My best lessons in School

The first One comes from my experience in the 9^th standard. At that time, each year, as we passed , the syllabus was changing and we were struggling for the right books. It is the same for 10^th as well. As my education was in vernacular medium, I tried to get books in Telugu medium. As the books were not released by that time, I got the English medium books instead, for Maths and Science. My brother started teaching me those lessons, which I felt were completely new; however I liked my brother’s way of teaching. So I learned all the things as if I was a neophyte. Though it didn’t help me much for my 10^th, I didn’t have the time to regret, that I unnecessarily spent time on it. However, when I joined in my 11^th in English medium, I was part of a group of three people from Telugu medium surrounded by 100 very good English medium students. We faced a lot of difficulty as it became very difficult for us to understand, when they were teaching and when we were tried to study them again. Though we understood, we did not know how to frame sentences; So it has become a mandate to learn the books by heart. We used to get disheartened when we get less marks than those people who study nothing but get good marks. It used to hurt us; However, later, I understood that, I was able to understand what faculty was teaching, but my friends™ were unable to follow the faculty. They used to ask me whether I was from the English medium, when I said I was not they used to give me an astonishing look. Within one month I was at par with the rest of the class and started getting a rank below 15. Then, I felt very grateful for those days in 10^th where I put in the effort struggled to learn.

The other lesson which gave me confidence and made me realize my potential of how much hard work I can do is in my 12^th standard, where I studied for almost 16 to 18 hrs per day. It has shown me that, I have the capability of working 18 hrs per day when it’s necessary. I found it is important as our struggle in life starts in finding out how much we are capable of, how much true potential we have.

In 12^th, we had a teacher for Inorganic Chemistry, may be the worst pedagogy that I had in my career so far. However, what he taught me is the best lesson that others failed to teach me till then. I used to have a pre conceived notion about reading things. If I fail to understand in first attempt, I used to doubt my potential and it became a great problem for me in going ahead while learning new things. What he taught me was “If you fail to understand in the first chance, read second time and third time and so on , till you understand it, and no one is capable of understanding new things at first time. It is only that, if they already have knowledge on those things earlier, they understand things during the first time itself without much trouble.” And that very lesson made me read things till I understand them. And I am not sure whether he taught me that, or I learned from him. However I cherish his lesson as well as him throughout my life.