K Damodaran
Fast forward to April, when all the students are done with their exams and the final countdown begins for IIT admissions.
The race to the IITs and top medical colleges leaves aspirants exhausted. Students may have been following a meticulous timetable for the last six months, detailed down to the tiniest of bathroom breaks. For them, the suspense of results mixed with the freedom of no exams is a caustic combination that they find hard to combat. So they find it difficult to get back to normal after the entrance exams are over. They take to various television series, the Internet and a general attitude to remain indoors that, without the right set of friends, is hard to get out of.
For
the more carefree ones, holidays mean having fun. In the end, the one
or two months of ultimate freedom, without the slightest silhouette of
worry, makes youngsters forget what it is like to be a student. They
begin to become individuals.
Self-discovery
Once you get into college, it is a whole new ball-game. The fastest way to develop individuality is a four-year stint in a college hostel. It can be hard to cope with the leash-less surroundings. Till this juncture, the students were the ones with the don’t-care attitude towards their education. They are surprised when they find out that the college does not care about their education like their school did. In college, it’s not do-or-die, it’s do-it-yourself or drop-out. Colleges do not spoon-feed students. The professors could not care less about your marks or whether you study. The environment of the college may drag you towards extra-curricular activities. To you, it will seem as if a college is anything but a place of pure learning. It is not. A college will not force you to study; but if you don’t, you will face the consequences later, in the form of GPA, CGPA, arrears and so on.
A good collegiate would guide his peers in what he believes to be the right way. But there is no right way in college. As long as you are moving in the general direction forward, you are set. College is a wild kingdom; be a little wild to fit right in. As Dominic Toretto says in The Fast and the Furious series, “We just graduated to a whole new level.”
What happens when a carefree student, right out of school, enters the unfamiliar domain of college?
The final days of December can be quite stressful for Class XII students. Most schools would have covered most of the syllabus for the exams and it would have dawned upon every student that the time for dawdling is over. Parents, teachers, schools and coaching institutes usually have an itinerary ready for students to follow for the next three months, leading up to the board exam in March.Fast forward to April, when all the students are done with their exams and the final countdown begins for IIT admissions.
The race to the IITs and top medical colleges leaves aspirants exhausted. Students may have been following a meticulous timetable for the last six months, detailed down to the tiniest of bathroom breaks. For them, the suspense of results mixed with the freedom of no exams is a caustic combination that they find hard to combat. So they find it difficult to get back to normal after the entrance exams are over. They take to various television series, the Internet and a general attitude to remain indoors that, without the right set of friends, is hard to get out of.
Self-discovery
Once you get into college, it is a whole new ball-game. The fastest way to develop individuality is a four-year stint in a college hostel. It can be hard to cope with the leash-less surroundings. Till this juncture, the students were the ones with the don’t-care attitude towards their education. They are surprised when they find out that the college does not care about their education like their school did. In college, it’s not do-or-die, it’s do-it-yourself or drop-out. Colleges do not spoon-feed students. The professors could not care less about your marks or whether you study. The environment of the college may drag you towards extra-curricular activities. To you, it will seem as if a college is anything but a place of pure learning. It is not. A college will not force you to study; but if you don’t, you will face the consequences later, in the form of GPA, CGPA, arrears and so on.
A good collegiate would guide his peers in what he believes to be the right way. But there is no right way in college. As long as you are moving in the general direction forward, you are set. College is a wild kingdom; be a little wild to fit right in. As Dominic Toretto says in The Fast and the Furious series, “We just graduated to a whole new level.”
The writer is a member of The Hindu Education Plus Club from VIT University, Chennai.
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