Zombie mode.

                  Well, the thing is this entire coaching set-up was very different from usual and nothing like in previous classes. First, you spend six hours at school, return home, choke the food down your throat in an attempt to reach your coaching on time, reach there, spend four bloody hours trying to understand the teacher, reach back home late at night, dead tired and dead hungry, eat food, and if you still have the energy and perseverance left-study. This schedule was exhausting. And it had been my initial schedule and till the end i tried to keep it this way, with some successful and some unsuccessful attempts.

                       This schedule is traumatizing, rigorous and appalling. There is no respite, no chance to take a break from books. In effect, you are always running behind schedule, behind class, behind what is being taught.

          Our teachers always advised us to follow a simple method. After coaching days-go back home and simply revise the topics taught in class. The next day, when you don’t have a class do further questions. (As I might have mentioned earlier, I joined a classroom program, one that goes with school. According to this, you have four hours of coaching every alternate day.)  I know it sounds simple and feasible too. But practically it is not. Especially in case if our batch. Because instead of having coaching on alternate days, on MWF, we had slight improvisation and had classes on MWTF. Four days a week. (So that we could catch up to the earlier batches, with the syllabus.) Like I told you, I had to face the repercussions of joining a late batch, and this was it.

               However, we were not informed of this minute but really important improvisation when we signed up for a late batch. Had I known this would happen, I would have joined sooner. It exhausted us even more. And in my honest opinion, with school and coaching, the Tuesday that we did get off-went in sleeping and taking out the tiredness. 

              If on one of the days, you did get energized and studied, there was no telling you would do the same the next day. And once you are doing a topic, you need continuity. As a result, whatever little bit you did study was washed off and you had to re-study it all over again. And by re-studying I don’t mean revising. I imply that this was a waste of time and energy.

                  The only effective study that was possible was during weekends.

        Only, in my case, I tried to follow my teacher’s advice and exerted myself. Thus, my friends began to call me zombie. After coming back from coaching, I used to take a break for an hour while I ate food. Then, I sat to study and I studied till 3 or 4 O’ clock in the morning. Knowing well, that next day I had to wake up at 6 am for school. At times, I pulled all-nighters and never even slept before going to school.  After coming back from school, except on Tuesdays, I had coaching, where I’d try to focus all my attention towards the blackboard despite my drowsiness. And trust me, this is not just my tale. It happened with a lot of kids with my class.

                   I began to grow thinner, and gradually became skeleton thin. There were dark circles under the eyes, and an overall Zombie look.

          All this pain and agony was not without results because I did excellently in the studies at coaching. But was it worth it? I began to wonder. My teachers often thought, after looking at my face, that she is depressed, sad and so on because of studies and books. Little did they know that it had nothing to do with books! I was sad, all right, but not due to academic reasons since I was doing well. I was sad because I was loosing the balance in my life. I did not want to look like a zombie!

       Sixteen-seventeen these years are the peak of hormonal changes in teenagers, and they show in different ways. The sort of person you will become in the future is greatly affected by stuff in this time.

          I always had a theory of balance in life, and it always worked for me. I believed that no matter what you do- a 24X7 job, studies, leisure you should always maintain a balance. A lot of people say that you just have to work for two years, then you will get selected in a good college, and you will not have to go through with this anymore. But they are wrong. So! So! Wrong!

          When you get in a college you will have to work to keep up your GP or whatever they call it. You will have to work to get a good placement. And when you do get the alleged high package job, you have to work your ass off in the initial years to reach anywhere.

          I am not saying that every aspect of life is bad. I’m saying that you will have to work and exert yourself in all stages of your life. The only solution or remedy to this is: maintaining a balance.

            

          Studies have shown that a lot of academically brilliant kids do not fare well later in life. It not because they are not good anymore, but it is because by the time they reach where the must, their entire energy is sucked up. No zest. No enthusiasm is left.

               Honestly till the end of these two years, i could never re-establish my balance until my coaching was finally over.

               But it does not have to be this way for any other kid. In these two years, you should know your priority-which is books. But it does not mean you must not have fun. Neither do you have to be as extreme as me.It is  possible to clear JEE and it is also possible to maintain a proper balance. You have got to decide how badly you want to get into IIT. For me? the cost was a little too much. Not that i gave up but

          I did not want to become that person. This is when O.D.S. (Oppressive Depressive syndrome) seriously began to take its toll on me. I began to doubt what I really wanted from life. Cruel success or humble happiness?

                                                                                     

\\ in line with my above thoughts I  highly recommends reading this book- The Gift, by Cecilia Ahern.  

Le commencement

       So enough introductions about how pitiful the entire educational set up of India is. All-in-all, it is not student-friendly at all. We all know that and we all have spent hours debating over the topic, when in fact, they could be better utilized doing something fruitful.

                Till class 10, I was a happy kid and had an eerie unbeatable optimism. This was often remarked as one of my best qualities. However, it all changed during the course of the past two years. As a matter of fact, this quality of mine would come as a shock to many of those who knew me only for these two years. I have termed this as ‘O.D.S’ aka ‘Oppressive Depressive Syndrome’. This syndrome is atypical for all those kids encumbered with competitive exam preparations or any such impaling task.  It’s symptoms are confusion, loss of confidence, depression, self-pity, remorse and such. In extreme cases may even affect the physical health of many vigorous students.

So this is the story of the beginning of it all. Now, I had always been a diligent student. Even though I was not very passionate about IIT in particular but when I was put amidst a bunch of other highly competitive students, my natural tendency to do better than them arose, mixed with the initial enthusiasm of all the ‘new’ things happening in my life.

As any other kid, when the coaching started off I studied my-ass-off. And it bore fruitful results too. The topics that I studied are etched in my mind till date as none other. The concepts of those topics are also crystal clear in all three subjects-PCM. I would advise any student to make use of this initial gusto to the fullest. Because, it will die out sooner or later.

Whatever begins badly, ends badly(?)

I remember the first day of my coaching. As I mentioned already, I had joined a late batch, one that began in June. Not only did I join the batch late, but I was also two days late in attending the first class. Due to personal reasons, we were out of town and I missed the first two classes. And you can curse my luck too, because I was late for the third class that I did attend. Though, I must admit that I was guilty for the last one because one of my dear friends was leaving town and I had to attend her farewell partly. It was going to my last enjoyment in a long time. Yet, all I did was show my face at her party and then rush to my coaching. Where I was late. In short, I could neither enjoy the party nor have great day.

When I entered, there were several classrooms and each one in session. I had no clue which was mine. I figured that out somehow, and entered. Someone was teaching there and a class of very serious students was studying. A person was teaching them mathematics, who of course, now I know as my math’s sir. My initial and final impression of him was-scary, even though there is nothing frightening about him. I glanced at my batch-mates, and gave a very awkward introduction of myself and how I missed the first two classes. Sir looked at me skeptically, a bit annoyed for disturbing the class (maybe that’s why I find him scary) then told me to sit down. The benches were all occupied, and I searched for some vacancy. The fact that I had been disturbing the class was making the task urgent. Moreover, I was in party clothes and had embellished my nails with an exotic set of nail paints. Again, I could feel eyes watching me and judging me, thinking that I was some sort of fashion queen, who had joined the big coaching to waste her time and parents money. Maybe I was over thinking, maybe I was the one judging my peers-but the atmosphere of the class at that time made me feel that way-intended or not intended. Before I was a student or anything, I was a friend, and it meant a lot to me to say goodbye and I would never have missed her party for anything. Lost as I was in finding a vacant seat, when sir told me to sit beside someone. Unfortunately she was sitting right in front. Right under the nose of the teacher. 

Since teaching had commenced since the past two days, I could only understands the lecture in bits and pieces. Plus, most of my attention was on holding my pen in such a fashion that my nails did not show.

Soon the class ended. A couple of other students had also missed the initial class, so luckily, sir agreed to give us an extra class, however, warning us not to keep up the habit.

After the first class we got a fifteen minutes break. Then I gradually acquainted myself with the other kids. Co-incidentally, the girl sitting beside me had the same name as me. I asked a few kids for their notebook, but no one was ready to lend theirs. Not that my classmates were selfish or stingy as it might appear, but at that time no one knew each other and preferred to maintain distance.

The next class was physics, where we met our first physics sir. Frankly, he was not a bad teacher, according to me. It was just that he could not control the class. During his lecture, children would scream, shout, talk and despite his best efforts- no one would stop. It created confusion, making the students feel that he could not teach well. But if you ask me, who did pay attention, he was remarkable. Regardless, while attending the physics class it dawned upon me that the teaching could not continue like this.

Anyway, the class dismissed and my first day at the coaching ended. When I returned home the first thing I did was cut-off my long nails, and remove the paint. Then I tried to study but I could not understand much so I let it be. Despite having such a bad day, you can say, I was not dissuaded at all. Like I said, I had always been an optimistic kid. I knew that I was going to set things my way soon. I was going to work and study to my utter best.

I did not loose my optimism overnight. O.D.S. takes time to take its toll! This was just the beginning.

                                                    

Coachahauntus (Coaching - haunt - us)

           So, here is the thing about coachings: there are just too many of them. And there is too much confusion about which is the best. I'm pretty sure many of you would have though this at least once "Kuch nahi toh coaching hi khol lege, achcha business hai." Ah! true,true.

             In my experience i've learnt that there are two types of coachings: The BIG, renowned ones and the smaller ones run by private teachers .

            I remember the time when I was looking for a coaching. There were so many options. Some people said study Maths from SO-so coaching, physics from yada-yada and Chemistry from another. While others suggested take a look at Aaskash, FIITJEE, Resonance and such.

                    Although I ultimately joined one of the big ones-for namesake lets call them ROCKJEE's but a few of my friends joined these small ones-lets call them JOCKJEE.  And I am going to describe how it affected us in different ways.      

                At that time, I was looking for the best. The best teachers, best material, best guidance, best coaching. However, now I realize that Best does not matter at all. Though, it is true that a coaching plays a very crucial role in preparing for your competitions, but 60% depends on you and your hard work. So, when you chose a coaching chose one where:

1.      You understand what the teacher teaches (even if the person may not necessarily be the best teacher)

2.     The coaching covers the syllabus for JEE and other competitive exams thoroughly.

3.     Other kids in your coaching are good. (Trust me, this has an immense influence on your performance. The better the kids in your batch are the better you will want to perform.)

Frankly, I hate the institute of coachings but it is undeniable that school syllabus is insufficient and way below the standard of competitive exams. If you are serious about any of the competitive exam-you must join some form of coaching, however unfortunate it may be.

         On one side the education system of India is being changed continuously and experimented under the pretext of doing away with the coaching system but its policies speak otherwise.

          Never mind that. It is a topic for later discussion.

    Personally, I don’t think that the JOCKJEE’s-the single coaching or the ROCKJEE’s have much difference in their standard of teaching. In my experience I have seen that the concepts, theory coverage are more or less same everywhere. Although, if you chose JOCKJEE -there is a chance that you get hold of all good teachers for all three subjects. In fact, that is a major drawback of ROCKJEE’s, i.e:-

                      These coaching centers run a lot of batches per day and every second student wants to join them. There is no guarantee that you will get good teachers. (As it happened in my case, our batch got a really bad physics teacher.) But again, all the ROCKJEE’s have a provision that you can ask for a change of teacher if they do not meet up to the marks. We did that with ours, yet regrettably the one we got after him was not of much help either.

            However, if we compare I think it is much preferable to join the ROCKJEE’s than JOCKJEE’s. why? Here’s why:

1.     UNDER THE SAME ROOF: You get to study all three subjects under one room. It will save your time immensely.

2.     MATERIAL: The material provided by them is compiled and analyzed by experts, extracted from various competitive exam. It is slightly better than normal coaching stuff.

3.     SYLLABUS RELIABLITY: These coaching have a strict regime about completing the syllabus within a certain period of time. It ensures that your course is complete in due time, with proper revision. However, in individual coaching it often happens that they carry on at their own pace, and rush up towards the end.

4.     COMPETITION: This is by far the most important advantage of these big coaching’s. The exposure they give you towards competition, preparation of other kids across the country is immense and absolutely important.

5.     TIMELY TESTING: Although, a number of small coaching centers may be doing this but the ROCKJEE’s have repetitive tess-Weekly, monthly and so on-exactly on the pattern of JEE. This gives you a good practice of how to attempt the paper, time management, and right from the beginning.

               My experience in my coaching was a mixture of good and bad. Like i said, i joined a batch that started late. As a result i did not get a the best set of teachers, or a studious batch for that matter. Though, i repect both my teachers and my batch very much. We (our batch) got an excellent teacher for maths, while our chemistry teacher was good at what he taught-but he was sort of lazy and liked to gossip more than teach, and thirdly, the jinx physics. I feel bad for him honestly because he tried really hard to make our batch understand 'physics' but ultimately we did not like him and he only though of us as a useless batch, a waste of time to be taught anything.The mutual dislike killed our physics.

                          Regardless; the material, interaction with other kids from different schools, the on-off tests, the pressure  given by the coaching's works on you like a hammer against a nail until you succeed. 

                                Like i mentioned before, we did not get the best of all. However, it is not as important to get the best of all as to make the best of all.

10 reasons why i chose PCM and decided to go for engineering.

1. I was never really interested in engineering, but i always had an inclination towards science. However, my favourite subject was computer, and initially i wanted to become a graphic designer and get into the animation stream.
2. My parents were supportive of my interests and we did some research on the avenues relating to these fields. Eventually we came to the conclusion that although the scope for graphic designing and animation is increasing but it is still limited. Moreover, there were only diploma courses available for these streams. If someone really wanted to get into animation-there were amazing uni's abroad, but we could not afford them.
3. My uncle, my dad and a couple of others gathered one day and told me pursue a proper UG course and get a qualified degree, and stop sticking to the idea of animation.They did not imply engineering, it could be anything as long as it was solid. I argued that i did not care about the money, i cared about following my dreams. They told me it was bullshit because later in life it all comes down to money. Reality check: they were not wrong.
4. So i did not have to particularly chose science or engineering. I could go for Commerce, but the subject seemed alien to me.
5. I could go for humanities, and i did want to. I wanted to be a lawyer but i would have to study History? Seriously? no way.
6. I could take up bio and go for medicine, but i did not want to keep studying for long years, as the medical kids have too.
7. I took up maths because i had always been good at it and found it interesting.
8. I could have done a normal hons. course. I did not necessarily have to go for engineering but i did not do that.
9. The reason is that i had a passion for computers since i was a little kid. I wanted to do something related to that. Computer engineering or maybe game designing or something of the sort.
10. Finally i decided to pursue engineering.I though maybe once i do that, i can still do the diploma in graphic designing and follow my dream after all.

Only time will tell whether this decision, these thoughts took me uphill or downhill.

My advise to anyone who has a hard time choosing their stream:

           Firstly, whatever is in your mind should be researched thoroughly.

You should research about your choice, about the universities-and the requirements they need for a candidate, the pay and security of your option.

There are many upcoming and potentially prospering streams which people do not even know about. If you stick to the cliques you will never find out. In the very least look them up.

Scholarship programs: India has a number of scholarships for different field. In fact, there are even scholarships such as the Dr. Manmohansingh Scholarship which help student study abroad in prestigious uni's like Cambridge at both UG and PG levels.

{e.g. http://www.cambridge-india.org/studying/scholarships.html }

Then you will have to make the tough choice.

However there is one important factor here: Competition is everywhere and in all streams. If try to take up commerce or arts, lets say, only because who do not want the hassle of the competition in science, then you are wrong. Think carefully, chose wisely.

You will HAVE to work your ass off regardless of the stream you take.

Be determined and all the best.

The Transition.

             The transition from class 10th to intermediate is a huge leap regardless of your choice of subjects. Within a month any student would realize that class 10 had been a cake walk and soon they would know that their cake has been overheated, burnt and dead. Especially for the science students.

    This is not because Science is 'tougher' than humanities or commerce or any other subject but because 80% of the students take up science.  In India, taking up Science is an 'intelligence' statement. A good, hard working student must take science. Arts and humanities are for losers who could not get a good score in their 10th boards. Although, this perception is gradually changing but the change is slow. Wake up people! Economics, Commerce, Psychology, Geography, History, Political Science require as much brain power, intelligence and aptitude as for science. Chanakya, the royal adviser of Chandragupta Maurya is considered the world's first, and one of India's greatest economics.Barack Obama, was a law student at Harvard. Students in India must assess their own interests and aptitude before blindly taking up science just because people in the past have been doing it or because it is suppose to be the 'in' thing.

       Moreover, out of the science student majority get into preparation for medical stream or IIT JEE-engineering. These avenues and options are not bad at all. However, their drawback is that they are over-clique-d  and almost every second kid in India is trying their hands at it. What are we going to do of SO many doctors and engineers?

    Since I had taken up PCM and like the herds of sheep going for engineering, I did some research. I don't know about the medical stream but I can vouch for my stream.

      I know the newspaper give of gala accounts of students who get picked up by multinational companies getting packages in lakhs but that is not the true picture at all. Lets just forget these lucky ones. True, if you work hard enough you can be there, but not everyone gets there. If we deselect a few toppers- a lot of students with excellent degrees form the best colleges remain unemployed and practically struggle for jobs.

Why? Because there is an excess of engineers!

             After a lot of analysis I got to the conclusion that people opt for engineering for these reasons:

• Clearing the JEE is a matter of pride and honor for many students. It is not about doing engineering it is about giving the prestigious exam. 
• It is stable and explored option. No experiments involved.
• Their parents or siblings did it too. Their peers are doing it.
• Genuine interest in the field.
  Why do you think BIG coaching center's have started classes to prepare for JEE from grade 6? I wonder which kid in grade 6 would want to be an engineer? Do they even know what an engineer does? I doubt it. It's just something fed into their brains by their parents.

I remember when I was in 6th grade I wanted to be an astronaut, then an artist for sometime.

            Anyway, my point of telling you all this is because kids do not realize this fact during the "transition". It is later on that the pointlessness comes to light. 

         This is specially because majority of the students get flying colors in their 10th boards which gives them a confidence that they can do 11th and 12th too. But WARNING: that is a delusion because 11th and 12th is NOTHING like class 10.

           The first few months of 11th are spent by students in two ways. Some think of it as a post-board break and party away two-three months. Others, the more geeky ones, start off with their preparations for competitive exams withing a week.

           I fall under the first category. After boards were over in March, school reopened in April. We had a pleasant one month break. The thing about the break-when you have nothing to do is-you get bored. I yearned for the boards to be over, however, once they were over days began to feel empty. That is when I started to think about my career options. I had opted for PCM, and wanted to pursue engineering. My father

almost had me admitted into another school with an integrated coaching program. I wish I had listened to him because life would have been much easier then. However, I did not want to leave my friends or my school. So I looked into classroom programs which are conducted in the evening. My parents and I went to different coaching centers Aakash, FIITJEE, Trivag and a couple of other local coaching institutes. I asked my seniors and other students on their feedback and finally settled for on one institute. (I wont name it, so lets just call it 'CCG' (which is short for coaching) otherwise they might sue me for slander.)

                I had done all this by April, and I could join the coaching right then. But I did not want to. It was too soon to get into studies, so I decided to join a late batch-one that began in June. I did this specifically because my parents had promised me that we would go for a trip overseas during the summer vacations, and I did not want to miss any CCG days or have backlog. 

            My personal advice to anyone who is in such a situation is to take a proper break of about a month or so before entering into any coaching because one you do that any form of break over the next two years will only be a dream. So take a well deserved break, but not a break as long as mine. This choice of mine had heavy repercussions, which I will explain gradually.

      You must be thinking that I have been condemning the practice of taking up PCM for no good reasons when I had myself taken PCM. What a phony right? I will tell you my reasons for taking up PCM soon.