Existential crisis-True..If you are going to ultimately become an IAS or IFS why take the pressure...To raise the Corporate ladder administrative skills are important...Very few engineering jobs require the IIT skills...To write programs you do not require an IIT education!
[h=1]I sacrificed my health and teenage years to study at the IITs—but was it worth it?[/h]
[h=2]The cram schools[/h] Most of the initial 13 years of my life had been spent in Rajasthan’s Kota, the epicentre of the coaching tsunami that engulfed the rotten senior secondary science education system in India. That is not to say that our schools teach commerce or arts any better, but the most significant impact of coaching classes, at least initially, was felt by the science stream. Kota pioneered the trend of training class 10 pass-outs for JEE, the Joint Entrance Examination, for admission to the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). A number of cities followed suit.
[h=2]The worst years[/h]
I’ve spent four years of my life studying in coaching classes: Classes 9 and 10 for National Talent Search Examination (NTSE) and classes 11 and 12 for the JEE. When I look back today, I feel I didn’t lose much during the first two years because there was more to my life than just coaching classes. I went to school and studied English and Hindi, wrote poems, painted and participated in debates and extempores. The last two years were depressing, despite living at home with my parents. Any activity apart from attending the coaching class and self-study used to drown me in a sea of guilt. Thus, no more reading newspapers, no more watching TV for long hours, no more afternoon naps (sports, anyway, were never a part of my life).
Getting up from, and sitting down on, my study chair was the maximum amount of movement my body went through and as a result, the flab on my belly thickened manifold. At my worst, I weighed close to a quintal. Things moved pretty fast in the coaching class, so falling sick was never an option. And if I did, which I did numerous times (especially in class 12), catching up became a task in itself, partly because of my own flawed studying techniques. And yet, things were easier in class 11 because I managed to stay on top of things and was among the toppers in my class. Things became darker in class 12. Course content suddenly increased and so did competition, and I found it increasingly hard to cope up. With every drop in my rank, my confidence dwindled. My allergies decided to wreak havoc on me during the same period and I went in a downward spiral of low scores, enormous amounts of backlog, a substantially reduced enthusiasm for studies and a lax attitude.
[h=2]Parents and their myopia[/h] It must have been impossible for my parents to stay insulated from this crazy atmosphere. So, when my father told me that he would want me to “become an IITian,” I wasn’t surprised. I am sure my brother, too, hadn’t been surprised. Both of us went through the same grind and eventually did manage to “become” IITians.
This post first appeared on Insight, the student media body of IIT Bombay.
For full article read:
http://qz.com/431397/i-sacrificed-m...ars-to-study-at-the-iits-but-was-it-worth-it/
[h=1]I sacrificed my health and teenage years to study at the IITs—but was it worth it?[/h]
[h=2]The cram schools[/h] Most of the initial 13 years of my life had been spent in Rajasthan’s Kota, the epicentre of the coaching tsunami that engulfed the rotten senior secondary science education system in India. That is not to say that our schools teach commerce or arts any better, but the most significant impact of coaching classes, at least initially, was felt by the science stream. Kota pioneered the trend of training class 10 pass-outs for JEE, the Joint Entrance Examination, for admission to the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). A number of cities followed suit.
[h=2]The worst years[/h]
I’ve spent four years of my life studying in coaching classes: Classes 9 and 10 for National Talent Search Examination (NTSE) and classes 11 and 12 for the JEE. When I look back today, I feel I didn’t lose much during the first two years because there was more to my life than just coaching classes. I went to school and studied English and Hindi, wrote poems, painted and participated in debates and extempores. The last two years were depressing, despite living at home with my parents. Any activity apart from attending the coaching class and self-study used to drown me in a sea of guilt. Thus, no more reading newspapers, no more watching TV for long hours, no more afternoon naps (sports, anyway, were never a part of my life).
Getting up from, and sitting down on, my study chair was the maximum amount of movement my body went through and as a result, the flab on my belly thickened manifold. At my worst, I weighed close to a quintal. Things moved pretty fast in the coaching class, so falling sick was never an option. And if I did, which I did numerous times (especially in class 12), catching up became a task in itself, partly because of my own flawed studying techniques. And yet, things were easier in class 11 because I managed to stay on top of things and was among the toppers in my class. Things became darker in class 12. Course content suddenly increased and so did competition, and I found it increasingly hard to cope up. With every drop in my rank, my confidence dwindled. My allergies decided to wreak havoc on me during the same period and I went in a downward spiral of low scores, enormous amounts of backlog, a substantially reduced enthusiasm for studies and a lax attitude.
[h=2]Parents and their myopia[/h] It must have been impossible for my parents to stay insulated from this crazy atmosphere. So, when my father told me that he would want me to “become an IITian,” I wasn’t surprised. I am sure my brother, too, hadn’t been surprised. Both of us went through the same grind and eventually did manage to “become” IITians.
This post first appeared on Insight, the student media body of IIT Bombay.
For full article read:
http://qz.com/431397/i-sacrificed-m...ars-to-study-at-the-iits-but-was-it-worth-it/
