28th April 2008, 4pm
I wait nervously in front of my computer. My hands and legs are shivering. I am bathed in sweat.Yes, you guessed it right! It’s every student’s nightmare. My Second PU marks were going to be declared. There were a lot of ‘expectations’ riding on this one result and the hype created over this one result, is quite high. This result would seal my fate. A good set of numbers and I get into a good engineering college and a bad set of numbers and I am ruined for life! The server jams and finally, I am going to get through. I take a deep breath and enter my roll number. Within seconds, the results pop on the screen.Probably, that was the first time I understood what a heart attack might have felt like. Without going into any details, let me say that the numbers weren’t pleasant (almost binary, if you could call it that).All six subjects were a letdown. That was the first reality check I encountered.I am not going to bother dwelling on it or if I deserved better. I would not know. Never do, actually.I am one of those people, who can never actually say how my exam went. I might write everything and end up with nothing and vice versa. The immediate consequences of the above mentioned events are quite expected. With the level of so called ‘competition’ in today’s world and the race against time, numbers such as mine would have surely meant THE END!Obviously,nobody’s reaction was going to be very nice and I was aware of that. It took me some time, to come out of the shock, but then I did eventually. It’s amazing what that one result and that one year did to me. It had a lasting impact on my life and I am actually grateful that the numbers I got, actually helped me. A few days after the results, was when I actually got my first chance to dwell on what had happened.Funnily, the first question that came to mind wasn’t what had gone wrong, but was why should the result worry me? The consensus in today’s world is that the so called 12th marks make or break your life.Apparently; it is the one document we need right throughout. Everybody asks for it. Funny isn’t it? How much importance is given to a set of numbers!
It is at that point, that I slowly begin to realize that what we are after in life is rarely worthwhile! In going after the so called marks and trying to beat the competition, we forget that we are in the process of learning. The most important process gets overshadowed by things of much lower importance.Well, I am the biggest exam hater there might ever be. I think they are the most useless thing in the world and should be done away with as soon as possible. (My hatred goes to such high extents that in one of my exams which concluded pretty recently, I actually sat and made an estimate of much of my life’s time are wasted writing exams. Believe it or not, it’s quite high!).Sadly, it is a dream that can never be fulfilled (not in the near future, at the least).To be point blank at this point, I find it amusing when people tell me they failed or they topped the class or anything of the sort. A single number that just happened to be the best number for you that day does not make you a failure nor does it make you a genius! It’s quite simple; really.That one number cannot decide your fate! You cannot allow it to do so. Let’s just say, on that day that number just suited what you have done. I won’t even say that number represents the amount of hard work put in blah blah.Because, quite frankly it does not! I know that for a fact, because there are times when I have put in no work at all and managed to get much higher numbers whereas I have put in some effort and I have got much lower. I personally believe, it is more important that you learn something. A person who has got ‘low’ marks has no reason to feel inferior or anything of that sort. I can say this again, with assurance as I find myself on the lower end most of the time! People actually ask me, why I don’t score and the only answer I have is, I don’t want to! A life where I learn something every day is more important to me, than getting high marks on a piece of paper. Whatever anybody says, I will not change that! It’s amazing the level up to which pressure is put on poor kids these days. Competition is always good, but not this kind of competition. It’s quite sick!Every time before the results are out and I hear about suicide cases and I ask myself, couldn’t this life have been saved, had we not given importance to such a thing? If only these kids were told, that nothing can be more valuable than your life, surely not those numbers.
I really don’t know where I am going with this article. It’s just a lot of frustration coming out, more than anything else! I think it’s time I stopped saying the same thing again and again. All I can say is, I really hope people don’t decide who they are based on what numbers they have got. There are more important lessons we need to learn in life. Living life itself is a wonderful thing. It’s not worth getting hung up about things that don’t matter. It’s more important to learn. Reflect on personal experiences, learn from mistakes, observe and be rest assured, things will happen automatically! As said by Clay Bedford:"You can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives."
