A letter to my 12 year-old self

As I reach my late teenage years, I would like to write an imaginary letter to my 12-year-old who is just about to enter his teen-life. So here it goes-

Hi. This is the 16- year- old Himanaya from the future. Yeah, I know your life is going great. You have a close group of good friends, get good grades and are doing well in sports too. But let me tell, you’re in for a wild ride in the future. Let me sum it up for you-

1. Many of your friends would leave school and you would reminisce about them a lot. You would barely have any friends (maybe 1-2) who were there with you since day one. But don’t worry, you will make a ton of new friends who are equally as good if not better. Also, 2 of your best friends will still be your best mates.

2. You love playing table tennis and are proud to be a part of the school team. But let me tell you, you would leave this sport and shift to Basketball and enjoy playing that much more. A bit difficult to digest since you once willingly left the basketball club once but it’s the truth. Also, you would stop playing cricket in the park in front of your house as none of your colony friends would come to play anymore. Instead, you will have a proper basketball stand at your house.

3. Your favorite tennis player, Rafael Nadal would win many more slams but would get injured many times as well. Your favorite cricketer M.S. Dhoni is still playing and is still winning games for India. Your favorite cager Kawhi Leonard has left the Spurs and helped the Raptors reach the finals.

4. A game named Fortnite would have you addicted and believe it or not, you would grow to hate your then-favorite game- Clash of Clans. Moreover, remember when you said that you don’t want a personal phone until you finish class 12? Well, that’s a blatant lie as you would ask and get a phone in grade 9 itself.

5. You would end up taking commerce instead of your then-favorite subject- Science. Your ambition of becoming a scientist would change to that of becoming an economist.

6. You wouldn’t care about marks anymore and would even give an exam without preparing for it. You would realize how foolish you were caring about marks so much.

7. You would end up becoming the coordinator of your school magazine and writing a story in a book. Moreover, you would start writing a blog. Writing would become your passion!!

8. Believe it or not, you would end up liking English songs more than Hindi songs. You would still be a movie buff.

9. Your hobby of reading would remain but the number of novels you would read won’t be much.

10. You would become much more confident than you were. You would still talk less in school but would stand up for yourself whenever the need be.

11. There would be really sad times but you will cope up with it. Some people will hate you and compare you with others but there would be no use thinking about them and their nonsense talks.

12. You will really mature and end up realizing that social media is a way for most people to show-off and waste time. You would stop comparing yourself to others and become more content with yourself.

13. You’d be involved in two motor accidents. You would escape without injuries but would start appreciating life more. You will also realize how lucky you are as compared to the rest of the world in terms of having materialistic comforts and luxuries, a loving and caring family, and a fairly smooth life

14. The person you would end up talking to the most is going to be a huge surprise and never in your wildest dream would you think that this would happen!

 

Like it or not, a huge adventure awaits you!

Advertisement

Are grades everything?

“1N73LL1G3NC3 15 7H3 4B1L17Y 70 4D4P7 70 CH4NG3” -573PH3N HAWK1NG

As a student, I find that the perception of people around me about intelligence is that they think students who get good grades are intelligent. If someone gets excellent marks just by cramming the entire syllabi, he is termed to be more intelligent than the one who gets 5 marks less but actually understands what he studies. I simply don’t understand this mentality.

My board examinations are just around the corner and while people around me say, “Study for your exams and stop writing your blog”, I consider it more practical to write a blog instead of going through the same things over and over again. I would rather expand my knowledge rather than cramming the same things again and again. Rote learning has no use. As I have already mentioned in one of my previous blogs , children don’t remember what they have studied the previous year. All they care is about exams and marks.

Now, parents especially in India find marks to be of utmost importance. Minimal regard is given to hobbies and extra-curricular activities. A budding footballer is not allowed to pursue his dream just because people think that here in India, pursuing sports will not lead to success. One of my friends isn’t allowed access to internet just because his parents say, “Internet is a distraction and would lead to a fall in marks.” Little do they know internet has more knowledge potential than the outdated books that we cram. In this world, access to internet and phones is really important. We can learn much more from the internet than what we can from our textbooks.

Agreed that exams might check what you have learnt in school. They can check your determination towards getting marks. Moreover, I am not saying that not studying and always partying, watching movies and hanging out with friends is of any use (You are just wasting your parents’ money by doing so). When people say,” Bill Gates was a drop-out too and thus education isn’t necessary” , I tell them that he is just one of thousands of successful people out of whom most received formal education. Also, he dropped out of Harvard University and not from some average institution. Nevertheless, I think having a productive hobby is really important along with your studies. Write a book, read novels, play some sport, participate in olympiads. Just do something. Just studying what is taught in school will seldom lead to success. Go beyond your own textbooks and research more on subjects you love. If you love physics, research on black holes and supernovas. If you love programming, learn new programming languages. So, go beyond your textbooks. Don’t limit yourself to formal education.

Now let me talk about my personal experience. I was always hungry for grades until grade 5. But then I realised marks aren’t everything. Now, I feel more satisfaction in having my article published in a magazine than getting good grades. I feel more happy studying for quizzes and olympiads than studying for exams. Talking to my friends about the latest happenings in the world gives me more delight than studying about different types of nouns and verbs. Learning how to file taxes is much more important than knowing who wrote “Julius Caesar”.

Now, getting good grades is not a bad thing but there are a lot of things that are much more important. People say that you won’t get admission in colleges without grades. I tell them that there is no point getting admission in colleges when you don’t understand what you study. You won’t be able to perform your job after college if you cram things and not comprehend them. Moreover, getting into prestigious universities is not only about grades but also about co-curricular activities. So don’t limit yourself to formal education and always try new things.

Over and Out.

Our education system

As my class X Board Examinations are approaching, I often see people around me discussing about how they can get good marks in these examinations. No one talks about what they have actually learnt. All they care about is good grades.When I ask my classmates who scored decently in previous year’s examinations any question from the previous year’s syllabus they are seldom able to answer it. I blame such behaviour of students on our education system.

I say this because since the time we have started going to schools, all they teach us is that good grades are of utmost importance. They don’t teach the students to think diffrently, innovate and explore new things. All what they tell us to do is copy what is written on the board, mug up the entire syllabi and vomit what you have memorised on your answer sheet. Our education system solely focuses on rote learning.
Schools teach the same thing the same way to different students who different minds and different capabilities.Now if you tell a fish to climb a tree, it won’t be able to do so but if it is told to swim,it would excel in that. Similarly,every child has different capabilities and interests but our education system focuses on uniform learning for every child and then we wonder hasn’t any Indian won a nobel prize(apart from peace) from the time we have gotten independence.

Moreover in the name of education, we are taught outdated things. For example many of my own textbooks have been last updated way back in 2009. In this era of quickly changing world, many of the things taught 10 years back have become irrelevant but our system persists on outdated learning.

Another thing that I fail to understand is the necessity to maintain notebooks and practical files.I don’t see any point writing down the same things what are written in the textbooks once again in your own notebook.It is nothing but sheer and utter wastage of time. Forcing children to write down practical activities in a dedicated file but not allowing them to do the same activities in real life on their own makes no sense to me. And to all those who say that making notebooks and files improves handwriting,there is going to be no need of having a good handwriting in the fututre(atleast according to me) since everything is going to get computerized and digitalized.

I want to share my own personal experience to highlight one of the problems in our schools. So what happened is that one of my classmates asked a teacher a question which was out of the syllabus. Instead of answering it, the teacher said,” Focus on what is in your syllabus and not on what you don’t need to learn”. I mean this itself shows the pathetic condition of schools in India.

This type of education system has made the society toxic in a lot of ways. Whenever you go to any weddings or parties, all your relatives ask is how much did you score in your examinations. Parents have started comparing their kids to others’ kids on the basis of marks. They don’t encourage their wards to learn other skills but keep forcing them to study and that too not for knowledge but for marks.

Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, was not wrong when he said that Indians lack creativity.India ranks 66 out of 140 countries. This stat shows how far behind we are in the world in terms of creativity thanks to our education system and its effects.

I do agree that good marks show that you are dedicated to what you are doing show that you have good memory , and allow you to experience what it is like to be under pressure but the high level of importance that we give to marks in our country is unwanted and is something that needs change urgently.

Over and Out