Every Life is a Story to Learn From

Sometimes, a person's life is not just another life... It is a footprint, in the sands of time... A footprint that stands for the strength of the human spirit. It's a story, that reminds us that life is neither as simple nor as complex as it seems. Makes us wonder about how in spite of all that's beautiful in this world, we decide to squander it all for reasons too primitive to think about.

Surviving the Twelfth - Problems at School

School, they say is like a second home. Maybe that's why it can be as painful as one's family during exams. I was going through a few websites while I came across this one: Why do I hate School. I can't help but feel that though the article is barely reasonable or logical, it still tells certain uncomfortable truths. That there are kids who absolutely hate school and it might not entirely be their fault, is a frightening aspect. But then, there are the nice kids who actually love school, but the school just doesn't seem to love them that much. This can be a huge drawback.

Surviving the Twelfth - Problems At Home

Everyone expects it to be tough. But no one expects to break down in the middle of it. Well, it happens and so, I'm here to put forward a student's opinion as to why "Studying is not easy"... Especially, when that's your prime objective, like in the 10th and 12th classes.

How to Choose One's Life - The Life One Wants

Life is all about choices. Good or bad, right or wrong... Your destiny will unfold according to the choices you make.

The title, I feel is a trifle misleading... This post is going to be about observations, not solutions, because in the end the answers can be given only by ourselves.

Here are the five options, I think, that teenagers of 17 or 18 years have to ponder about, to make the best of their lives... And these 5 are basically dependent on what sort of life we wish to lead:

The Demotivating Motivational Speaker

I'm going to these AIPMT [All India Pre-Medical Entrance Exams] classes and today, they announced that we were going to have motivational classes starting at 2 o' clock in the afternoon. Many were rather disconcerted about this, because being the real hard-working students, they saw this as a waste of time. But I was rather overjoyed [partly because I love philosophy and partly because I dislike classes]. At first someone gave us an intro and then, the motivational speaker arrived. He was a pretty tall man and had a long tilak on his forehead. He was some sort of engineer and had got distinction from ILO and UN or something [I forget].

Diversity is So Beautiful!

I have been going to these AIPMT coaching classes for about a week and guess what? Every single professor teaching us is from Andhra Pradesh. No big difference, some would say, but... oh, there is. Have you ever been around people who are completely different from you, and yet not feel isolated or alone? It's awe-some!

Every Freedom in Life - Using Our Gift of Freedom

At this age... lots of dreams... dreams of coming out with flying colors...some remain just that... as dreams deep inside the heart. Now my parents give pressure for making me score high marks. I feel like I have an egg on my face every time I'm not able to attain my goal and am criticized for it. But only when my distance towards the goal starts decreasing do I rectify my mistakes. Parents give lots of freedom to us.... [Something we're fortunate enough for] I would illustrate my own experience of freedom and how many have little of it.

Holidays.... Everyone would enjoy holidays. My heart jumped in excitement when we all planned out for a trip. We went on a car journey..... with songs buzzing in my ears. My eyes enjoyed all of nature's bounties... The cloudy sky, chirping birds, green paddy fields, glittering butterflies around flowers... I admired each second.

Is India growing? The So-called 'Developed Cities'

Tall buildings touching sky, sophisticated awesome cars rushing on the roads.......people busy walking on roads, flooded roads with traffic jams, metro running in jet speed. This gives the outline of urban cities. Everyone dreams to live in this type of city, to have good education, to search a satisfied job....etc. Do you know how bad is ' so called ' good, developed city?

Even I was admiring the metropolitan cities because education will be best, apart from that i can even get my own satisfied jobs. Suddenly after my 10th class my dad was transferred to Bangalore, a metropolitan city.

Problem: Exam Stress; Solution: Cancel the Exams

There was a lot of noise when the Human Resources Department considered canceling the 10th board examinations for students owing to the huge stress they induced in the students. I suppose now these exams for tenth standard students have been left to the choice of students in CBSE board [I’m not sure about the other boards].

Before I talk about what I think about canceling exams for tenth, let me share with you a little story:

EXAMS...... ^_^

We all know how much we LOVE learning...........

 

.....And Exams too..........................

The British Rule - Was it a boon? India's Independence - Was it a mistake? PART - II

This article is a continuation of The British Rule - Was it a boon? India's Independence - Was it a mistake? PART - I

British Rule... Was it a boon? Would India have been developed by now if the British had remained in the country? Did our freedom fighters do a great mistake by sacrificing for a freedom that was not really as beautiful as they thought it would be?

What a Remarkable Family!?!

Hey guys check this out....
[start: sarcasm]
We should be extremely proud about India because of this guy and we are gonna become the leading country in population because of him...

His name is Ziona chana and he is living in the North East direction of India, that is in Mizoram. His age is 67 but he still feels young and he wants to marry a high school young American girl .

Actually you would feel whats wrong in this but the interesting part is here:

He has already married 39 women and has 94 children and he has also got 33 grandchildren!

He is proud about himself and he calls him as the direct son of God... Drives you crazy right?!!!

The British Rule - Was it a boon? India's Independence - Was it a mistake? PART - I

Imagine my shock when I saw this as the status update in my English teacher’s face book wall: 

“I hate Godse because he killed Gandhi.... I hate him because he killed Gandhi much too late.”

Below, I will disclose our conversation via the social networking site:
[I haven't edited the words. So kindly forgive the grammatical errors, spelling errors and the outrageous shortcuts :) ]

Meenakshi Rcm: hmm.. a gandhi-hater mam? i suppose u think sc bose was better?

English Teacher: Not really ...and yeah Cos he got us freedom

Meenakshi Rcm: but then y d u hate godse becos he was too late?

English Teacher: had he killed gandhi earlier we may ve never got freedom. De best thing tat could ve happened to india:)

THE LOST CHILD'S INNOCENCE

Child Labour is still prevalent in India. Following photos speak the harsh reality of poor Indian children who are forced to work because of poverty, hunger and fear. Most of them are school dropouts who work for at least 12 hours daily to feed themselves and their families.The Lost Child's Innocence.

A Day with Our VII Std Friends

This academic year had been absolutely amazing for the ten of us, but no day has been as awesome as the 11th of February, 2011. It was a beautiful Friday morning and we had an exam in a few minutes, but that was hardly what we were thinking about. Our minds were buzzing and hearts beating pretty fast, for we were about to do something so different, something we had wanted to do for a long time. We were about to handle 5 value education classes for our friends of the 7th, with two of us for each class. Our aims were simple: Share our views and beliefs, and make a difference that way. Normally it would have been an easy task to do, but this wasn’t exactly like the normal interactive classes. We were going to talk about patriotism and awareness, and all of us know what these words sound like, coming from someone else. The greatest challenge of all in such cases is to make it both interesting and effective.

India's Education System - Why it needs reforms

"We are students of words: we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation-rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing."  ~ R. W. Emerson

 

Education is one of the fundamental rights in India now. Though to how much extent that right is being delivered to people is a matter of extreme concern, we also need to think about the standards of education in our country first. Many say the Indian education system is one of the finest. I disagree. I think that statement has got it wrong because of two reasons: One, the education system for India isn’t the same throughout the country and two, the syllabus or portions may be really good – not the system as a whole.

First things first, there is no common board of syllabus for all the schools in India so basically, there’s nothing as the ‘Indian Education system’. Maybe we can call it the ‘Set of all education systems in India’ or something of that sort. However, I’m not sure if India needs a common education system or not. Think about it…

True Education - Where Schools Fall Short

Preview

Edward Everett once said, “Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.”

What’s it that makes so many people lose patience, become intolerant, lose hope and seek the easier path, no matter how unjust it may be? It’s the lack of education. Well, as far as many of us are concerned, the word ‘education’ brings only science and algebra to the mind. But there is something more to learning that just that. There is the entire society’s value system in the hands of our educational institutions. What people are now, what they have become and what they believe in… all have their roots in the type of education those same people had received… the kind of schools they went to. So it’s not really an exaggeration to state that education can become the first step towards a whole new revolution of change.

Where did any of us get the passions for the stuff we do? More often, it’s from the things that happen at school, because that’s where all kids spend about one-fourth of their lives [we’re not taking into account the truants and the shirkers, of course]. More than math or literature, what one really learns at school is the skill of living. The kid learns to get along, to respect, to be tolerant, to work hard, to face failures & triumphs, to understand life, to value friendship and much more… These are small things which we learn along with all the complicated intellectual lessons from the text book, that most of our teachers were so keen to see us imbibe. But even when we forget the formulas and equations, it’s highly unlikely that we’ll forget those tiny lessons we learnt as we grew up.

Learning Lessons from Life...

Click for a bigger image

A little knowledge is dangerous. But then, ignorance kills. We know how ignorance has wrecked havoc across the Earth. Stories with painful morals are all over our history books. The trouble is, we don’t consider them as anything more than just stories. Let me put it in Haile Selassie’s words:

“Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph.”

It’s almost like insulting your intelligence to state here that indifference and inaction both rise only from a foundation of ignorance and lack of understanding. To believe that being ignorant is one’s right, would be like inviting injustice and serfdom on oneself. There’s no way ignorance can be ignored… none at all, especially if there are problems around [and we’ve got them in abundance, of course].

Ignorance simply means the lack of knowledge, but I believe it can also mean the termination of learning. When learning is stopped, we don’t stagnate… we tend to go down. It is curious how after a certain time, some of us just forget to learn.