Harry Potter and the End-Semester Exams...

“The Human Brain is the most outstanding organ. It works for 24 hours, 365 days, right from your birth, and suddenly stops at the moment you step in the Examination hall”. Engineers’ brains are exceptional. It never stops, even in the Exam hall, even when he/she blacks out, even when he/she dies, it works perfectly. They have the ability to understand a whole book just in six hours and in the Exam hall they accurately remember all the scenes from the movie they had seen previous night. And in my college, number of FB status a student posts increases exponentially with the semester they are studying. Starting from “tomo exams… scared…” to “exams at doorstep  :P” to “exams… so bored of them…”, FB status messages vary drastically with semesters.

My Struggles with Exams started from 10th standard. Before then, I had never cared about them. I was sort of Who Care About Marks guy then. But fate, though I never believed in it, had changed my attitude towards Exams. My mom, working as a Junior Assistant then, got transferred to Tirunelveli, as it was a routine among the departments in Tamil Nadu. Leaving the Safe Haven of 9th standard, I stepped into the vulnerable zone. There came my saviour, my Bodh Gaya, the great St.Xavier’s Higher Secondary School. Every thing about this school was optimum to the core for my character, my attitude, whatever you call them. The Awesome 3 years of my life so far, 2005-2008,  is credited from SXHSS. With less than expected 10th standard results and feel free 11th standard followed by a motivated 12th standard reaped an all time highest total and a district rank for My School. And then everything changed…

“SSLC is important beta… study well” –> “Plus two is at doorstep… Start Studying” –> “Just one year… Study well and enter into a good college… then you can be free…”. –> “Beta… get some good CGPA. Once you get a job it will be all over” this is what you get from your parents, grand parents, relatives and whoever you call as well-wishers, from 10th standard till you get a job. I don’t know further as I have just crossed the ‘getting a job’ stage. In a country like India, in a state like Tamil Nadu, you entire knowledge is assessed through the marks and CGPAs you have got, although they do not have a drastic impact on your knowledge level or IQs. But still that is the fact. The worst part is the syllabus you are pondering over with. They will tell you to use your first spell directly against You-Know-Who and will motivate you as you have defeated him, without considering the fact that you don’t remember the spell and even you had forgotten Lumos. But it never changes…

There came the dilemma, Medicine or Engineering? Once the people knew that I had got some really worthy marks in HSE, their next question was “Medical right??” In my case all their predictions, expectations, plans had gone wrong. With loads of advices from school faculty, ideas from friends, and with the liberty of choosing my path, I fell into the Engineering cloud. It was kind of bottom to top idea for me – I selected the field and tried to shine rather than choosing the one I am familiar with. I had chosen Anna University as it was told the best Engineering Institution in Tamil Nadu. I had chosen Electronics and Communication as every other toppers I knew had chosen it. No issues till then… and came the twist in the tale. With lot of expectation from my family and from myself I wrote my first internal assessment, and my past performances in schools reflected in all the subjects except one – The One – Fundamentals of Computing. Till this moment, I do not know whether I had written that assessment correctly or not, but I knew how it goes here in my college for exams. From then my performance in examinations continued to decline and I never cared about them. I had just finished my pre-final semester exams, with watching one Harry Potter movie before each exam. In examination hall, when I take my pen, it looked like elder wand, compulsory questions  resembled the You-Know-Who with other questions as Horcruxes. Lots of Prof.Snape to invigilate the exams and so many Death Eaters as Squad. It was one hell of good imaginary experience to assign HP characters to real time Exams and it made them look more funny (I was caught up thrice for smiling during Exam :P). But the only fear in my heart is for Optical Communication, as it is more likely for me to get my first CUP in this paper. Any way, past is past and could never be changed, and let’s hope for a better result without any ‘U’ for me.

“We’ll See”, said the Zen Master…