I Finally Got My Driver’s License

A Family’s Fear, a Personal Struggle, and the Road to Driving

I finally managed to get my driver’s license yesterday. It took a whole lot of sporadic effort strewn over time and space (combined 10 years over India and the US) that eventually culminated in me getting it.

It’s somewhat crazy to think that something people consider trivial was so hard for me. Looking back, I see it happened because of two things: the ecosystem I grew up in, and of course, my own stubborn share of blame. I can’t just throw everything on society, even though all of us love doing that. 🙂

An added twist is that I’m the first person in my family to have an “active” driving license. That story begins with my grandad, who, while working outside India in the 1970s, had such a severe accident that it left shockwaves across the family. He recovered after six months of care, but with the limited communication of that era, my family back home endured months of silence and fear. That trauma turned into a ripple effect: driving became synonymous with danger.

Even my dad wasn’t spared. As a civil engineer, he once got a motorbike from his firm. After a minor fall, he gave it up completely. The irony? He’s led more than 20 national highway projects across India, but doesn’t drive a single vehicle himself.

And then there was me. Because of his job, we always had an SUV and a driver. For much of my childhood, I enjoyed what was essentially a personal chauffeur. I can still name each driver on my fingers because I grew up knowing them so well. Naturally, I never felt the pinch of learning to drive myself.

But that easy arrangement disappeared when I moved to the US for my studies. Suddenly, I was on my own. Living on the East Coast, in Manhattan and Jersey City, I still managed without driving because public transport was so good. Long-haul buses and trains got me far, and for the occasional trip, generous friends would take the wheel.

So that’s the backdrop, the reasons I never felt urgency. But that doesn’t mean I never tried. Over the years, I made several attempts, each with its own twists.

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The Attempts

2015: Kota, India.
I signed up for formal driving lessons during my last year of undergrad. I remember driving around the industrial zone for hours with my instructor, but for reasons I can’t recall, it never culminated in a road test.

2017: Allahabad, India.
On a vacation home during my spring break from grad school in the US, I practiced with a local driver who knew my dad. I even got a learner’s license by passing the knowledge test, but the actual road test was scheduled a month later, and my vacation was shorter than that. So the effort fizzled.

2017–2019: New York and New Jersey, USA.
Determined to fix it, I tried again in NYC. But visa documentation issues had me running in circles between multiple New Jersey DMVs, and I gave up, exhausted. By late 2019, I registered at a Queens driving school, cleared the knowledge test, and took several lessons. Then Covid hit, the learning permit expired, and the cycle ended again.

2023: Jersey City.
I gave it another go, this time in the New Jersey’s DMV. My first knowledge test attempt failed by a single question. Frustrated, I ditched the apps and read the NJ driver’s manual cover-to-cover. That worked, I passed and got my learner’s permit. I took classes, built some confidence, and went for the road test. I failed. Twice. Once for doing a K-turn in five moves instead of three, and another time for not using hand-over-hand steering. To make matters worse, the same examiner failed me both times.

It was disheartening, but I kept pushing. Friends like Shubham, Hardik, Abhijit, and Jayant helped me practice, and for the first time I felt real confidence behind the wheel. Driving with Jayant especially was a breakthrough. His patience allowed me to relax and become aware of my own mistakes. That was when I realized I wasn’t just following rules anymore. I was actually aware of what I was doing, and that’s the moment when practice turns into real skill.

Still, scheduling the actual test was another hurdle. That’s when I wrote a small Python script to alert me if cancelled DMV slots opened up, saving me from endless refreshing. It worked, and I finally got a slot.

This time, I asked for Blanco, the Guatemalan instructor I trusted most from my driving school for the road test. On the way to the DMV, he handed me the wheel, and that simple gesture gave me the same ease I had found driving with Jayant. When the test began, everything clicked. I moved through the maneuvers like clockwork, and when the examiner smiled and said, “It’s a pass,” Blanco hugged me and said, “Congratulations.”

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Reflections

Looking back, I realize my biggest flaw was waiting until necessity forced me into action. That habit has cost me opportunities beyond driving. For a long time, I treated effort as binary, either 0 or 1. But life is really a gradient. You can dial it up slowly, patiently, and let part-effort mix with the entropy of life and that way you can actually surf the wave somewhat easily.

I also learned that friends and teachers play different roles. Friends give you space to grow; teachers give you sharp corrections. Both matter, but in different stages of learning.

Most importantly, I saw how every skill moves from rule-following to self-awareness. That’s when you know you’ve crossed the bridge from fumbling to mastery.

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And so, after years of attempts, detours, bureaucratic loops, countless instructors, and the help of friends, I finally got my driver’s license. Maybe this is me growing up after all!