Follow your inner urge

  We tend to look at the immediate with magnifying glasses. If you have not got marks in the board exams that either you, your friends and wider family or (and this is the crunch category) your parents expected (or hoped) you would, you might be tempted to believe you have reached the end of the road. When a top course in a top college looks like a quickly fading dream, you want to stick your head in the sand. To me, an academic with 21 years of teaching behind me, your reaction would evoke some sympathy, but primarily it would cause mirth!

You can’t keep your head in the sand forever. Unless you look around, you’ll miss all the opportunity the world has to offer an 18-year-old Indian in 2011. Pinch yourself back into the real world and visualise a few real-life scenarios. How often have you heard your mother (or your father, for that matter) discuss her school/college marks with her friends.

Do you even remember the name of the school your grandparents attended? Pick the ten most successful people out of your personal list and try and recall their school records. The only reason we all know Bill Gates went to Harvard is because he dropped out. He did return in 2007 to pick up his degree. Since he was soon to retire from active Microsoft responsibilities and turn to full time philanthropy, he joked at the convocation: “I'll be changing my job next year, and it will be nice to finally have a college degree on my resume.” College, course and competition (3 Cs if you like) are the immediate universe of the high school graduate. The real universe, however, is hidden within each individual. The time to discover it begins from the moment we escape the straitjacket of school and experience the freedom of adulthood. To collapse all our aspirations and goals at this point onto a singular desire to get into the ‘best’ course in the ‘best’ college is, for want of another word, plain stupid.

Two of my most successful uncles failed in college. One of them failed once; the other failed twice. Guess what? The guy who’s most successful failed (sorry, you guessed wrong) once! My grandfather wrote to him, commiserating and berating at the same time, that “failure is the stepping stone to success; successive failures however are not successive stepping stones to success.” My granddad was a wit. He unwittingly articulated a family legend that I would later corroborate with a Harvard Business Review article about success. The article theorised how most successful people never have a straight career graph from college to job. Most of the best experience a period of absolute dejection and slide. Something or somebody picks them up at the lowest point of that slide. From thereon they transform into top leaders in their field. Academic success is a mere sub-plot in a person’s journey to meaningful existence; the big picture pans out in the story of our life and not in high school certificates.

Here then is a strategy for those who do not have the marks to get into a course/college of their (or their parents’) choice. A college/course eventually translates to cold black print on your resume. When one day you sit across the table from you potential employer, it is you who will either land the job or miss it, not your resume. A great candidate will get hired even with a weak resume; the best of resumes cannot get a weak candidate hired.

Pick your preferred course in any college where you can get in. Course ought to score over college simply because you are more likely to enjoy a subject you prefer. In case you can’t make it anywhere, there is always the School of Open Learning in Delhi University. It even offers B.Com Honours, just in case you did not know. Guess the eligibility criterion for the course? Just 45 per cent in your 12th grade examinations. Once you’ve got into a college, make the three undergraduate years work for you. Read a lot, especially in and around your subject. If you take a sudden fancy to studies, you can even try and excel in the university exams, though that is not (and never will be) the most important thing. Immerse yourself in college level activities through clubs, societies or even NGOs. If you like theatre, get into it. Or photography, or a film club, or community outreach programmes. Involvement in issues relating to the real world will help you develop your life skills, and personality. Most significantly, it will enable you to meet like-minded people.

Science tells you we are all pure energy. We just need something to spark off the fire within us. Some find the spark early; others wait a lifetime. The point is to be passionate about what you do. Passion ignites the mind, and springs commitment. Out of commitment is forged your chosen path. The school exams have nothing to do with it. They are not the end by any stretch; at best they are merely the beginning. Someone’s made a better beginning than you have, but who knows how it’ll all end?