Every year around 5-6 lac students apply for the IIT-JEE Entrance examination, and a mere 15,000 get selected in the prestigious institute called IIT. So what is the mantra of their success? Is it purely luck or hard work or a combination of both? Asking someone, who has got a top 10 rank in the entrance exam, you would probably get answers varying from I didn’t study much – just what was necessary to I studied 10-12 hours or even more in a day. But why are these kids considered to be much superior to others? Just because they got into the premiere institute of India – IIT?
What is it about an IIT that everyone in India is so hooked on to it, that for any kid who hears the word engineering – the second word in his mind is IIT? That’s a mystery that I have been unable to solve till date. The pressure to be selected is so high, that it’s given way to tens of coaching institutes, primarily preparing you for IITs, charging you lakhs of rupees. The part our society fails to realize is that it is just a college, agreed a really nice one, but in the end it’s a college and a degree. It’s often said that a good kid will study anywhere no matter what the conditions are, so why doesn’t it apply here? Why the pressure to get into IIT?
When kids, tortured by the decision of taking Commerce, Science or Arts, in 11th grade, finally decide to take Science (non-medical), it is automatically assumed that they would join a premiere coaching institute and get into one of the IITs’. Apart from the family pressures and expectations, the society plays such a huge role in increasing the pressure on kids, as if they aren’t already buckling under the schoolwork, coaching work and preparation for one or the other exam.
Being someone, who has had first experience with all of this; it pains me to say that we have been and still are travelling on a very wrong path, that will doom a lot of people’s future, their ambitions, creativity and most important of all their sanity. The pressure to meet expectations of a hundred thousand people (parents of course are fine, but neighbors and this relative and that relative), the strenuous schedule, the confusion at not being able to understand chapters after chapters of some subject and the hours trying to keep a strong will and still keep going. Well its nothing short than a marathon, I must say, a marathon that goes on for a stretch of two long years, where every individual day is like a race, to keep your will strong, to keep yourself happy, to not care about this marks or that marks, to not be depressed, to not look at other friends and say what fun they have – going out every day – when you don’t have the same luxury.
I don’t doubt people who get into IIT by believing it was luck or fate – they did their share of hard work and reaped the success. What I want to say is that, for people who don’t get into IIT, it doesn’t mean the end of the world. It doesn’t mean they aren’t worthy or that they didn’t study as hard as the other kids. This is what our society should learn – to respect the kids no matter what their result is in an entrance exam. The kid couldn’t do well in an entrance exam, so what; it’s not the end of opportunities. He/She might find something better, something he/she is more suited to do. The only thing to realize is that “You should do whatever makes you happy.” Often people will judge you or be harsh to you for it, but in the end, thirty-forty years down the line, you will realize you took the right decision.
It’s really important to realize that no premiere institute be it IIT’s , National universities or any reputed universities can give us a “Realm_Of_Imagination” to live in, it is one’s potential that defines a “Realm_Of_Imagination” for him/her. The society categorizes children on the basis of the reputation of the institutes that they study in, making it really hard for the children to even think that they haven’t done any crime if they can’t get into an IIT, but above all what this society fails to see is that this is the same society that opposes girl child, opposes inter-caste marriages, opposes bi-sexual relations and yes ofcourse, how can I forget to mention about opposing other religions if they by mistake interfere in our very own “well principled” and “sacred” religion. The issue is not whether someone from our colony got into IIT (just an instance) or not but the issue is that people repeatedly fail over and over again to understand that there are other things of great importance which need to be cared about.
So “Think” where you stand, “Analyze” your steps so that you can make a better tomorrow and “React” to achieve the best you can.
In the end, I’d just like to quote Haruki Murakami, “And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”
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