As the deadlines to apply for college admissions near, prospective students are becoming anxious.  Some, rejected in the past by colleges of repute, will pray to find a good college to go this time. For those who have decided to skip a year or two, it is even harder now because so many other graduates are applying in the same year. And some will decide to let go a year or maybe more to improve their SAT score or get subject grades of their choices.

Countless paper works fill up the free days. So much of money is pooled in for attempts to get in, let alone get selected and move out abroad. The fear of having to face embarrassment for being rejected by the college of your choice cannot be surpassed and it builds more like paranoia over time. And after getting a seat in the college of your choice, the pain of having to move away from family is very depressing. And all this, year after year, repeats because our home country cannot do enough in terms of education to lure us to stay home for our higher studies.

How many of the total students having passed high school decide to stay back out of choice? A handful. We are molded in ways that we want to move out for higher studies and for work. We are made to learn that there is nothing in here to attract us; no opportunities, no basic amenities, no praise for talents and no rewards for hard work. We are taught that the ever unstable political system is corrupt and favors only the ones in power. And perhaps these values become instilled in us so well that we start to see the country and her people in similar ways.

But once we move out for study or work, it will not be as golden as we have been hearing. How many foreign migrants are in threat of being attacked every day in different parts of the world? How many are blamed for terrorist attacks or mishaps? It is mainly the countless migrants that are the primary suspects and victims in cases like these. We have all been witness to so many Nepalese citizens being trafficked, sold or illegally sent to many countries in attraction and promise of a better life for studies or work. Some are stranded in a different place than as promised and are left to fend for themselves. Women, particularly maids, in the Arab states have always been telling about how mistreated they are; made to work for as much as twenty hours in a day, beaten, sexually assaulted and underpaid.

Amazingly, we are ready to work as hard as we can in foreign lands but when it comes to doing the same amount of work here we do not. We may work as petty laborers outside, leave everything we own and still be happier than we are here. We bask in the pride of all the remittance money we get back home but it does not ever occur once to us that we should be making all this money here, at home. We should be creating opportunities to work in different arenas of work. Entrepreneurship should be encouraged and fostered. More than that we as citizens should realize the importance of not migrating and help develop the economy by the same hard work we have been giving elsewhere.

We need to stay here and study our nation well before trying to explore the geography of the world. We need to know where and why do we stand and try and change that by knowing our country well not the working and functioning of some multinational. And most important of all, we must learn to love the nation we were born to and preserve what is left of her.