The Secret of Success Or: Enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree of Exams

The most important phase of a student’s school life is the time when her school education ends. It is as much stressful as it is ironical. The zone when the doors of the school shut on you and the college gates are ready to welcome you. Transformational. Tectonic. It is not by any stretch ‘recent’ when I too was at the cusp. But still the memories linger, and at times torment me as I wake up to the nightmares of misplaced exam hall tickets or forgotten answers. The Class XII Exam results meant a lot.

I did my higher secondary from the Tamil Nadu Board that was mainly aimed at testing a student’s memory power. Colloquially, the thumb rule for scoring well in the Exams is to ‘read and vomit’. The evaluation encouraged neat hand writing, impressive presentation and rote memory. Be it English or physics or moral science, generally the exam question papers had questions only from the text books. The themes like developing an inquisitive mind, fostering scientific temper and improving the self-confidence of students were absolutely alien to the pedagogy. Nevertheless, the competition was crazy. As an additional feature, the Board awarded higher marks to more number of students. Even at the top you are not alone — there were hundreds of students even in the 97–99% group. It was insane. As I was aiming for an institute that admitted students purely on the Class XII marks, the results meant everything to me.

Fortunately, there were no debacles and things panned out fairly well for me. Over the years I would go on to take many more crucial exams, and hundreds of other tests, semester exams, online tests and personal interviews. Most of the results were in line, but many, especially the ones during my graduation days, were utter failures; and in one of them I scored a memorable 00/60. It was the first test of Differential Equation and Fourier Series. Twenty years have gone by, and here I am, Enlightened under the Bodhi Tree of Exams, sharing the Five Noble Truths -

                                                             (Image from Pinterest)

Truth of exams: The evaluation modules come in various avatars like exams, internal tests, practical, viva voce, group discussions, personality tests, aptitude tests and so on. Each form expects something from you; each of them has broadly different goals. Understand what the exam expects from you. Some of them, like the optional paper of the civil services exams, require in-depth understanding of the subject, while a few like social media marketing demand a degree of creativity too. Some of them test your intelligence, while the likes of official language papers in government training academies may test your patience. You also have to understand the importance of the exam to you. Is it a so-called life or death paper or just a technical formality that needs to ticked? Bonus: A good place to know more about an exam is the question bank of the past 8–10 years.

Truth about yourself: This crucial Truth is also the one that is often skipped. Introspection is important. Find a peaceful corner and talk with yourself. To use a jargon, students could do a self-SWOT analysis. Do not get bogged down by star performers who score a sixer in every ball faced and bag a wicket in every ball they bowled. Just play to your strengths. But till a level in school, and also in a few stages beyond school life, we are expected to gain a stronghold of all the subjects taught. It is inevitable. So think of O and T and act on them. Bonus: Ask near and dear ones about yourself. Even a Hanuman needs a Jambavan.

Truth of goals: Everything starts here. And ends here. This Truth is the first among equals. Be flexible with what you what and how much you want. Do not fall into the trap of being perfect with every preparation. You will be surprised to know that many of the IIT JEE toppers or IAS exam toppers have been selective with their goals. They do not try to score extraordinary numbers in every topic of a subject. Instead, these stars pick and choose the areas that give them maximum ROI. They aspire to top the exam; but they do not necessarily aim to score a centum. On the other extreme, I have personally set ‘just-pass’ as the goal in certain situations, and believe me it is so relaxing. Bonus: A well set goal is a great motivator.

Truth of fear: On an exam day, it is very normal for most of us to hold on to our books and notebooks and ruffle pages randomly till the very last moment, with one leg already inside the exam hall — just in hope of brushing our memory one last time, just in expectation of seeing the topic you had just browsed as the first question in the exam. There are two different things working here — First: the need for the last-minute revision of key topics and Second: the fear of going blank. Just when we wake up on the day of the exam most of us feel that we had forgotten everything. Panic all around. But with a quick revision, things reappear pretty rapidly. We get more comfortable. But as we wait outside the exam hall, the same phenomenon occurs once again. And we start rummaging our material aimlessly. Avoid this. Once you are done with the high priority topics, just shut down. Enter the exam hall calmly. Whatever happens, happens. Bonus: You can do it!

Truth of the path:
1. Right friends: Surround yourself with positive minds.
2. Right responsibility: Your exam is basically your responsibility.
3. Right teachers: Guruvey saranam.
4. Right effort: Blood and sweat, no alternatives.
5. Right discipline: Follow a proper work schedule.
6. Right health: A strong mind in a strong body.
7. Right revision: Revision is the name of the game.
8. Right view: When you fail, fight harder the next time.

I wish I had got my Enlightenment a long ago. I could have scored at least one mark in Diffix.