Well scholars and even normal human beings like you and I know that experience speaks on a person. And it surely does. Because this topic is written by a man who indeed screwed up his grades when he came to junior college. Its not just my tale but that of all the students who appear for their HSC in Mumbai- The City Of Dreams. Yeah…poor students are indeed left dreaming at the end.
Every year passes by and you hear all those stories of your neighborhood boys an girls who score considerably less than what their class X percentage was. Since it happened to me too, I analyzed the matter and came out with all those reasons like the air crash investigator who comes out with the cause of a devastating air crash. If gone in detail I can publish a mini book on it. But this is the shortest it can be.
First and the foremost reason is that the Class X syllabus is a hell lot simple than junior college portion. For the newbies who score in the high eighties in class X and expect to do an encore in their HSC, this comes as a Mike Tyson sort of punch to their jaw. They find it difficult to cope with the new and much harder concepts of Physics and Maths. But their conscious mind does not want to believe it and they end up trying to master that portion till the very end. Sadly they end up just trying and nothing more.
Secondly students in Mumbai think that there is a need for a good college to excel in your HSC. Hence in a valiant search for that ensures that you get it at least 20 kilometers away from your home. That means a travel time of one hour if you take a train. A worst case scenario if you take a bus. Secondly the student gets into some very damn expensive classes who as we know only want to please the student’s parents by maintaining a clean slate. They conduct tests before the student can realize what the chapter is about. In fact the chapter is completed even before the student finds out the chapter’s name. Many scientific reports believe that an average child has an attention span of only 3 hrs per day. But these so called coaching classes take up courses in the months ranging from March to June non-stop without even a single holiday for 7 hrs at a stretch each day!
By the time the vacations are over 70% of the portions are finished(what crap!). When college starts they reduce their class times to 3 hrs(great act of responsibility). So if you count 5 hrs of college plus 3 hrs of tuitions plus 2 hrs of traveling. It takes up ten hours of you active 16 hrs. Student spends time in all those daily chores for about 4 hrs. So after all this do you people in your sane mind think that the student would want to study in the 2 hrs they get to sense and feel whats happening around in this world? Of course he would not. He would instead crave for entertainment of any sort to free himself. Also peer pressure acts on him in a terrible way.
I am not supposed to say this but colleges in Mumbai are utterly useless. They would be deserted like government libraries if not for the fact that they conduct practicals. A new collegian expects his college to be a friendly an co-operative affair like his school. But it is not so. Its just like the Indian government(exists for the namesake).Teachers come and go. They don’t care about the portion nor do they take classes seriously. Even then they want students to attend all their lectures. Other reasons include the obtainance of mobile phones, want to attract the opposite sex, and to experience the all new factor called bunking. Especially if you have that odd chemistry teacher who just blabbers out his qualifications. I don’t want to go in detail about all that.
Yet there are those super humans who survive all these atrocities and come out as “Toppers”- the word itself needs coronation. We should really salute those super humans wherever we see them.
It does not end here. Theirs a lot more to it. As I mentioned I can write a mini book on this topic. This comes from a source who has experienced all this on himself and has also seen his friends who were perennial toppers in their school days nose dive with their percentages. I am sure that anyone of the above mentioned points would have contributed to your diminished percentage. Just think about. Yeah, I bet you will.
This was not a pamphlet of complain or anything of that sort. Its just what I felt. And I think you will agree with it to some extent. And do post your valuable comments on what you think about this matter..
