Class IX Strategy: My Unfolding Voyage 024

Higher Secondary Strategy

Higher secondary study at the school was a very compact and reasonable prescription for students like me at that time. During this period, I had to study ten subjects: Art & Craft, Sanskrit, Social Studies, General Sciences, Compulsory Mathematics, English, Bengali, History, Economics and Elective Mathematics. There would be one paper of each of these subjects, except Bengali and English which would have two papers each in Class IX. Sanskrit, Social Studies and Art & Craft would get dropped in Class X, but the number of papers in History, Economics and Elective Mathematics would increase to two each. The total number of papers would thus remain the same at 12. In class XI, the total number of papers would get reduced to 10, with Social Studies, General Science and Compulsory Mathematics getting dropped and the remaining five subjects having two papers each.

What would be my ambition? To get as many marks as possible to score over others in the class in the first two years and get as many marks as possible at the Higher Secondary Education Board Examinations at the end of class XI. Clearly the objective for the first two years was much more comparative and specific than the general objective of the final year. This was essentially because I would know much about the competitors in the school and not know anything about the competitors from the other schools under the Board. I hated to quantify my target / objective more precisely in the absence of relevant information. There was of a possibility of choosing more quantitative targets like getting x or y percentage of marks in each of the papers in each of the subjects and a getting z percentage in the aggregate. But I had chosen not to have such precise quantitative targets become a constraint on my general, non-study life during this period. The higher the percentage of marks I set for the school examinations, the greater is the likelihood of my efforts and time getting allocated to the studies, reducing thereby my general enjoyment. This is the same reason that I always hated writing essay on my ambition in school examinations, though I had been repeatedly told by teachers, and seniors at home that if one had not ambition in life, one would drift in life and if one had not aimed high and challenging enough one would not have a successful life. This important piece of advice rather had given me an idea that allowing to be drifted, managing the drifts that would take place and remaining contended while doing so could be an aim worth pursuing in life. Then, the drift would not occur due to lack of ambition but would occur only to be managed. There could be something great about drifting. I would not have liked to commit to a rigid, inflexible thing called aim of life.

I had thought having ambition is a good dream for people, but not for me because I had always been lazy enough to ensure that dreams could not drive me in to action. I would rather like things happen while I would pursue very easy goals that would not stretch me to work harder than I would normally like to. I would like targets that would depend on what comes naturally to me with ease and require very little of extra effort on my part. I had assessed what came naturally to me and what required more of hard work for me. I would try to minimize allocating time on hard work and whatever such work effort is required I would allocate only to those where they would produce greater and quicker results for me. So, I had found out that I Sanskrit learning did not come naturally to me, it required extra efforts and time and would produce less than proportionate results and my target was just to get through from class IX to X and over with Sanskrit. I could not have had an ambition of life where Sanskrit could contribute in any significant manner. Craft and Art deserved similar tactical treatment: I had no reason to allocate much time and energy to allocate t o an activity that required perfectionist of a creative artist – whether paintings, sculpture or performing arts. I could only do such things that would come to naturally as pure self enjoyment. And, I did not at that age think that very attractive towards my flexible notion of life ambition. I have had to just pass out.
Social studies and General Science were interesting reading and did not require much effort and time allocation to get reasonably decent marks. Compulsory Mathematics and Elective Mathematics came naturally to me for the most part and the productivity in terms of learning per unit of time and effort put into these subjects was very high. So I allocated more time and effort there, especially to compete with those who excel in mathematics. History was drab, more of story and dates, and mostly hypothetical debates with little logic. All these came naturally to me except repeating elaborate stories, dates and names. I had recognize this natural handicap, decided on lower allocation of time and effort, depended on my precise writing ability where necessary and felt comfortable that this would be adequate for securing decent score in relation to the other students in the class. Economics is what I had specially chosen as a possible instrument of my future career. And, I knew that I had to allocate more time and effort to excel. Very few serious students would consider economics as a subject of interest in the school: I was one among them. This left two other subjects: English and Bengali. I knew if I could devote some time to English Grammar, I could easily top the rankings given my natural ability and past exposure to English. I did not care much to increase my vocabulary, as I felt that the incremental benefit in terms of higher marks was less than proportionate to the efforts that demanded. So, English was just playing carom. I Bengali I start with a handicap of not studying the subject during the four years of secondary school: but I knew that a little practice in reading and writing would soon remove my relative weakness to a large extent. The easiest way to do this would be to convert from English medium to Bengali medium of study for all the subjects. I knew that I am a natural, not necessarily well-gifted, composer of written communication in English and Bengali since my primary school days.
That was the substance of my study strategy that was consistent with my other interest areas in the teens: indoor and outdoor games, cycling, leading club of my age group, and take up some sort of responsibilities at home that I foresaw coming on me soon.
How did my study strategy fare? There was need for some minor changes in emphasis here and there but it remained in tact to produce results just enough to satisfy my objectives: with a little more luck, those who loved me would have been more happy that I had met their expectations. But luck eluded them and me. But I avoided the disaster that my maternal uncle had predicted a few years ago: I would go to college three years later from now.