High Marks May Not Guarantee Success

High Marks May Not Guarantee Success

Fear of examinations, anxiety over results and poor marks are driving many teenagers to take that desperate, irreversible step: suicide. During the exam season anxiety levels peak both for students and parents. Then there is the extended worry of getting into a good college. Exam frenzy , say chemists, push sale of memory-aid pills and stimulants to high levels.

Is academic excellence a true measure of one's success in rankers because they were found to have tunnel vision. It is true that hardly any country is run by rank holders. It is those who dabbled in much more than mere academics, who seem to fit the job. So what is the big deal?

We often forget to tell our youngsters that the achievements of great men and women stood on the foundation of the mistakes they made in their formative years. Behind Winston Churchill's perfection lay a history of failures. By making a student walk the tightrope of tough time schedules, stressful assignments and anxiety-ridden counselling sessions, we not only rob them of the fun of childhood but also cause damage to their social, mental and physical well being. The present system leaves them no room to err. Error, however, is the backyard of perfection for it is by learning from past mistakes that we become better and brighter individuals.

Parents should understand that there are limits to the child's elasticity ­ stretch him too far and he could snap. Expecting too much too soon is the bane of our competitive lives, where no room is given for reflection and contentment.

Ten years down the line, it won't matter which college one went to or how much one scored. Don't we all know what qualities matter on the stage of life? All that goes into building one's character or personality are acquired in the course of day-to-day life and not by scoring high marks in examinations.

It is high time youngsters spared some time to laugh heartily and experience a sense of social, mental and physical well-being. Norman Cousins, editor of the Saturday Review for over 35 years, was diagnosed with a painful and progressively degenerative tissue dis ease. He was given a one in 500 chance of complete recovery and was told that he did not have long to live.
Cousins moved out of the hospital, checked into a hotel and regularly, every day, watched comedies presented by the likes of the Marx Brothers, Laurel and Hardy and Charlie Chaplin. He also watched episodes of Candid Camera for days together. He slowly recovered and returned to full-time work. He wrote about how he laughed himself back to health in Anatomy of an Illness. When he suffered a severe heart attack 15 years later, an overdose of laughter saw him through. He related his experiences in The Healing Heart.

Life is too precious to be taken too seriously . Laugh at life and its twists and turns.

A KG student laughs 300 times a day against an adult's 17 times. It is no laughing matter.

Don't laugh it off. But laugh your way to health, and happiness.

Om Namah Shivay