College is supposed to be about learning, but half the time it feels like an elaborate drama where everyone is acting busy. We’ve all become professional pretenders of productivity, starring in a play called “I’m working hard, please don’t question it.”

Walk into any engineering college library and you’ll see the cast in action. One student has a laptop open on a complicated circuit diagram, but the real tab hidden behind is YouTube. Another has surrounded themselves with thick textbooks, highlighters, sticky notes, and a water bottle—like a fortress of seriousness. But peek closer, and they’re scrolling through memes. I can’t judge; I’ve done the same while telling myself, “At least I came to the library, that counts.”

Assignments are another big performance. Everyone waits until the last night, then suddenly we’re all typing furiously as if we’ve been working all week. The next morning, we proudly hand in our “efforts,” pretending it wasn’t assembled at 2 a.m. with Google, Ctrl+C, and a prayer. Professors must know, but they let the show go on. Maybe they were actors once, too.

Even group projects are more about appearances than actual work. One person does the coding, another designs the slides, and the rest nod in online meetings, saying, “Yes, yes, great idea,” while secretly watching cricket highlights. On presentation day, we all dress neatly and act like equal contributors. That’s the biggest lie college trains us to pull off: teamwork.

What’s funny is how guilty we feel if we’re not pretending to be productive. If I spend a day just chilling, it feels like a crime. But if I open my laptop and keep typing nonsense, suddenly I’m a “hard-working student.” It’s less about results and more about performance.

Somewhere in this circus, though, I think we do learn something. Not just circuits and codes, but survival skills: how to juggle deadlines, how to manage group egos, how to look serious even when lost. Maybe college productivity isn’t about what we actually produce—it’s about keeping up the act until we figure things out for real.

Until then, I’ll keep my textbooks open and my memes one click away.