I had scored 90% in tenth class and then joined a top school of my city in Science stream. It was all good except that I became a total loser thereafter.
Since I had to start going out for tuitions, I was given a phone and got totally addicted to it. The very first thing I used to do in the morning was to check my phone and then forward the new, cool morning messages to everyone. I had three different contact groups: my old-school friends, my new-school friends, my tuition friends. I forwarded the messages accordingly. We used to alter the 'boy' and 'girl', 'husband' and 'wife' in "non-veg" jokes with real classmates' names and then forward it to each other. There were some people at school whom I had met like once and then never saw again yet they were one of my regular recipients because they forwarded awesome messages. Believe it or not, I didn't even know the names of some of them. I had their contact saved as 'Pooja's friend', for example.
I scored pretty low in eleventh but the motivating thing was, that many others did as well. At my new school, everyone was smart. The students knew it, the teachers knew it, so nobody really cared. In fact, in twelth class, we hardly ever appeared for any test. We asked our teacher that whether or not we will be given our admit cards if we fail in the pre-boards and he said, 'All admit cards have been received. You will have them even if you don't appear for the exam.', and for a moment, we actually considered not to, but we did, not very seriously though.
My father was really concerned over my school marks but I used to console him by saying that everyone scores so in school exams, it doesn't count and even though he being a Professor himself, knew how true that could be, he decided to believe me, that I will make it all right in the end so he didn't question me further.
Finally, when the time arrived, all my text-buddies got into their books and I had nobody left to entertain me, but wait! there was 0.facebook.com (free text only facebook) at that time, and I spend all my time on it. I had liked a number of pages as none of my friends used to get online and would keep commenting and arguing with strangers on every post.
My first paper was Physics. It sucked. I hadn't studied anything. I wrote whatever I thought would make slightest relevant sense.
Second was Chemistry. Same thing. Moreover, it was even more difficult to fill it up with rubbish as they asked you direct chemical reactions.
Third was Maths. I remember, we had 10 days gap for it and we had 10 chapters in our syllabus. That was more than sufficient. I was quite lucky for that because maths is not a paper you can prepare for, overnight. But, each day I would start out with the first chapter, 'Sets and Relations', read a page, start facebooking and then start again the next day. I finally finished on the day before exam and then, there I was, sitting for maths paper with only one vague chapter.
It's hard to describe how I felt when I saw the question paper. I didn't have an idea about anything. I didn't know the C of Calculus. I solved the two questions of Sets and Relations and that was it. I didn't know anything else. I had never in my life felt more miserable. My paper was over in like fifteen minutes. I looked around. Everyone was writing at full speed. I knew I was going to fail. I thought of asking someone the answers, just enough to make me pass, but I couldn't dare. The only other thing I knew was how to differentiate and a bit of Vectors from Physics. So, I differentiated the equation in all questions regardless of what they asked and tried a bit on vector questions which I knew were wrong.
I was utterly depressed when I got out of the examination hall. Physics and Chemistry had gone poor but this time I was going to fail. I was crying inside. That day, I walked from my exam center to home, which was about forty minutes. It was my realization moment. I was feeling terrible. I didn't say anything to anyone when I got home. Just took my question paper out, and started counting marks, hoping to pass somehow. I counted again and again but it wouldn't even reach 30. Then in the evening, my friend called and asked how the exam went. When I told her, she thought I was kidding. But when she realized that I wasn't, she consoled me by saying that I could appear for improvement exam later. I had never heard of it so I asked my father about it and his instant reaction was, 'Why are you asking about it?'. I was silent and he knew it. He asked me directly and I confessed that I might fail. It felt like letting go of a burden as well as very shameful at the same time. My father blamed himself for this, that he wasn't very aware, that he should have kept a watch on me. I knew that he was feeling dejected for all the lies I have been telling him but he didn't say anything because there were still three more exams to come. He encouraged me to study for that.
My next three exams, Informatics Practices, English and Physical Education went all okay and I scored above 80 in each.
When the results got out, all I hoped for was to pass but my family still, in spite of everything hoped that I would score great and that I was underrating myself like I did in tenth. They were actually shocked that I had scored 64.6%. My score in maths was 33 exact. I really owe that to the examiner.
All my friends scored great because even though they wasted their time before, they studied during board gaps. I surfed through other's marks a little and perhaps my score was the lowest in my entire school's batch.
Needless to say, my competitive exams didn't go very well either, so I had decided to take a one-year drop. I had even started to study maths for improvement exam but everyone felt that I might get depressed with all my friends joining currently so they suggested me to take admission in a decent enough private college and move on and so I did.
I didn't understand the significance of twelth board at that time but now I know, how companies put a criteria of it in campus, how much it is valued everywhere, and how much I have to work to make up for it.
Sometimes, I wonder, that what if Maths would have been my first exam and I would have realized it at least soon enough not to screw up Physics and Chem.
There are times I wonder, what if I had never joined that new school and stayed at my previous school. There was no trend of failing or getting absent in exams there. People knew me as a good student. I might have kept studying for the sake of that reputation.
But then again, there is no use thinking of such things now. Like I said, all I can do is to try and make up for it. I believe in happy endings and would have loved to close this post with one, which is why if I'm able to succeed ahead despite the failure, I would certainly post about it.
Since I had to start going out for tuitions, I was given a phone and got totally addicted to it. The very first thing I used to do in the morning was to check my phone and then forward the new, cool morning messages to everyone. I had three different contact groups: my old-school friends, my new-school friends, my tuition friends. I forwarded the messages accordingly. We used to alter the 'boy' and 'girl', 'husband' and 'wife' in "non-veg" jokes with real classmates' names and then forward it to each other. There were some people at school whom I had met like once and then never saw again yet they were one of my regular recipients because they forwarded awesome messages. Believe it or not, I didn't even know the names of some of them. I had their contact saved as 'Pooja's friend', for example.
I scored pretty low in eleventh but the motivating thing was, that many others did as well. At my new school, everyone was smart. The students knew it, the teachers knew it, so nobody really cared. In fact, in twelth class, we hardly ever appeared for any test. We asked our teacher that whether or not we will be given our admit cards if we fail in the pre-boards and he said, 'All admit cards have been received. You will have them even if you don't appear for the exam.', and for a moment, we actually considered not to, but we did, not very seriously though.
My father was really concerned over my school marks but I used to console him by saying that everyone scores so in school exams, it doesn't count and even though he being a Professor himself, knew how true that could be, he decided to believe me, that I will make it all right in the end so he didn't question me further.
Finally, when the time arrived, all my text-buddies got into their books and I had nobody left to entertain me, but wait! there was 0.facebook.com (free text only facebook) at that time, and I spend all my time on it. I had liked a number of pages as none of my friends used to get online and would keep commenting and arguing with strangers on every post.
My first paper was Physics. It sucked. I hadn't studied anything. I wrote whatever I thought would make slightest relevant sense.
Second was Chemistry. Same thing. Moreover, it was even more difficult to fill it up with rubbish as they asked you direct chemical reactions.
Third was Maths. I remember, we had 10 days gap for it and we had 10 chapters in our syllabus. That was more than sufficient. I was quite lucky for that because maths is not a paper you can prepare for, overnight. But, each day I would start out with the first chapter, 'Sets and Relations', read a page, start facebooking and then start again the next day. I finally finished on the day before exam and then, there I was, sitting for maths paper with only one vague chapter.
It's hard to describe how I felt when I saw the question paper. I didn't have an idea about anything. I didn't know the C of Calculus. I solved the two questions of Sets and Relations and that was it. I didn't know anything else. I had never in my life felt more miserable. My paper was over in like fifteen minutes. I looked around. Everyone was writing at full speed. I knew I was going to fail. I thought of asking someone the answers, just enough to make me pass, but I couldn't dare. The only other thing I knew was how to differentiate and a bit of Vectors from Physics. So, I differentiated the equation in all questions regardless of what they asked and tried a bit on vector questions which I knew were wrong.
I was utterly depressed when I got out of the examination hall. Physics and Chemistry had gone poor but this time I was going to fail. I was crying inside. That day, I walked from my exam center to home, which was about forty minutes. It was my realization moment. I was feeling terrible. I didn't say anything to anyone when I got home. Just took my question paper out, and started counting marks, hoping to pass somehow. I counted again and again but it wouldn't even reach 30. Then in the evening, my friend called and asked how the exam went. When I told her, she thought I was kidding. But when she realized that I wasn't, she consoled me by saying that I could appear for improvement exam later. I had never heard of it so I asked my father about it and his instant reaction was, 'Why are you asking about it?'. I was silent and he knew it. He asked me directly and I confessed that I might fail. It felt like letting go of a burden as well as very shameful at the same time. My father blamed himself for this, that he wasn't very aware, that he should have kept a watch on me. I knew that he was feeling dejected for all the lies I have been telling him but he didn't say anything because there were still three more exams to come. He encouraged me to study for that.
My next three exams, Informatics Practices, English and Physical Education went all okay and I scored above 80 in each.
When the results got out, all I hoped for was to pass but my family still, in spite of everything hoped that I would score great and that I was underrating myself like I did in tenth. They were actually shocked that I had scored 64.6%. My score in maths was 33 exact. I really owe that to the examiner.
All my friends scored great because even though they wasted their time before, they studied during board gaps. I surfed through other's marks a little and perhaps my score was the lowest in my entire school's batch.
Needless to say, my competitive exams didn't go very well either, so I had decided to take a one-year drop. I had even started to study maths for improvement exam but everyone felt that I might get depressed with all my friends joining currently so they suggested me to take admission in a decent enough private college and move on and so I did.
I didn't understand the significance of twelth board at that time but now I know, how companies put a criteria of it in campus, how much it is valued everywhere, and how much I have to work to make up for it.
Sometimes, I wonder, that what if Maths would have been my first exam and I would have realized it at least soon enough not to screw up Physics and Chem.
There are times I wonder, what if I had never joined that new school and stayed at my previous school. There was no trend of failing or getting absent in exams there. People knew me as a good student. I might have kept studying for the sake of that reputation.
But then again, there is no use thinking of such things now. Like I said, all I can do is to try and make up for it. I believe in happy endings and would have loved to close this post with one, which is why if I'm able to succeed ahead despite the failure, I would certainly post about it.
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