A note to all students appearing for Board, Entrance & School Exams in coming months

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Dear Children

Hope you are all studying well and preparing well for your upcoming examinations. Wishing you all the very best in your endeavors.

The Board and the School examinations are ways to assess your learning for the grade you are in and progress you to the next level/grade. The entrance examinations are typically examinations for elimination. Because in India, for any college admission, the ratio of seats available vs the number of students appearing for the examination is highly skewed. Getting into the top colleges across the streams in India is about a 1%~5% chance. But fortunately, there are more options available in a variety of courses across India and abroad, in case you are not able to get into your Plan-A professional course. However, as prepare now, just stick to your plan-A and don’t deviate your thoughts elsewhere. Give your best shot and leave the rest to a power that is beyond and your control. Over the next few months, as things become clearer, you may take the help of a trained career counselor a school/college/independent, and decide on the Plan-B & Plan-C in case that situation is warranted. Remember one thing, the world of work is rapidly changing with every year, and in your career of 30/40, years post your prime education, you will have to undergo several shots of re-learning, and upskilling throughout your life to remain relevant in the world of work.

Now let’s focus on the job in Hand – Facing Examinations;

Let me give a little background of how we learn. When you see a small child, he/she can barely sit, walk, or talk. At home, we continuously keep talking to the child in our language and we keep repeating the same thing to help the child understand what we are trying to communicate. Similarly, everything the child learns through continuous practice and with the support of family members. Essentially, we are trying to impress upon the subconscious mind of the child with information, by continuously repeating either some activity of talking. Once the child grows and starts to go to a school, the process is the same, the teacher makes the children first learn through visual – communication and then slowly, through writing, repeatedly. By the age of 6 to 7, our conscious mind becomes active and the child can now learn and be more creative using the conscious mind. However, the memory or the storage is still the subconscious mind. So, essentially, our conscious mind is the active, creative, rational thinking mind and the subconscious mind is the storage mind. And this remains like this forever in our life. Anything we repeat several times through reading, listening, and experiencing gets stored in the subconscious mind for medium-term or permanent.

So, there is no rocket science behind the most successful students vs the rest. The successful students are those who have practiced the subjects more often than the rest. At an individual level though, every person is also very gifted concerning their own strengths, such as Personality, and Mental Abilities. So, some of you will be more inclined to some subjects more than the other subjects, which is absolutely normal. Give more focus on subjects you enjoy or are good at and try to be the best in that subject, better than others. At the same time don’t neglect the other subjects which you don’t enjoy so much, but need to get the best possible grade to get an overall good grade. In the current education system in India, you need to be good at all the subjects in your grade to progress to the next level and stay ahead of the elimination.

Taming the digital beast

All of you are in different eras compared to earlier times. And this happens all the time. The upcoming generations will be living in different times. In today’s times, we are all surrounded by the digital world. Technological advancements are always designed to do well for society. The digital, AI, and social media are no different. These are integral parts of our lives now. However, for a few months at least, make a conscious plan to control this beast, else, all your active 16/17 hours of the day will be consumed by it. Remember, what we repeat throughout the day and days together will get stored in your subconscious mind. The best part of the subconscious mind is, that it is unlimited disk space. You can store as much data as you want. However, the key is the number of repeats you practice to store data. We can not store data in the subconscious mind by any other means.

Every successful person – be it in business, academics, professional careers, or any other field practice day in and day out. They are constantly, learning, reading, upskilling, & reskilling, and storing new information, and skills in their subconscious mind. And use these ideas in the work. In the work also, success comes after many cycles of repeated and consistent effort. Whenever we a successful people today, they have put in years of hard work, which is not seen now. So, I would recommend instead of spending hours on a mobile phone or TV channel daily to read the biographies of the most successful people. Your subconscious mind helps you to modify your life eventually.

So, if you want to be part of the top 2% of the most successful people in the world, start behaving like one from today. Put conscious efforts into your studies, learn, practice, and repeat the cycle.

Parting remarks

Start conscious putting efforts from today.

Don’t be critical of what could not be done earlier, like grades in class tests, or half-yearly exams, etc. You can change the past.

Put a plan for the rest of the days left from today.

Stick to your daily plan and in case of some days, you have fallen behind don’t be critical, just refocus on today.

Remember, the simple rule is: Repeat/Practice as much you can for each subject and your subconscious mind will automatically store the required information over some time.

Wishing you all the success in your upcoming examinations.