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I came here to grow. To learn. To lead. To bring life back into the soil. I thought agriculture would root me in purpose in people, in innovation, in change. But semester after semester, the only thing that’s truly growing is my frustration. Let me tell you what it’s really like to be an agriculture student in Nepal. The rotting truth that nobody wants to talk about.

When I entered our college what I found was a dying curriculum, tired teachers, empty labs, and a system that feels like it's forgotten us. We’re being taught from manuals written a decade ago. New knowledge? New technology? Nowhere in the syllabus. Precision farming, climate smart agriculture, vertical farming we hear these terms but never touch them. Our lab classes are dry theory on paper. The microscope is broken. The seeds are missing. The equipment is "coming next year." Always next year.

And our teachers when they’re here are often overworked. Some semesters, we don’t even get them. One teacher arrives, rushes through a six month course in two days, and then vanishes. We copy notes. Memorize slides, highlight sentences we don’t understand. Then we walk into exams like sheep heading for slaughter. Sit for practical exams that are anything but practical. Write definitions of tools we’ve never seen.

Time runs out. The course is never completed. Yet the exam arrives like a storm, and we’re left scrambling. Nobody teaches how to think, how to apply, how to survive. Just pass or fail. More than 70 percent of students fail repeatedly—and no one asks why.

There’s no mentorship. No industry linkage. No exposure. No internships. And every time we raise questions, we hear the same thing: “budget chaina.” They say they do not budget for basic learning, for upgraded classrooms, for the internet, for practical tools. But they have plenty of budget for events, speeches and elections. And the main thing for this is politics. Yes, politics poisons everything. Student parties dominate every corner of our campus life. If you’re not a member of some political group, you’re not getting on stage, you’re not leading any events, you’re not getting your name on any notice. And if you are, you get everything even if you haven’t earned it.

They say student unions are meant to protect us. What we see is power games. Vote campaigns. Threats. Fights that erupt into real violence. Heads get smashed. Classrooms get locked. And you’re either with them or invisible. Opportunities? Leadership roles? Exposure? Reserved for those in politics. The rest of us just survive. Sometimes, fights break out. Literal ones. Blood on campus floors. People hospitalized over student elections. And we call this education. We are silenced in the name of discipline. Told not to complain. Told this is how it’s always been. But we are tired. We are breaking down.

No one talks about the mental load we carry. The anxiety. The burnout. The breakdowns in hostel rooms. The pressure to succeed in a system designed to make you fail. The constant academic pressure, the humiliation of failing, the fear of asking questions, the silence in classrooms where curiosity once lived. Many of us are depressed. Many have panic attacks before results. But there is no counselor. No system. No one notices unless we collapse.

I am an agriculture student who once believed in change. I still do but not like this. I don’t want the juniors to walk this same road, only to lose their voice halfway. Because no student should come here full of life only to leave burnt out, bitter and broken. Admissions in agriculture campuses are declining year after year not because agriculture isn’t important, but because we’ve made it unbearable.

We wanted to grow. But this system is built to bury us. And unless something changes, more of us will keep withering in silence. To the system, we are not machines. We are not vote banks. We are not pages to be marked red for wrong answers you never bothered to teach us. We are not your failed harvest. We are the seeds of change. So stop burying us alive. We are students. We are the future of agriculture and we refuse to rot in silence.