Today I write about how I went through my 4 years of school life prior to the all important indian competitive exams. They are amongst the most important years in the life of an Indian child. Don't hope for names of books and authors to refer to, because it makes no sense buying a book (which some random people say is good) without having actually referred to it yourself. Instead, read and learn from my mistakes.
Year 1:9th standard (2009-10)
This is for all 9th graders and below to read (actually a mustread!!). If you don't qualify, then you can still read and you could probably enjoy comparing your 9th grade experiences with mine!!
Everyone called this the beginning of high school. You become a senior and with that status, you get some exorbitant privileges while in school. What's more important is that everyone who wanted to be an engineer was going to start studying hard to get into that dream place, the Valhala of all wannabe Indian engineers......the IITs. The Indian Institutes of Technology were the most prized institutes in India during my time and much before my time. I have no clue when you might be reading this post, so I can't say what happened . So everyone had set their sights on these places. The race to get in is similar to a wildebeest stampede......many would finally fail, but the few who succeeded in reaching the waterhole , were blessed with the most fulfilling gifts of life for an Indian........ultimate respect and prestige in society, a superb salary and a chance to go abroad. So with many aspirations and burdens on our small, immature shoulders, we tried to scale the society's equivalent of Mt. Everest.
I was damn sure that I was gonna work hard for my seat. I had harbored a dream.......to become an aerospace research scientist and later an aerospace tycoon. I thought getting into IIT would bring me one step closer to my dream. So I set about working and studying as hard as possible. What pushed me further was that I hadn't been able to clear NTSE while in 8th standard, due to family functions and refusal from my parents to join coaching in 8th. So, like a cornered tiger, I tried to fight my way up the small ladder to the "heavens" (now I think of my thoughts as rubbish), which was already overcrowded with other passengers trying to climb up. So I set about achieving my task.
Luckily for me, my school had an integrated course for IIT aspirants. After school, we were tutored and tested by teachers from the coaching classes. I found it exciting and tiring at the same time.......but I was starving for success and I would sacrifice anything for it. I was able to excel in all those tests they gave us during the summer, for we didnt have school then. In any case I thought I was on my way. Sometimes I shuddered at the amount of studying to be done. One of our physics teachers said that IIT aspirants never say the daylight. They would study and sometimes refuse to eat food. This scared me to the extent that I asked my mom that night, "Mom, if I don't get into IIT, what will I do with my life?". My mom was much more sensible and said that not getting into IIT wasn't the end of the world, that there were so many guys who didn't even complete their education and were still billionaires and CEOs of huge corporations. That lightened me up a bit. I now believe that it was pointless trying to kill yourself just because you hadn't got an IIT seat. Fact is, there are bigger things worth living for and your future could go any way, whether you become an IIT grad or not.
After the summer got over, normal school and IIT coaching kept me on my toes. Things became tougher when it came to balancing these things. From day 1, even a goofball could tell that I lacked time management. Actually speaking, time management is the most important lesson these competitive exams taught me. Had I sorted out my problems while I was young, I might have been an All India topper. I advice all students to work on time management. In later posts, I will talk seriously about this issue, as not tackling such a crucial problem is equivalent to walking into a lion's den with nothing but a wooden twig to defend yourself.
However inner, self-created problems can be solved with determination and practice. How do you heal yourself from the loss of a loved one? That summer, I lost something way more precious and important than an IIT seat..........my grandmother. Her death happened in shocking circumstances and took the entire family by surprise. I loved her so much, that her death shattered my focus forever. I stopped studying continuously and became restless. I felt that I was the cause of her death and I could have saved her if I had wanted to. She left me in ashes. Both my grandmothers had gone and I knew nothing more than their real names. I still feel that her demise may have had a huge impact on my studies and how I am now. Nevertheless, I had to go on, because brooding over her death just pushed me into a blackhole of depression that could have killed me from the inside and everything I had wanted to achieve. And I learned another important lesson: Time is the greatest healer.
With a melancholic atmosphere in the house, it became tougher to study. Also, my dad, who was also a support system of mine, had decided to stay in the Gulf (where we grew up until I was 12 years old) to save money for my and my brother's higher education and to grow our savings till a certain time. School wasn't easy; I had to study hindi & social studies, along with what was being taught at IIT coaching. The class I was in had many irritating guys - all hell bent on making me look like a jackass, continuously trying to study at a time when everyone else was having fun. One very bad thing that happened was that I started thinking of how other people saw me-a failure and a misfit. I suddenly started worrying about how I looked and what I did in front of my classmates. There were a couple of very popular guys in my class, and started trying to get their attention, which was pointless. I later realized that I had been a fool to do such a thing, and gave it up. NEVER EVER TRY TO PLEASE ANYONE, ESPECIALLY YOUR CLASSMATES. Don't think you are any less, because each and every are special. If you really wanna be recognized and respected, then pursue your interests with complete passion and never will you crave for friends (although true friends will always be with you regardless of your achievements). Unfortunately, I experienced it in a very bad way and I have since been careful about whom I do favours.
I fell sick very often and still suffer from several ailments. There was an olympiad conducted in our school in October, 2009. I believed that I could come within the top 500 to qualify to the next round. On the eve of the exam, I had a horrible headache and I went down with fever. As luck would have it, I just managed to answer some questions in the olympiad. When the results came out, I had a rank of 611, just an inch away from some much needed success. That depressed me further. What was further crushing my life was the new system of education that had been introduced: CCE. Kapil Sibal, famous for his role at the 2007 Bali Summit, had been made Minister for Higher Education. He wanted to bring an American style approach to our education system to do away with rote learning. With his system of grades for 9th and 10th, he wanted less burden of studies on students, and he wanted them to take up extra curricular activities for all round development. Now the effects varied. Students who were good started taking part in sports and extra time activities such as competitions. They started missing classes excessively, because competitions are much more fun. Hence many lost focus for a major part of the year. To get back the awesome grades, they started rote learning, as it was easy enough to do so, with the entire syllabus being diluted to 8th standard levels. And the results came without much problem. So they never really understood what was important to be learnt. The situation was worse for bad guys. They stopped studying and started running away for competitions to bunk school, without winning anything. They never wanted to study; and the new system encouraged them to not do so. Thus results were coming in plentiful, but with no visible output. All of them suffered big time when they came to 11th, because then there is no respite whatsoever from studies. I still think the system is far from foolproof. The good guys, like me, started losing focus, and thought about trying our hand at competitions. Being in the 9th gave you certain privileges. You could bully your way into putting your name to represent school in competitions. So I started participating in quizzes and debates. One of my teachers knew I was a good student, so she sent me to BMUN, a mock United Nations session. The competitions started becoming an addiction, something like gambling time, initially spent on studies, on these awesome competitions. Thing is, I kept losing time. Not only was I unprepared for these competitions, but I was also falling back in my studies. My marks fell, although they were enough to scrap me an A1. And the continuous defeats started denting my confidence. I realized that I was no match for the Indian student level competitions, without preparation. For a guy who literally drank out of the Goddess of Success's hands for so many years (when I was abroad), repeated failures killed me from the inside. I started becoming even more morose. Why was my view so hazy............and where was the sun?
Then my mom decided we needed some peace of mind.......meditation was the key. Within an hour we had decided to go to tirupathi, to ask God to ease our pain. I asked for his help, because I wanted to live with happiness. More importantly, I wanted my depressed family to move ahead, instead of losing themselves further. It was so difficult to move around. Everyday had felt like a burden. I wanted to sleep and only sleep, so that I could forget reality and live in a world of my dreams. But that wasn't going to give me any reprieve from the sadness and I knew that only God could cure this illness. So I prayed for God to take away all this sadness and depression and give me a new beginning.
I believed it worked. 80% won't believe me; but neither did I ask you to read this blog. I felt that spring come back. Family life became normal again. It was easier to talk to people and my focus was coming back. But the first step was through my studies. I put in more efforts and things started looking easier to understand. I started top scoring in all the IIT and school tests. I wasn't winning many competitions, but my ability to advance to the final stages in many of them gave me confidence in my ability to succeed. It felt nice to be back on the taxiway (the strip on which aircraft taxi before takeoff).
Here, another important lesson was to be learnt But I feel that there were 2 incidents that really made me feel that I am now back on the track to success.
It happened in January, 2010. On some wednesday, a teacher randomly called me to her cabin. She told me that I was to represent the school in 'Aarohan-11', an annual fest held for students of different schools by Amrita Engineering School, Bangalore. It was a very huge event, some 70 schools had come. My teacher told me that I was to be drafted in 'Vaigyanik', a science quiz. I obviously thought that I was going to lose more time by not studying. Nevertheless, I liked these competitions and decided to learn more by participating. In any case, the next friday, me and my friends were sitting in a van headed to the college. I had breakfast and then headed in to a hall, which was filled to the brim with around a 100 guys, from all schools participating in the event. The competition sounded high profile. Anyways we were given an hour to answer the 25 "science" MCQs. It wasn't just science, it included some GK. Fact was, I think I got somethings by fluke. In the sense, I had gone to the Bannerghatta National Park sometime back and out of curiosity, simply memorized the scientific name of the Indian peacock - Pavo Cristatus, I think. Now guess what their question was?!!!!
I wrote the test and we guys started discussing the answers. I don't know why, but when the results came out, it had 14 names!! 3 people from our school had their names on the list.......ME INCLUDED!!!I was actually shocked. I hadn't expected to be declared a winner. I was soaring through the skies at that moment, when something struck me. 14 people ain't gonna win a prize. Then the organizer announced that the 14 were chosen to participate in the next round, an undisclosed event. Judging by what was said, I realized that I had just scraped through; my name was the last in that list!!!! Anyways, they called all of us to an auditorium and we were told to wait. After 36 minutes, to be precise, a couple of organizers followed by the principal came to meet us. They announced that we 14 had done the best among 150 guys!!! But obviously, there was a next round. The interesting part was, the next round wasn't another pen & paper thing (sort of obvious), but neither was it a quiz. That was strange...........what was it then? It was going to be a different type of elocution, or you could say speeches. We were asked to make a speech for 3 minutes on a scientist or inventor who we admired, and how his invention or thoughts changed the direction of science. Now normally, you are supposed to be given internet access to do research...........but that was the catch. NO RESEARCH ALLOWED! If you admire them, you gotta know everything there is to know about them, by heart!
Now, in a situation like this, I jumped to the one thing I knew better than general science.........aerospace. I first tried to pick APJ Abdul Kalam, but another guy had already started writing his speech. So, I jumped to the next best guys: The wright brothers. Anyways, thinking up the inventor's name took up 7-8 minutes, and we were allotted only 10 before the first guy went on stage. I hadn't written much, when the first girl started her speech. I watched with abated breath as she stumbled through her sentences. This happened to the second guy also. And then I realized that if I finished writing my speech quickly and revised it, I needn't suffer from stage fear. Another thing that was on my side was the lot system; the organizers were picking up chits to decide the order of the people who were gonna speak. As luck would have it, my speech was the 9th in row, which gave me an extra 7 minutes to prepare and revise. When my turn came, I knew I had everything to gain by speaking with confidence and passion. I walked to the stage and I have since forgotten what happened in the next 4 minutes (I overshot time, but the judges didn't stop me!!!) I just remember getting pats on the back from my friends when I got back to my seat. I only remember one emotion that was oozing out of me at that moment: I knew I had won the judges' votes, I knew I had won everyone's cheers in that auditorium. I impatiently waited for the others to finish their speeches. It didn't really matter if I had won or not that day; I knew that I had got applause from everyone in that room that day. That's what mattered.
Nevertheless, I waited for the results. My friends said they knew this was definitely coming, but when the judges announced the results 30 minutes later, they had adjudged me as the best speaker and gave me 1st place. I don't remember whether my feet were still on the ground at that moment. When a winner is adjudged a winner, the amount of happiness bursting out of every pore is too much to control, and so was the case with me. I could feel the sights of every other guy who saw me win for the rest of the day, even during lunch. That long lost respect was what I had always craved for. At 5PM, a huge crowd gave me a resounding applause as I collected a certificate and a cash prize of Rs. 3000. I knew I deserved it, but more importantly, the judges and participants knew I deserved it, and that's what matters. As the bus started moving back home, and my friends continued to badger me into giving them a treat, my thoughts took me back to the days when I was considered a champion, an all-rounder as a small kid in the Gulf. But success is a journey, not a destination, and I knew greater things were there to be won.
Enough about that. The second thing that brought my spirits back up were my academic results. Realizing that I was falling back, I decided to work overtime on my preparation. I used to hide from my mother and used to study late night MOSTLY TILL 4 IN THE MORNING, only to feel sleepy next morning. This was my method, BUT I URGE YOU TO NEVER EVER FOLLOW ANY OF MY PLANS UNLESS YOU ARE COMFORTABLE WITH IT! I shall address this major issue in my future posts, for many students fall prey to stupid techniques. Nevertheless, the studies paid off. I secured an A1 in 9th standard, and needless to say that I deserved it. What was really surprising was the IIT coaching test results. I had actually managed to come 4th among all coaching centers of the institute put together!! That I felt was a bigger achievement, for a guy who couldn't spell "engineering" properly (please forgive my spelling mistakes!). It felt nice to go into 10th knowing that I had ended my 9th on a positive note.
There were many things that I experienced that year that have made me battle ready for today's world. This year was tumultuous in terms of learning opportunities and I still carry those lessons with me, as I ride on my plane to the sun of success. But there were some wrong things I picked up, which I corrected very much later and which cause me regret as I lost out in ways that can cause lots of heartburn and loss of important energy. For 10th, I had set about making a new set of goals and trying to achieve them, but things took a drastically different turn. To know more about what happened in that strange year, keep visiting my blog and wait for my next post..........
The first few drops in the ocean --- Part II
Till then, a quote to deeply understand............
"A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others."
-- Ayn Rand
Year 1:9th standard (2009-10)
This is for all 9th graders and below to read (actually a mustread!!). If you don't qualify, then you can still read and you could probably enjoy comparing your 9th grade experiences with mine!!
Everyone called this the beginning of high school. You become a senior and with that status, you get some exorbitant privileges while in school. What's more important is that everyone who wanted to be an engineer was going to start studying hard to get into that dream place, the Valhala of all wannabe Indian engineers......the IITs. The Indian Institutes of Technology were the most prized institutes in India during my time and much before my time. I have no clue when you might be reading this post, so I can't say what happened . So everyone had set their sights on these places. The race to get in is similar to a wildebeest stampede......many would finally fail, but the few who succeeded in reaching the waterhole , were blessed with the most fulfilling gifts of life for an Indian........ultimate respect and prestige in society, a superb salary and a chance to go abroad. So with many aspirations and burdens on our small, immature shoulders, we tried to scale the society's equivalent of Mt. Everest.
I was damn sure that I was gonna work hard for my seat. I had harbored a dream.......to become an aerospace research scientist and later an aerospace tycoon. I thought getting into IIT would bring me one step closer to my dream. So I set about working and studying as hard as possible. What pushed me further was that I hadn't been able to clear NTSE while in 8th standard, due to family functions and refusal from my parents to join coaching in 8th. So, like a cornered tiger, I tried to fight my way up the small ladder to the "heavens" (now I think of my thoughts as rubbish), which was already overcrowded with other passengers trying to climb up. So I set about achieving my task.
Luckily for me, my school had an integrated course for IIT aspirants. After school, we were tutored and tested by teachers from the coaching classes. I found it exciting and tiring at the same time.......but I was starving for success and I would sacrifice anything for it. I was able to excel in all those tests they gave us during the summer, for we didnt have school then. In any case I thought I was on my way. Sometimes I shuddered at the amount of studying to be done. One of our physics teachers said that IIT aspirants never say the daylight. They would study and sometimes refuse to eat food. This scared me to the extent that I asked my mom that night, "Mom, if I don't get into IIT, what will I do with my life?". My mom was much more sensible and said that not getting into IIT wasn't the end of the world, that there were so many guys who didn't even complete their education and were still billionaires and CEOs of huge corporations. That lightened me up a bit. I now believe that it was pointless trying to kill yourself just because you hadn't got an IIT seat. Fact is, there are bigger things worth living for and your future could go any way, whether you become an IIT grad or not.
After the summer got over, normal school and IIT coaching kept me on my toes. Things became tougher when it came to balancing these things. From day 1, even a goofball could tell that I lacked time management. Actually speaking, time management is the most important lesson these competitive exams taught me. Had I sorted out my problems while I was young, I might have been an All India topper. I advice all students to work on time management. In later posts, I will talk seriously about this issue, as not tackling such a crucial problem is equivalent to walking into a lion's den with nothing but a wooden twig to defend yourself.
However inner, self-created problems can be solved with determination and practice. How do you heal yourself from the loss of a loved one? That summer, I lost something way more precious and important than an IIT seat..........my grandmother. Her death happened in shocking circumstances and took the entire family by surprise. I loved her so much, that her death shattered my focus forever. I stopped studying continuously and became restless. I felt that I was the cause of her death and I could have saved her if I had wanted to. She left me in ashes. Both my grandmothers had gone and I knew nothing more than their real names. I still feel that her demise may have had a huge impact on my studies and how I am now. Nevertheless, I had to go on, because brooding over her death just pushed me into a blackhole of depression that could have killed me from the inside and everything I had wanted to achieve. And I learned another important lesson: Time is the greatest healer.
With a melancholic atmosphere in the house, it became tougher to study. Also, my dad, who was also a support system of mine, had decided to stay in the Gulf (where we grew up until I was 12 years old) to save money for my and my brother's higher education and to grow our savings till a certain time. School wasn't easy; I had to study hindi & social studies, along with what was being taught at IIT coaching. The class I was in had many irritating guys - all hell bent on making me look like a jackass, continuously trying to study at a time when everyone else was having fun. One very bad thing that happened was that I started thinking of how other people saw me-a failure and a misfit. I suddenly started worrying about how I looked and what I did in front of my classmates. There were a couple of very popular guys in my class, and started trying to get their attention, which was pointless. I later realized that I had been a fool to do such a thing, and gave it up. NEVER EVER TRY TO PLEASE ANYONE, ESPECIALLY YOUR CLASSMATES. Don't think you are any less, because each and every are special. If you really wanna be recognized and respected, then pursue your interests with complete passion and never will you crave for friends (although true friends will always be with you regardless of your achievements). Unfortunately, I experienced it in a very bad way and I have since been careful about whom I do favours.
I fell sick very often and still suffer from several ailments. There was an olympiad conducted in our school in October, 2009. I believed that I could come within the top 500 to qualify to the next round. On the eve of the exam, I had a horrible headache and I went down with fever. As luck would have it, I just managed to answer some questions in the olympiad. When the results came out, I had a rank of 611, just an inch away from some much needed success. That depressed me further. What was further crushing my life was the new system of education that had been introduced: CCE. Kapil Sibal, famous for his role at the 2007 Bali Summit, had been made Minister for Higher Education. He wanted to bring an American style approach to our education system to do away with rote learning. With his system of grades for 9th and 10th, he wanted less burden of studies on students, and he wanted them to take up extra curricular activities for all round development. Now the effects varied. Students who were good started taking part in sports and extra time activities such as competitions. They started missing classes excessively, because competitions are much more fun. Hence many lost focus for a major part of the year. To get back the awesome grades, they started rote learning, as it was easy enough to do so, with the entire syllabus being diluted to 8th standard levels. And the results came without much problem. So they never really understood what was important to be learnt. The situation was worse for bad guys. They stopped studying and started running away for competitions to bunk school, without winning anything. They never wanted to study; and the new system encouraged them to not do so. Thus results were coming in plentiful, but with no visible output. All of them suffered big time when they came to 11th, because then there is no respite whatsoever from studies. I still think the system is far from foolproof. The good guys, like me, started losing focus, and thought about trying our hand at competitions. Being in the 9th gave you certain privileges. You could bully your way into putting your name to represent school in competitions. So I started participating in quizzes and debates. One of my teachers knew I was a good student, so she sent me to BMUN, a mock United Nations session. The competitions started becoming an addiction, something like gambling time, initially spent on studies, on these awesome competitions. Thing is, I kept losing time. Not only was I unprepared for these competitions, but I was also falling back in my studies. My marks fell, although they were enough to scrap me an A1. And the continuous defeats started denting my confidence. I realized that I was no match for the Indian student level competitions, without preparation. For a guy who literally drank out of the Goddess of Success's hands for so many years (when I was abroad), repeated failures killed me from the inside. I started becoming even more morose. Why was my view so hazy............and where was the sun?
Then my mom decided we needed some peace of mind.......meditation was the key. Within an hour we had decided to go to tirupathi, to ask God to ease our pain. I asked for his help, because I wanted to live with happiness. More importantly, I wanted my depressed family to move ahead, instead of losing themselves further. It was so difficult to move around. Everyday had felt like a burden. I wanted to sleep and only sleep, so that I could forget reality and live in a world of my dreams. But that wasn't going to give me any reprieve from the sadness and I knew that only God could cure this illness. So I prayed for God to take away all this sadness and depression and give me a new beginning.
I believed it worked. 80% won't believe me; but neither did I ask you to read this blog. I felt that spring come back. Family life became normal again. It was easier to talk to people and my focus was coming back. But the first step was through my studies. I put in more efforts and things started looking easier to understand. I started top scoring in all the IIT and school tests. I wasn't winning many competitions, but my ability to advance to the final stages in many of them gave me confidence in my ability to succeed. It felt nice to be back on the taxiway (the strip on which aircraft taxi before takeoff).
Here, another important lesson was to be learnt But I feel that there were 2 incidents that really made me feel that I am now back on the track to success.
It happened in January, 2010. On some wednesday, a teacher randomly called me to her cabin. She told me that I was to represent the school in 'Aarohan-11', an annual fest held for students of different schools by Amrita Engineering School, Bangalore. It was a very huge event, some 70 schools had come. My teacher told me that I was to be drafted in 'Vaigyanik', a science quiz. I obviously thought that I was going to lose more time by not studying. Nevertheless, I liked these competitions and decided to learn more by participating. In any case, the next friday, me and my friends were sitting in a van headed to the college. I had breakfast and then headed in to a hall, which was filled to the brim with around a 100 guys, from all schools participating in the event. The competition sounded high profile. Anyways we were given an hour to answer the 25 "science" MCQs. It wasn't just science, it included some GK. Fact was, I think I got somethings by fluke. In the sense, I had gone to the Bannerghatta National Park sometime back and out of curiosity, simply memorized the scientific name of the Indian peacock - Pavo Cristatus, I think. Now guess what their question was?!!!!
I wrote the test and we guys started discussing the answers. I don't know why, but when the results came out, it had 14 names!! 3 people from our school had their names on the list.......ME INCLUDED!!!I was actually shocked. I hadn't expected to be declared a winner. I was soaring through the skies at that moment, when something struck me. 14 people ain't gonna win a prize. Then the organizer announced that the 14 were chosen to participate in the next round, an undisclosed event. Judging by what was said, I realized that I had just scraped through; my name was the last in that list!!!! Anyways, they called all of us to an auditorium and we were told to wait. After 36 minutes, to be precise, a couple of organizers followed by the principal came to meet us. They announced that we 14 had done the best among 150 guys!!! But obviously, there was a next round. The interesting part was, the next round wasn't another pen & paper thing (sort of obvious), but neither was it a quiz. That was strange...........what was it then? It was going to be a different type of elocution, or you could say speeches. We were asked to make a speech for 3 minutes on a scientist or inventor who we admired, and how his invention or thoughts changed the direction of science. Now normally, you are supposed to be given internet access to do research...........but that was the catch. NO RESEARCH ALLOWED! If you admire them, you gotta know everything there is to know about them, by heart!
Now, in a situation like this, I jumped to the one thing I knew better than general science.........aerospace. I first tried to pick APJ Abdul Kalam, but another guy had already started writing his speech. So, I jumped to the next best guys: The wright brothers. Anyways, thinking up the inventor's name took up 7-8 minutes, and we were allotted only 10 before the first guy went on stage. I hadn't written much, when the first girl started her speech. I watched with abated breath as she stumbled through her sentences. This happened to the second guy also. And then I realized that if I finished writing my speech quickly and revised it, I needn't suffer from stage fear. Another thing that was on my side was the lot system; the organizers were picking up chits to decide the order of the people who were gonna speak. As luck would have it, my speech was the 9th in row, which gave me an extra 7 minutes to prepare and revise. When my turn came, I knew I had everything to gain by speaking with confidence and passion. I walked to the stage and I have since forgotten what happened in the next 4 minutes (I overshot time, but the judges didn't stop me!!!) I just remember getting pats on the back from my friends when I got back to my seat. I only remember one emotion that was oozing out of me at that moment: I knew I had won the judges' votes, I knew I had won everyone's cheers in that auditorium. I impatiently waited for the others to finish their speeches. It didn't really matter if I had won or not that day; I knew that I had got applause from everyone in that room that day. That's what mattered.
Nevertheless, I waited for the results. My friends said they knew this was definitely coming, but when the judges announced the results 30 minutes later, they had adjudged me as the best speaker and gave me 1st place. I don't remember whether my feet were still on the ground at that moment. When a winner is adjudged a winner, the amount of happiness bursting out of every pore is too much to control, and so was the case with me. I could feel the sights of every other guy who saw me win for the rest of the day, even during lunch. That long lost respect was what I had always craved for. At 5PM, a huge crowd gave me a resounding applause as I collected a certificate and a cash prize of Rs. 3000. I knew I deserved it, but more importantly, the judges and participants knew I deserved it, and that's what matters. As the bus started moving back home, and my friends continued to badger me into giving them a treat, my thoughts took me back to the days when I was considered a champion, an all-rounder as a small kid in the Gulf. But success is a journey, not a destination, and I knew greater things were there to be won.
Enough about that. The second thing that brought my spirits back up were my academic results. Realizing that I was falling back, I decided to work overtime on my preparation. I used to hide from my mother and used to study late night MOSTLY TILL 4 IN THE MORNING, only to feel sleepy next morning. This was my method, BUT I URGE YOU TO NEVER EVER FOLLOW ANY OF MY PLANS UNLESS YOU ARE COMFORTABLE WITH IT! I shall address this major issue in my future posts, for many students fall prey to stupid techniques. Nevertheless, the studies paid off. I secured an A1 in 9th standard, and needless to say that I deserved it. What was really surprising was the IIT coaching test results. I had actually managed to come 4th among all coaching centers of the institute put together!! That I felt was a bigger achievement, for a guy who couldn't spell "engineering" properly (please forgive my spelling mistakes!). It felt nice to go into 10th knowing that I had ended my 9th on a positive note.
There were many things that I experienced that year that have made me battle ready for today's world. This year was tumultuous in terms of learning opportunities and I still carry those lessons with me, as I ride on my plane to the sun of success. But there were some wrong things I picked up, which I corrected very much later and which cause me regret as I lost out in ways that can cause lots of heartburn and loss of important energy. For 10th, I had set about making a new set of goals and trying to achieve them, but things took a drastically different turn. To know more about what happened in that strange year, keep visiting my blog and wait for my next post..........
The first few drops in the ocean --- Part II
Till then, a quote to deeply understand............
"A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others."
-- Ayn Rand
 |
