The path to the stairs of success - A reprise

It gave me great pleasure to see my friend Amrutha's thoughts on the article link that was posted on one of my previous posts. At the same time, I was horrified to read in print, the heartache she suffered throughout her schooldays with teachers passing the sort of comments that they did about her.

I sincerely hope that someday, Amri gets to show them in proper measure what a grave mistake they made uttering those knife-edged words and hurting her pride and confidence. Well, as they say, what goes around comes around and I wish that all those horrible teachers get back three-fold what they bestowed upon her.

Anyways, on to the focal point of my post which has been long overdue. In many ways, my school life was a complete antithesis of Amri's. For the most part of my school life, I was in the top 3 or atleast in the top 5 always. Math was a favourite subject of mine; and albiet having a few miserable years, trying to get trignometry and algebra off my back, I think I did pretty well to bounce back towards the end. However, education-wise I do have a few regrets. Although, the good lord has been kind to bestow me with a great job, a great position of respect and a career that's the envy of quite a few, I do believe that I have made a few tactical errors of judgement in my life. The first and foremost would be my inertia in tapping the "US boom" in the late 90's. At the time, everyone was spending day and night working hard to get into an Ivy-league university and brag to one and all about his/her achievement of having secured admission into a college of repute. I on the other hand, chose to lead a completely laid-back lifestyle; swept through my under-graduation days, getting just about "above-average" marks(would you believe I actually did commerce?") and making up for lost time in terms of extra-curricular activities. I will never forget my days in school where I was always overlooked as a potential prize-winning contestant for music competitions; and music was and still is, the love of my life! I made up for that fabulously in college; winning every music competition I ever participated in(beating Stella time and time again tasted sooooo sweet!!!. No offence WCCites, you guys just stick together...but we Ethirajians are just perpetual winners... HELL YEAH!).

In the midst of all this, the motivation to work a little extra harder, just got swept under the carpet and lo behold, after under-graduation, I didn't have the foggiest idea as to what to do in life! All I knew was that I wanted to work... anywhere, doing anything(as long as it was decent and by honest means ofcourse!) and be independent. That feeling was to evade me for a long time; too long I would say. By the time I had completed a few computer courses, what was the dotcom boom, suddenly turned to bust and there I was, twiddling my thumbs wondering what I could do. I will never forget the struggles I went through for something as trivial as finding if need be an unpaid internship to gain some work experience.

I don't know if my life would've been different if I had chosen to spend day and night cramming in Physics, Chemistry and then writing the IIT-JEE or equivalent exams, getting into an Engineering college and passing out with a B.E or a B.Tech. I don't even know if choosing to do an MBA at say, an IIM or equivalent institution would've changed the course of my career. One thing that I will say however is this; in order to be wholistically happy, one should NEVER forget where she/he's been before. A few years ago, I lamented at the fact that there were some people who never had to move a finger and life sorted itself out for them in a jiffy and here I was planning everything meticulously, only to find it fall in a big heap.

Today, I really value everything I've got; however much or little it might be. It's taught me patience, humility and most of all, empathy! I just hope the embedded link to the article titled as above but written before, will teach people to pat themselves on the back every once in a while, and tell themselves to be proud of whatever they've achieved.