Eighteen months is a long time to hold a commitment when the finish line is that far out and nothing forces you to keep going. Standing outside the hall in Rupnagar before the ceremony — in front of the banner for the Major in Artificial Intelligence, eighteen months after the first module opened — was a moment about one deeply underrated professional trait: the ability to see a long thing through. I set it down in this note.
Long commitments are where most people fall off
Short bursts of intensity are common. Sustained commitment across many months, especially alongside everything else demanding your attention, is rare — and it's exactly what meaningful work requires. The interesting parts of a long program are the start and the end; the middle is just showing up, repeatedly, when novelty has worn off and no one is watching.
Reaching the convocation for an eighteen-month AI major wasn't a single achievement so much as the sum of a hundred unremarkable days of continuing. That's the part worth respecting: not the ceremony, but the consistency that earned it.
What seeing a long thing through teaches
- Consistency outperforms intensity. A steady standard held over eighteen months beats bursts of effort that don't last. Careers are built on the former.
- The middle is the real test. Anyone can be motivated at the beginning and the end. The professional trait that matters is continuing through the unglamorous middle.
- Completion compounds credibility. Finishing a long, demanding commitment is evidence — to yourself and others — that you can be trusted with the next one.
The takeaway
The convocation marked eighteen months of not stopping. I've come to believe that the capacity to sustain a commitment over a long horizon — to keep a standard through the quiet middle stretch — is one of the most valuable and least visible professional traits there is. It's what turns intention into a track record.
The full note, taken outside the hall that day, is on the page below.
👉 Read it: www.divyakush.com/insights/iit-ropar-convocation
Divyakush Punjabi — Full-Stack & AI Systems Engineer
🌐 https://www.divyakush.com · 💼 LinkedIn · 💻 GitHub
