Well, for starters, let me just say that I'm writing this, mainly just to vent my feelings, not because I want to seem cool or anything like that. I honestly don't mind if no one reads this, it's just for my satisfaction. However, do feel free to take away from my experiences.
Let's see.. I'm a 17 year old Indian science student, in year 12. Although I was mainly schooled in India, I had a reasonably happy childhood in Indonesia. But that's all in the past now.
In case you didn't know, year 12 in India is (literally) the do-or-die year in any student's life. In many ways, it is comparable to the struggle for birth; more than a hundred thousand students slog away in this one year to "set their lives" (yes, this is actually something Indian parents tell their children). After all, this is the last year of junior college. What follows is the struggle to be accepted into another institute for further studies - the most obvious choices for Indian students? IIT (Indian Institutes of Technologies) or medicine. "Get into IIT, or fail in life" is the motivation that the average Indian student sets out with. For bio students, there is no career option further than that of a doctor. And that's the end of that.
So let's do some quick calculations. There are about a million students giving competitive exams post 12th grade, and there are, say, 12 good institutes (i.e. institutes that are reputed, and can get you great placements) in the whole country, with about 12000 seats for everyone. Then there is the issue of reservation (the Government feels it's a good idea to reserve around 50% of the seats for backward classes et al). So that's around 6000 seats left for the general populous. Setting aside a further 10% for the rich and well-connected, we have around 5400 seats left. 5400 for 1000000. That's almost a 190 students fighting for a seat. This has ENORMOUS implications.
What implications, you ask? Well, to get into an IIT, we start our coaching early. 10th grade, or even earlier. So, straight off the bat, we lose our social lives. We devote every single minute of our lives to get into the "good" IITs. And when we're halfway done with the 11th grade, we realize, "holy sh*t; I have one year left, and I'm still not even done with the IIT syllabus." This adds on to the societal and parental pressure we already face. But undoubtedly the biggest implication of them all; we don't know what we're studying half the time. We're just in a hurry to finish the syllabus, no matter how badly we do it, for the sake of getting into an institute for higher education. And in doing so, we lose any love for studies we may have had. And this creates people who are utterly (for the lack of a better term) brain-dead.
That is what puts me off the most; science students who don't have any scientific resolve in them, science students who don't have the curiosity to discover how their world works, science students that grow up to be vestiges of society. I'm trying to keep this as anodyne as possible (and I'm probably failing, but f*ck it), but it's the bare reality. Indian students live an extremely exam-centric life. It's ridiculous. It's pathetic. It's (sadly) what I'm surrounded by.
Not all students are like this, though. Maybe a few hundred of us are different. Students that actually study, not from an exam POV, but from a learning POV. Students who may grow up to actually contribute to society. This may sound extremely arrogant of me, and that shows that you are not like us. You have no idea how difficult life is for people like us. All our lives, we study because we like to study, and all our lives, our efforts are quashed, rendered useless by "that kid who studies for 19 hours a day." That's how life in India works; hard work trumps intelligence.
I don't know what you can possibly take away from this (if anyone even reads this), or if you even finish this whole bit.
I don't know what my next post will be. I don't know when my next will be. I just know that it WILL be.
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