Being in a boxed room with a blackboard and white dusty chalks (with a risk of being hit, if conversation decibel increases) looks like a moment from yesterday, although in nick of time it was stitched around a quarter-century back.
I know it might sound unbelievable but conversations still used to happen eye-to-eye and face to face in those days and not with a medium of electronic impulses.
One of the most interesting ones used to be we trying to make sense of our future, where will we all lie in time-space and what will we all do If….
However, keeping aside dreams, which used to fuel our hopes there were innumerable day-to-day survival issues that needed to be thought through to reach a creative solution. The speed of our thoughts and action both used to be innovative in those days without the presence of Google and the flexibility of Quora at our fingertips. Some problems which I’ve come across with my group personally and resolved to our satisfaction were:
Which questions to ask to ensure the teacher can speak on for the remaining time of the period and forget about the last class assignments?
What time is the best to cross gates and bunk for a Shahrukh Khan movie?
Hey! the other group guy is talking to us, Is he/she trying to extract information or was implanting the fag end of gossip?
The funny thing about such a problem was not the impact they’re going to create but the agility with which they used to occur and resolve.
When I try to sometimes teach my kids and try to take things with perspective to my teachers, it was definitely not a bed of roses for them. There did not use to have an internet lesson or youtube video for them to take before the class was taken. The only real source of knowledge was between those thick covers and after going through a bored and long phase of going through it, they were exposed to unlearned and untrained brains trying to implant seeds of knowledge. The question is not that did it help us then, the question also which used to bother us was will it help us in future?
I honestly do not undermine what we learned as those foundations were truly necessary for what exists today but today, I want to cherish more the pristine learning environment and the process of learning. That probably was more important than the concepts of calculus to integration and simplified the complex numbers to Heisenberg uncertainty principle to us. The way in which we adapt to the unknown and the known in our lives, the attitude to understand the importance of it, did shape our confidence and many things in life beyond it. Not realizing it was my first mistake, and I do think that folks should realize and assimilate that you may or may not get the concept but respect your learning environment and resources. Accept the unknowns with respect, this will go long way with you even in corporate life. To sum up:
“Actual problem and actual answer” do matter only sometimes in life, most of the time only your approach to head on the problem in your way matters. Whether you have, a teacher who gives you Marks on writing correct steps or not life always values your spirit, courage and attitude more than your intellect and wisdom
Turning a few pages more of my life story, it’s ironic that the things which seems pretty important and pretty serious in those years, in the sands of time, gets washed off and this happens like a complete brutal wash-off. We used to give so undue importance to a ‘romantic story’ that was building up in front of us in our lives. It was so interesting that we used to forget everything surrounding that although you were not personally involved. It’s strange that while most of us were busy building careers some of us were busy building relationships It’s a matter of sheer coincidence that when today you visit their lives they could neither build relationships nor careers although they were a celebrity at a point in time in the mind of the lot many people in school.
It’s also strange when you see that some of our batchmates did waste their golden years in some misunderstanding and they were not talking eye-to-eye in those golden years. However, when tested with time they turned out to be best buddies, friends for life.
“My second mistake or second late realization was giving attention to the thing which was unimportant. Focusing on what’s important matters a lot rather than getting lost in romanticism or woven stories”. It’s important to think about what difference it’s going to make in my life or firm’s life and If it’s not something which we can put down in a sentence we are probably drifted.”.
In this era of technology, focusing has its own value. We honestly live in an era of science and technology and not only now but even then, the importance of math and science was so glorified in our lives that when I review it, it seems overrated. It was usual and natural for students of our age to ignore humanities. I would like to admit that I’ve done the same too, and want to register as a 3rd mistake of my life.
“Language does matter”, beyond school corridors the difference between an engineer and a manager of engineers is not about subject matter expertise but who can present it in simpler and wisest terms. So high school guys who’re reading it, the choice is yours, focus on language and communication skills now in all your building block years or suffer due to lack of it in your corporate times.
It’s immensely valuable to learn from our mistakes, and I am grateful to the world that even with these mistakes and many more I’m surviving and thriving. However, for you again, it’s a choice between wisdom and intelligence, do you want to make some of these mistakes on your own or want to learn from the mistakes of others. With this, I will bid adieu to your reading and leave you with your thoughts.
