Same People, Similar Situations, Different Perspective

School: If you get good marks in Maths and Science, you’ve better future prospects.

Undergrad: Besides marks you should have done some extra curricular activities and won accolades as well.

Grad: Marks constitute very small part of overall evaluation, you should have good work exposure, leadership and communication skills etc.

Does that sound reverse chronological to you as well?! Shouldn’t we encourage leadership and communication skills in school itself and once we’ve got the life skills, solving equations or calculating distance of the Sun from Moon would make more sense! More often than not, we fall prey to the prejudices and act likewise without challenging the basic notion.

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When we grow up and accept things as presented to us, we’re supposed to look at it from different perspective, to challenge the prevailing ideas and do things differently to prove ourselves worth competing with others (and I thought being good at Mathematics would suffice! )

Mr. D: Tell me why do you think you deserve a good rating?

Me: I’ve done all the things efficiently, didn’t make any mistake most of the time, and was always available.

Mr. D: Everyone else has done the same, what difference did you make? What value did you add?

Me(to myself): In school, if everyone did well in exams everyone used to get good marks. I didn’t need to do the sum differently (provided it was correct) to prove I was better.

I forgot it doesn’t work this way here. We don’t get marks for things we did rather we get points for doing things differently and adding value to it. “Efficiency” is no more a buzzword. Not sure whether to consider good or bad, but I believe this should be taught since childhood (earlier the better)!

After learning to think differently I have a new perspective about the half glass problem,“The glass is neither half full nor half empty, it’s double the size than required!”