I was much tensed because my exams were up in front in a few days. I was going through this usual ordeal of fear that every student has before his or her exams. “How am I going to cover the syllabus before the dooms day?” this was the question that was lingering in my mind. And the tension was taking its toll on me. I was almost scared to death. That is when I decided to go to my friend’s place with a hope to ward off my fears and feel better.
As I entered his room I saw him preparing notes for the exam. I was ashamed of myself when I saw his sincerity. I unbundled all my fears in front of him. He said, “What is the big deal? We have enough time to study”. I was surprised to hear when he said that, because the portions for the exam were very vast. And you know how the post graduate syllabus is like. The books are so thick that they can literally be used as a pillow.
Now I was very curious to know his mantra. I was desperate and asked him to help me out with the situation. I was surprised to hear his suggestion. He suggested me to mug-up all the titles and sub-titles of the topics listed in the syllabus and then to study all the diagrams associated with them. “And that’s all you got to do, it is as simple as that”, he said that with a smile. I asked, “what about the contents that I would have to write under the titles and sub-titles”. He suggested me to fill it up with my own stories. He said, “Who is going to go through what we have written? They are only going to go through the titles and the diagrams and award marks.”
And within an hour or so his studies were done and I saw him turning on the television set to catch up with the India-Pakistan one day cricket series that were going on.
So this is the state of Indian education today. Who is to be held responsible? The students who seek the easy way out or the members of the evaluation system who are so lethargic in going through the papers properly?
Most of the Indian industries find most of the students they recruit through campus processes to be unfit for the post for whatever they are being selected. These students have an excellent track record as far as their academics are considered. But when it comes to stuff they are tagged unfit. This is why you find most of the students being dropped off the companies during their probation period. If this doesn’t happen then at least their probation period gets extended.
So who is really to be blamed? There is no doubt that the education system and the infrastructure that we have today are one of the best. Even the syllabuses that are being taken as part of the curriculum are up-to-date and are in par with the latest trend. So where is that we are going wrong?
Is it the
1. The student’s care-free attitude.
2. The faulty evaluation system and the lethargic members of it.
3. Or the incompetent management.
So where can we bring a change? Who has to change? The answer to this is “EVERYONE”.
The evaluation system should be changed. They have to be strictly monitored because the careers of the students are at stake. In a way they are encouraging the students to choose the easy way out.
The management should take strong action against the evaluators who are found guilty. They must be strictly monitored.
And the student’s community must realize that all these short cut methods are helpful in getting marks on the board. But in the long run it is absolutely useless. We must realize that marks are just going to get us across the initial hurdle, set for the selection criteria in companies during the interview, but what really matters is the amount of knowledge we have acquired in the all these years. That is the only thing that can make us grow in our career.
They say, “Rights Come with Duties”. And I say, “Duties Come with Responsibilities”. If Right to Education is our fundamental right, then attaining it in the right way is our fundamental responsibility.
Our life is our responsibility, and if we realize this, then there won’t be any reason to blame others. The key is to correct ourselves rather than trying to correct others. When we realize our responsibilities and act accordingly there can be no one to stop us from attaining what we want.
So let us chase our dreams by realizing our responsibilities.
Please do leave your comments on this article. I would also like to have your comments on the photograph too. I am up on my next article. So friends, please do stay in touch. Till then take care and keep smiling and of-course do take care of your responsibilities..
I am sure that every one of us has gone through this phase at least once in our lifetime. You might have guessed it right by now from the title. Well it is all about this one bad phase in our lives where we let ourselves completely drown and lose our true identities among the crowd. You feel lonely and insecure. You feel that you are at the bottom of the world and everything has come to an end for you. You feel as if life has nothing in store for you anymore. You feel like ending everything and turning your back at life. You feel that everything that happens to you happens because God is picking on you. Well seriously, I am surprised with myself that I am writing this post.
Well coming back to the subject, “where were we?”
Yes, I remember, I was talking about that depression phase. Well most of you reading this post must have experienced this at least once. Well let us admit it. Well for those of you who say that you have been so lucky not to undergo this really awful tough time in your life take my advice, quit reading this post and switch on to some other posts. This section is not for you. But if in future, God forbid, If you undergo such a bad situation and feel that things are getting sore and you are completely down, come back and read this. Maybe I would be able to give you a different perspective of looking at your life.
Well friends, those of who are still reading this post, continue to read because this maybe helpful to you in someway or the other, or at least let me know how I was for a novice blogger.
Let us get down to business. As I was saying we go through these very difficult times when we feel that no one in this world can understand what we are going through. Believe me, I have undergone all these myself, and that is how I came upon a conclusion to write this here as a post. I would not mention what had happened with me here, cause I don’t want to make this personal.
But then talking in general about this topic completely won’t help you understand what I am coming to say, for that reason alone I may prefer to quote some of my experiences here.
I am not coming to say that I have been an absolute prodigy in coming out all the depression. It took a long time for me to realize things and come out of it, still traces of it remain. After all I am a human and not a computer with an artificial memory to delete everything completely when not needed.
So this is it, here I am, right now, writing a post to let you know that life is full of ups and down. And it treats us very well at times and ditches us completely until we eat the dust. That’s the irony behind life. Happiness and sadness are two sides of the same coin. We never know which side is going to show its face towards us. But I would let you know one good thing about being in all this. It makes us wiser; it gives us the experience that not even the happiest times in our lives would have given us. We grow and mature, that is one thing that we must always be happy about all this. That is what makes us stronger and tougher for the long run.
We often don’t see all those good things around us when we are down, we are very happy in our own world of grief. All that we ask for is solitude. What we fail to understand here is that solitude is only going to make the burden of carrying all that sorrows even more difficult.
Life is very short. The good thing about life is that life changes with time and the bad side of the story is that time never stops for anyone. It goes on, and as it goes on we miss all those opportunities, the opportunities from which we could have got the best. So it is up to us to capitalize on this very thought of running time.
11 months back, I was going through a very bad time, I was not able to think anything that I am letting you know now. I was totally shattered because life had played an ugly plot on me. There were family and friends who tried to help me out off it, but I refused to adhere to them and loved to be alone in my own fantasy world of sorrows. Things were getting worse with every passing day. I was totally kicked off my senses and was letting myself down even more.
The whole thing changed when I started looking at life in a different perspective. I started believing that everything that happens, happens for a reason. To be more specific it happens for a good reason. And it happened because God has some better things in store for me.
I started to analyze my situation carefully; I found out that there was no good that was happening out of being like this. I started realizing all the good things that I was missing only because of thinking about my past. I wanted to come out of all those things. I won’t say that it was easy, it was pretty much difficult. And believe me, that phase when you start to mature and think rationally is the most beautiful phase. That is what that makes up your personality on the whole.
At the end of the day, the things that counts are not what we have achieved; but the very truth, how we achieved it. They say life is very short to hate someone, but I say life is too short to be unhappy. Each and every second that is passing by is very precious to be missed, because once lost it cannot be regained.
So, whenever we are down just think about the people who really love us, people who really care for us, people who are really worried for us, people who can’t see us in this state, people who try to help us to come out from this dreadful phase. They are the people who are really worth our attention, our love and care. They are the real reason for which we have to be happy.
I just thought I could make this post a little interesting if I visually represented what I wanted to convey. So the story board put up below will help me convey my message.
I have put up a legend which represents the three mental states of the person. Here I have used three colors namely green, black and red representing the happy state, the normal state and the depressed state respectively.
Click on the image to have a clearer look at it.
So here is how the story goes. In the first frame the person is having a very normal and a peaceful life with nothing bothering him. He is happy in his world, until he meets up with trouble on his way. He doesn’t really realize what he has met up with and happily carries the trouble with him. He is very happy about his new possession. He is on cloud nine.
One fine day, the trouble that he is carrying with him, bursts out. Everything becomes gloomy and he goes into deep depression. The whole episode engulfs him as a thick capsule of negativity. The person is totally depressed and prefers to be in solitude. This is the phase that I was mentioning earlier.
He looses control over himself and his life and keeps himself devoid of happiness and other’s company. In the seventh frame you would see a group of people coming to his rescue. These are those friends and family members those who truly love and care for him. They try to help him out of the depression. But he asks them to leave him alone.
He prefers to be in solitude. The depression magnifies and shatters him completely.
This is what really happens to us friends. We fail to see happiness that is all around us, and seek happiness elsewhere. And this pursuit of happiness never ends as we seek what was never meant to be ours. It’s like going around the place with a hope of reaching the ends of the rainbow. We fail to realize that this is just an illusion.
In the tenth frame you can see a person breaking the negative cloud. The stick represents love and compassion. This is the key to pull the person who is depressed into normalcy. This initiative can be taken by people who are close to the victim. Finally the negativity that surrounded this person vanishes and slowly the person recovers and regains his happiness and becomes normal. He realizes the presence of people who are really worth his thoughts. He realizes that they are the true reasons for him to be happy.
We become so selfish in times like this that we are in pursuit of our happiness putting other’s happiness at stake.
I hope you would have heard this very famous song from the very famous band "backstreet boys", “Every time you’re down, you can make it right, and that makes you Larger than Life”. Truly that is what makes us larger than life. That is what molds us into a true personality. And that is what makes us wise and strong.
They say that, “life is worth lived when we it is lived for others”. So, live for the people who really care for us, the people who really love us. They are the real reason for us to be happy.
When we are down and depressed it only takes a few minutes to contemplate and come out of it. But once we have made the decision to take the path down the lane, it becomes very difficult to climb back.
A few questions that we must ask ourselves when we contemplate are:
1. What was the reason that caused the problem?
2. Are we responsible for the problem in anyway?
3. Is our position justifiable when we put ourselves in other’s shoe?
4. Are the answers to the above questions pricking our conscience?
5. Isn’t there any other way to sort out the issue?
6. Was there any ego involved which caused the problem?
7. Is it really worth solving the problem and carry on or is it better to leave
it and carry on?
8. Do we really feel that the person involved in all this is worth to be thought
off?
9. What are the negative things that would happen and what are the positive things
that we would gain by clinging on to the problem?
10. Will walking out of the problem make the other prople's life better in
anyway?
11. Is it really worth being lonely and sad for the problem (or person) which (who)
is not even worth our attention?
12. Is it really worth hurting the people who really love and care for us for a
person who is not even bothered about us (if the problem is due to a person)?
These questions would help us to analyze the situation. And it would help us to come out of our depression. I would like to say that, life is very short and unpredictable. No one knows what is going to happen the very next second. So why should we bother about the past and make our present unpleasant. Live life to the fullest, and try living it for others.
That will give us a reason to live and be happy.
Don’t let life, fate or a person decide your life and happiness, your life is yours and you alone have the key to make it joyful or sorrowful.
Though I am not a great blogger, I would like to have your comments regarding the posts and the blog..
I would like to thank all those dear ones who have stood with me during my tough times and helped me out of this phase and have inspired me to write this. And I would like to thank that one person who has taught me an important lesson in life. Just wanted to tell that person, "I still love you for what you did to me, and will always love you for that. You have made me strong and wise".
Stay in touch with this page. Because the next article that I am working on is really going to be spicy and thought provoking. Till then keep smiling..
