Students are getting ready for exams or they are already appearing for exams. It brings back memories of preparing for exams and the recurrent nightmares of appearing for exams unprepared.
One might still wake up years later dreaming of sitting to answer the questions from your toughest subject. How many days did you sit longing for the time when you would be free from the exam routine?
One only finds out later that we never really overcome exams when we realise life itself is a collection of tests. From school it is college, from college then it is the challenge of finding a job and then to grow in your career.
What really helps is how we learn to prepare for the challenge and handle stress. As a child you can throw tantrums and people may want to help you out or even understand you. When you are a grown up the more difficult you are the more people would want to avoid you.
As a child you might have wanted to understand how your teacher would prepare the questionnaire but in grown-ups world there are lot of examiners who are waiting to grade you. If you had been concerned only about the grades in high school and college, you would realise once you are in the job market that you should have been preparing yourself with many other skills — especially people skill.
It is cool to have had an attitude when you were a teenager and your friends loved it then, but as grown-ups they are busy looking for the right opportunities and you realise that in grown-up’s world it is more of how fast you can fit in with the rest of the team.
It is important to be a leader, but even more important to be a team player. As a leader you need not be an expert in every field, but if we attain the team spirit, the team will help us in striking the balance and making all the right decisions.
This is where the listening comes in. We had to do that in school too. The better listener we were in the classroom better our grades were. The teachers who were better story-tellers made us feel close to the subjects they were teaching. There were times when chemistry was best and maths could be a best friend. Then came history who made us love the past of the world, and then there was political science that took us to the world stage.
When we look back we can remember the teachers who left a lasting impact on us without us even knowing. And now we long for those days of innocence when people were keen to explain to us and forgive us.
The real world however does not forgive and forget that easily. Then again I came across a thought that said we are born with eyes in the front to look ahead and not to look behind — in other words — the past.
The past however teaches us so much especially if you are willing to learn. But some of us keep making the same mistakes until we become an expert at it or break open a new direction all of a sudden.
It could be age, could be wisdom or simply being fed up with the norm — the soul nudging us to move on.
Is it enough to move on or do we plan it? It is the same stage as we were when we in the job hunting stage. Picky at first, arrogant to an extent until the reality hits and one realises it is better to adapt and learn to be the organisation. So what happens to individuality? When you master the art you realise you still have the attitude and the difference the only thing that happened you had the will to flow and grow.
Enjoy the flow.
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