Back in 2020, my board results post was perhaps the most awaited post of the blog. I had so many messages about it, and I figured it’d be fair to include the final school year exit journey as well. It isn’t as colourful as its predecessor, I must warn you.
I began my senior secondary online. I had the most amazing and supportive teachers. Being confined to four walls of a room was fine, for a few months. But in the long term, the impact was huge and unfavourable. Attending five to six hours of school and another few hours of extra classes in the same location has adverse effects on your attention span. And at one point, probably the most crucial point in senior secondary, I simply didn’t care anymore. Things got slightly better around 2021, and we went online again. The 2021 batch might complain about the uncertainty of exams, and the cancellation of their boards. But we were a batch that never saw the labs until two to three months before board practicals. And CBSE likes numbers. So to make up for 2021’s lost exam count, we had two public exams in the same year.
Now the idea of splitting portions for the sake of bridging the learning gap is good, but the timeline wasn’t. You can’t announce an MCQ test with a three-month preparation time. The beauty of the MCQ test is that it’s supposed to be easy for theory-heavy subjects (that wasn’t the case tho), but the effort you put into calculation-heavy subjects has to be the same, if not double. And the result would be either a hit or a miss, thereby leaving out the possibility of step marks.
Shouldn’t this be easy for people who prepare for competitive exams? In a way, yes. Then let’s add the OMR sheet into the bundle too. This is where the problem begins. Competitive exams are held in a computer-based test pattern. For a batch with a short attention span, it was hard to concentrate while filling the bubbles. Fortunately, my school gave us adequate preparation, but in the end, it was hard to make sure we didn’t screw up. Because once you screw up, you can’t correct it. Fortunately enough, with all my mistakes and blessings, I finished my 12th grade with 94% total, with the highest being in math and chemistry.
Next is the competitive exam phase. These started way before the final boards, and they ended around august. I wrote SRMJEE, VITEEE, AEEE, Jee Mains, BITSAT and Manipal Entrance Test. I didn’t attempt Advanced partly because of a medical emergency and also because I was exhausted from writing exams. Out of the ones I attempted, I got CSE at SRM ktr campus, VIT Chennai campus, Amrita Coimbatore campus; Cyber-Physical Systems at Manipal Institute of Technology and EEE at BITS Hyderabad. I also got Civil and Mechanical at a few NIT’s in the north. The JEE phase was particularly very challenging, and most of us had our results mixed up. There was a lot of fuss going on, and no plausible solutions came up.
There could be a few takeaways here. First - you can only control how many questions you attempt and how many mistakes you make. The result, percentile and rank are out of your control, and you don’t have to blame yourself for that. Second - have a plan b. Things won’t always go as planned, and your second plan might work better than your first. And third, embrace your wins, big or small. I learnt these the hard way. Not getting my first choice of degree at certain universities was a failure compared to what I had received. When choosing a preferred course or a university, I postponed making decisions until the very last minute. Looking back, I would say I did a decent job academically, but my decision-making flow was poor.
Remember, your grades don't define you. But the way you react to them certainly does. It is easy to lose track of positive things in times like these. So make sure you take a break from academics every now and then, no matter how busy you are. Life doesn't wait until you finish your degree. Learning to balance both is important. That was my primary weakness, and I hope it doesn't become yours.
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