have to decide whether we want to be a student or an adult.

I spent the entire day following my subject, watching her perform chore after chore, and before we knew it, it was time for bed, leaving us with a mountain of assignments that were due. The inspiration for this theme came to me when I needed to start studying but first had to clean my study table, and once I started on that, I realized that my laundry had piled up and needed to be done. I was exhausted after I finished my chores that I didn't even notice when I dozed off. My goal for this project was not to encourage empathy, sympathy, or to make people feel sorry for us, but rather to demonstrate how students' lives are far more disparate and complicated than our parents and professors choose to admit. It entails far more than simply eating, sleeping, and studying. It consists of making our own beds, creating a budget, doing laundry, and so much more. The guilt we feel when we fail to fulfill our only responsibility of value that our parents and professors expect of us is heartbreaking, but it is a decision, nay a burden, that we choose to live with every day.
Here's the link to the assignment that I submitted : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Fk8UIZuArijgma59P6TaCrJhOhxCa2MB/view?usp=sharing