Good
Morning NMKRVeeeeeeeee!!!
Yesterday
was a mirthful day for my colleague Prof. Manoj and I. We spent the better part
of the day evaluating your mid-semester examination answer books.
Manoj Sir
and I, we enjoy this…yes? It’s great fun…reading your answers that is…. Many of
them are downright hilarious!
Halt! My
intention in writing this post is not
to mock you and your earnest efforts to perform well in your examinations. Without
going into the humiliating details, here’s some good advice for you:
I am yet to
meet a student or trainee in my 21-year adventurous work life who really wishes
to fail a test. All of you have done well, given your 100% and you have been
rewarded for you sincerity. That’s the good news.
But excellence
comes at a heavy price. One has to ‘prepare well’ and ‘perform under pressure’
to score well in exams and life. That is a lesson which is self-taught. No
professor can do justice to you and that
topic of discussion in a classroom environment. We can only aspire to inspire.
Life
experiences & failure are the greatest of all teachers. It’s not ‘what’
you learn here in college that matters when you march forward into a career …..but
‘how’
you learn it.
What is your
attitude? Do you just want another degree? Or do you want to succeed in life
for now and forever? Attitude is everything. With the right attitude, YOU CAN achieve
the impossible!
Well, I did! (Psst! Pls don’t tell anyone. I was
worse than most of you….lazy, arrogant, stupid. But my life changed when I
changed.)
What Manoj
Sir and I summarized after poring through reams and reams of answer sheets is
that we are indeed blessed with a super-diligent batch of students this
academic year. But tad confused.
Confusion usually occurs when you are performing under
pressure. But if you have prepared well for the battle, then your
self-confidence ensures you Win. Preparation is the key to
success.
(Do you know that Manoj
Sir spends 3 hours each morning reading 5 news dailies and catching up with the
latest news updates on TV and websites before he comes to class to lecture you?
Every single day!)
Preparing
for exams has less to do with ‘mugging it all up’. At a Master’s level, that
does not help much because the questions require intellectual discussion rather
than thoughtless reproduction of over-stated facts and theories. All that is
just the foundation we lay.
The
foundations for my 1-BHK thatched hut in JP Nagar and your dream mansion….are
structurally the same. In class, Manoj Sir and I endeavor to lay that strong
foundation, for you to architect & build your dream palace on.
Go ahead! Be brave me lovelies, me hearties!
Dare to think differently!
We wish to test your understanding of the
subject matter,
not your memory. We want you to give the world “fresh perspective”.
And
technique.., if you master the techniques of performing under pressure, you are
a winner for life. What my learned colleague and I observed is most of you
believe that ‘writing a lot…long answers..’ earns you more marks.
Sorry
Ma’m!! Good technique is saying a lot by saying less.
Evaluators look for PERTINENT POINTS in your answer. If all the relevant points
are discussed adequately in your answer, you score well. You don’t get more
marks for recreating Ramayana!!
That said,
all of life is like answering a 100-mark Media Studies question paper. From
time to time Life throws difficult situations at you and the only person you
need to answer to …..is yourself. Questions like:
1.
Is this what I really
want?
2.
Can I do it?
3.
Why am I here saying
and doing all these things?
4.
Is it just my ‘Karma’?
Or do I do it because I love doing it?
5.
Who are these people
around me?
6.
Why am I with them?
7.
When should I do this?
8.
Have I done it before?
9.
How do I do this?
10. Can I do it better? How?
When you
find the right answers to these simplistic questions my babies, YOU RULE!! YOU ROCK!!
Prof. Manoj
joins me is wishing you all the very best for your futures. We are forever there
for you. Don’t you ever forget that!
Lots of Luv
Prof. Iron
Man
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