the rat race.

-Richa

“Academics are very important”, ”choose your priority” ,”you will beg if you don’t study” are thing students often hear through their school life, but if you think about it ,is it really true ? The obsessive need and pressure a student has, to score well to PROVE their intelligence baffles me, and to be frank I myself have been a part of this for years. I remember getting a test paper back and thinking to myself “SHIT I CANT TELL MY FRIENDS I SCORED SO LOW, I MUST INCREASE IT BY A FEW POINTS SO I DONT SOUND DUMB!” and you’ll be lying if you never thought so, buy why? What race are we in that we have to be perfect or what kind of friends do we have who need a cut off percentage for friendship.

A few days ago I was reading an article about suicide survivors and it made me realise, out of 20 of those survivors 11 tried committing suicide because of low scores, when we aren’t able to accept our failures or who we are, how do we expect others to! We have all told this and heard this that “SCORES AREN'T EVERYTHING” but how many of us thought of this for ourselves.

I think we have all heard about the JEE EXAMS (the entrance exam for the IITs) but may be not all are aware of how they work. The exam leaves each student with an AIR-(all India rank) that becomes the student’s identity for admissions. It saddens me that when the greatest countries in the world use more than just scores to admit you in colleges ,they look into your personality , then why does the best institute in India require you to only pass a series of exams to get in ? Why don’t we wow at a fact that a science student may have passion for media too, it’s just about the mindsets.

However, it is to be mentioned that in recent times Indians have progressed a lot in understanding that scores aren’t everything, but we still have a small percentage of people who are yet to change and a few children who weren’t told about this, and I am sure if people like u and me can help them realise this, we really wound make a difference in someone’s life.

The next time you see a student stressed or are stressed yourself think about this article, ask yourself, is it really worth stressing? Are you in the RACE, and if you can answer that saying NO then believe me there will be no one more happy and successful than you!