Don't lose your path, create it.
Flashback #30th May #1993
28 years ago, today was the day of my elder sister’s wedding. All festivities & rituals were in full swing, when we suddenly got the news that results for 12th boards are getting released. Unlike current times when we just need to open the weblink to check, I had to rush to Rajasthan Patrika (local newspaper) office to check my result.
From being a somebody, who would score well-respected (in those times) first division marks every single time until then, it took to become the worst result of my life; scoring just 50% !!
And that too at a time, when there were over 200 people (kins and guests) hovering & flocking around me to specially ask me for my result. I so wanted to disappear if only I could, and not face a single person but that wasn’t possible. And so I kept babbling my result and why I didn’t score better to few of them, who went on to ask that question too. It felt so sad and hurtful, why my result had to be declared amid all cheer and gathering, to create nothing more than embarrassment.
I am trying to relive all those memories today and wondering, how did that day and experience and embarrassment impacted my life. Would I have been doing better or worse now, by scoring another 30-40% marks then? How those people, who got more marks as compared to me, are doing in their life today? I honestly do not know the answers.
But what I know for sure, is that with a little more hard work, I would have definitely got a much better score. What matters today are not those marks, but my learning that there’s no alternative to put in hard work consistently.
Of course, a better result at school level also paves way to getting admission to a better college, which makes a huge impact on one’s career. But for me, what it meant that I was left out of the race, where lakhs were still participating, while I had to carve out my own path through lot of unconventional methods. Not getting admission to a regular college meant that I started working only after completing my 1st year of undergrad course. Something I would shiver to advise to any college student today. What it also meant that while people were busy collecting degrees & certificates, which in a way I did too, I continued to gain work-experience. And in the next 4 years when my peers were joining the industry as freshers, I had already proved my mettle to some extent by working and discovering my strengths, which were problem solving, reasoning, logical thinking, persuasive communication and conviction.
A good degree gives you a fast-moving car to move forward in your career, and somebody moving on the same path on a bullock-cart can rarely catch them, yet by starting earlier on that path before people start with their race, you can identify and carve out your own path to follow. So, the race essentially never began for me to run it.
This philosophy may not work for many, and hence people obviously rely on more proven, good grades model.
However I feel, more than what marks give you as a direct outcome, what is more critical is what they do represent. A good academic score also represents personal attributes such as hard work, intelligence (to a certain extent), memory, patience, perseverance, which are indeed the critical skills to succeed in life.
In conclusion, reflecting back today and the journey from an embarrassing 30th May to a self-fulfilling one today, I don’t wish to submit that grades do not matter, because they do and more so in the short term. But what I want to sincerely endorse and emphasize is that if you lose your path somewhere, you may want to step aside, check what is working for you and create a path, designed for you and your unique capabilities, instead of following masses who’re walking it and getting depressed often about not leading in that race.
Brush it and off you go…. to your skies!!! ✈️