An exam is not an exam, Jispa!

I almost forgot to write this story down, but it deserves being there for posterity. It is something that Jispa will probably laugh over when she grows up and this one is seriously good.

One evening I come home and see Jispa having her dinner on the dining table. Jasmine was sitting on the sofa. I have no idea why Jasmine doesn’t like sitting for food with the entire family. I have spent the last 16 years coaxing her to do it, but she just doesn’t like it, or values it. I hate this aspect of her, but that is another story for another day. Bah!

So I come home and watch Jispa eating her dinner alone. I ask her whats up, how was her day. “bad” she replies. OK… now I am listening. So what happened, I asked her. “you finish and come here, I will tell you”. OK. I wash my hands and come to sit on the table and I am ready for dinner. “what happened today sweetheart?”. “I want mommy over here as well” she insists. Ok mom, you sit here and we all sit around the table for a chat. It was pretty serious, I assume. We all wait as the big thing is about to revealed. The she says “I will tell you but you will nottell me anything immediately afterwards. You can tell me later, but can’t get upset at me or tell me anything now.” “ok” what choice do we parents have in this case. Of course I agreed and gave her the freedom to talk freely without any repercussions. Then she starts “today was math test. It was horrible. The teacher gave us the papers ten minutes late and we were solving it and I couldn’t finish the paper on time”. “ok” I urged her one as I saw one tear coming down her cheek. “I think I am going to get a C”. “ok – how do you know you are getting a C” I enquired. “I calculated the marks. I know. This is bad.”

Now what to do with this. Math is important. Tests are important. Scoring is important, but crying over a test – that’s shit. I remember my childhood. School and studies were bad enough but this, this exam shit was way too bad. For many years after, I still got nightmares about not being prepared for exams. About going to exams late, about failing, about being blank… many such things. I think once I turned up late for one paper, once I studied the wrong paper and things like that as well. It was crazy growing up and managing exams. It was so stressful. One thing that I wanted in education for my child was – absence of fear from an exam. Everything else can be managed. Everything else is a function of the stress the kids put on themselves. Their hair is not ok, they have pimples on their faces, they like other boys, everything else – I really don’t care… that stuff is self-imposed. But exams – that’s one thing that is imposed by the parents on the kids in connivance with the teachers and the whole freaking education system. Exams are designed to kill you and make your life shorter in the long run but stretch it for eternity in the short run.

So what advice should I now give her? I start:

Ok. I hear you but if you give me permission to say one thing, may I say it. (she gives me permission) Cool. Thanks. First – I don’t care about your exam grades. That’s ok. More so – I don’t care about exams in general. I think they are too measly a thing to be upset about. So that’s my point of view, but if you now allow me to talk completely and freely, I can explain further. ( I get permission again).

So you couldn’t complete it, because you did not understand it or you did not have time? (it was time she said). Well then that’s ok. Math is all about speed and practice. They purposely are now raising the bar for you and getting you to know that now you area bug girl who needs to solve math fast. That’s important now going forward. The only way to get it right is to keep solving the papers, again and again. Chat with your teacher, tell her you want to improve and ask her how. Tell her you are not used to this and that you don’t have tuitions and you want to go beyond. So that’s about the paper in question.

As regards exams, come on kid. It never the exam. It’s the preparation. I have always pushed you to prepare right for the exams and not bother about the results. Results are important but only as an indicator of the preparations you put in. Exams are over rated. Don’t push yourself on this. I have always had a hate hate relationship with exams. They never did do well for me. You have to figure a way to attack the question papers and game the system. In eight grade, I once failed a Hindi paper. Mom flunked a year in 4^th or 5^th grade when her mom was in US. That too in History or something. Its ok. It doesn’t matter. In my final year in economics, I just about passed. I got a 36 on 100. Today I teach economic concepts to people. When I first saw the paper, I distinctly remember, that I thought I was going to fail. I had obviously underprepared myself for the exam and I was shit scared. I remember then gathering myself and telling myself, if I fail this paper then 90% of Maharashtra will fail. I am better than 90% of my peers. So I spent 30 minutes just thinking of how to attack this paper.  Which questions can I write the most without even knowing anything. I will attempt and attempt well. I will write and write long. I will not give up. I then remember for writing non-stop for the next two hours. I wrote so much that my hands got tired. I wrote so much rubbish and about anything and everything I could write about. I wrote. If today, I see that paper I will probably die of laughter. But I wrote. No exam could get the better of me. And I passed! I was so excited about passing. It was such a relief. My other scores ensured that my aggregate went up beyond 60 (62%) and I got first class. Mom managed a 35 in the same paper and Vinu managed a 26 and got 9 marks grace. It was an epic paper.

So Jispa – exams are a piece of shit. Don’t give it more importance than they deserve. Go ahead, study for a paper. Give it your best, but please, please don’t cry after the paper is done. It’s over, enjoy, have fun. Learn from there on. Exams are bad things. Don’t give them importance in your life. Study. Study hard but learn more. Have fun giving exams. Write whatever you think is right, write anything, have a blast and come out happy. Whatever you do, don’t get stressed by an exam. Kick its butt, but don’t get stressed by it.

I work hard and try and build a career with pays decently well and I save money. I try to read and teach. I do everything so that some of the basic stuff that I hated while growing up is avoided in your life. The scare of exams rank up there amongst the top things to hate and remove from your life.

Jasmine thinks I am a bit too lenient on this. But I really don’t care. When we conceived Jispa, I was clear. I was going to love my child and have a few things that I will dream for them. I wanted a healthy child, a child that could do good in some sports, a child with insatiable curiosity and a child with little stress to perform – at least little or no stress from me. AND definitely – NO EXAM STRESS.

Now that I think about it, my dad was pretty advanced in his thinking. He told me that till the tenth standard, it is my job to push you to study. After that it’s your problem. True to his word, he never did give me any grief on it afterwards. The least I can do is advance that by two years. Now Jispa is in 8^th. It’s time to back off and to let her pursue what she wants to do and how she wants to do. Basically – let’s not see the grades and stress out.

Enjoy! This is the age to enjoy life and studies not loathe it.