Confusion crept in to the inner of my thoughts. At an age when maturity was scared away by the enormous number of opportunities to choose from, I needed an opinion of mine. After passing tenth, i was not sure to take up which path to my destination. Whole thing appeared spherical to me. where ever I started, I ended up in same place I started of course after roaming through a vast effort of futility. I crawled into a residential college to pursue my intermediate not knowing for sure that it was an outcome of my conscious thinking. Reasons are no more needed as I found myself soon enough, in an assembly line to become a good ranker in SATs. Like the followers seeking their sage's knowledge, I along with similar minds and bodies crawled in and crawled out of classes took by highly paid teachers. Not sure whether it wsa a wretched life or a pious one as it depends on your consciousness of choice which itself was quite in blur. Some of us learned to see moon through the darkest of windows. But some found shadows in the darkness. We, for our ability of imagination, were labeled ELITE and for the same imagination on the counter end, they were in the bottom of stack. Though, most of SATs are objective, students reaction to such kind of preparation is subjective and it depends on individual. I am sure that atleast a few in the last sections would have done well, if not faced such a concentrated competition. Parents don't realise that they are selling off two years of their loved child's life to a institute that has produced last year's top ranker.
I started as a part of last but one section in the institute and fortunately crawled to the first after a test taht was proved to change people's life so much. The better the section, the better the freedom you get. Even the best of the freedom doesnot afford to know quite about the person who sleeps next to you in dorm, if not about his problem solving skills. It was most unlikely that a person's mind is big enough to contain any thought other than getting good marks in the imminent test. Who said there is no compulsory millitary training in India? It has its presence in the form of preparation for SATs, after tenth. In a elite batch, its more often seen that a person gets technically loaded day by day but far from his realisation, he is losing grip on what he ought to enjoy or see in that stage/age of life. Whatever achieved from restrain is shortlived.
Moreover, management divides students in terms of their focussed ability to solve questions. To a student in last section, the whole scenario boils down to the one where his parents are paying money to feed the better performers while their parents are reaping the benefits of incessant scholarship. To make the situation even worse, highly paid lecturers takes classes only to top students. For management, its more important to mint out their brand ambassadors out of good performing students to attract crowd in future. "Work hard for two years. And you can enjoy whole of your remaining life" That's the sentence they chant out loud to their children in Intermediate.
By the end of two years, I felt like a frog in a well. Other than a good rank holder, I was no more interested in myself. And that two years, I can never forget for they made undelible imppression. But on the brighter side, I have good number of friends who shared that life with me.
