Give Your Life A Way

“Tomorrow is your result.”

“Yeah.”

Vishal just wanted to get an escape from this, his board result. Next day he found out that he happened to get 60% in the boards. But what next? Continuously after his board exams his parents were suggesting him to do engineering as they thought that doing engineering would make it easier for him to find a match for his marriage. But after a month it seem like more of an order than a suggestion. As per their wish, he gave some exams and as a he had believed, he failed in each. After getting the board exam and entrance test result, he knew he wasn’t going to be someone great. He had no confidence.

He just wanted to get into a College and that time and it didn’t matter where or how. Luckily there was a minority Engineering College that accepted him on the basis of his marks. After a year there he left to study Aircraft maintenance Engineering in Bangalore. This was because he didn’t want to be one of those engineers who completed engineering and understand nothing about it. He had absolutely no motivation. The professors were not good and there was no help. So whenever he didn’t understand anything he usually left it.

His performance was never good there. So once his new HOD (Head of the Department) came and told him that, “You left one college to come here, I think you might have to leave this place too and go somewhere else.” Until that moment, he did not realized how serious the condition was and sensed that he had reached a point where he could not study AME anymore because it was a lot difficult. He wanted to genuinely improve but he did not know how he was going to do that. That is when the best thing happened; someone suggested him to consider teaching!

You know, when you start doing something you always look for motivation.

He thought teaching would be the best thing because it was a part-time job and it would help him improve his basics. So that is how he started learning 8th standard textbooks at the age of 20 when most of his friends started defining their careers and were doing great with their lives. He finished 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th CBSE Mathematics in a span of 6 months and did each and every question in the textbook. He did the same with Physics. At the age of 21, he was ready. He gained a lot of momentum. 

After the preparation, he went to a reputed institution to apply for the post of teacher. And to his surprise, the person who was appointed to take his demo class was his school principal. A teacher who had always known him for failing the subject was now watching him doing just fantastic. After the class she congratulated him 3 to 4 times, telling him that he did a great job. And to receive appreciation from someone who has always scolded him, that too in the subject she had mastered, it felt too good. 

These were not sudden changes. He was pretty smart back then also but he didn’t know how to channelize it for studies. Also, at that point, he shed a lot of weight and had suddenly become good looking and then the girlfriend phase kicked in where he wasted a lot of time on stupid things, trying to be really cool to impress others. Now he feels that he did all that only because he was not doing well in school.

Because when you are not serious in life everything starts becoming light, anything you start doing in your daily life becomes just another thing. You are unable to see the meaning behind anything. Now he has started looking for meaning. He has changed a lot. He is not that 17-year-old guy people knew and he is happy that he is doing quite well for himself. If money defines success, I think that he is doing much better than his classmates. But that is not how he wants to define it anymore. Every day if he learns something before he goes to sleep, that is a huge success for him.