Dear Ishita:

career in india. com/ entrance exam: “These exams which are very competitive in nature teach students to deal with competition they are about to face in their future…  Students who crack these exams are selected in the top colleges”.

drona. in. com: Entrance Exams are conducted by various educational institutions or universities in India to provide admissions into different courses like engineering, law, management, (etc.).. Student have to attend for the Entrance Exams after completion of their 12th or graduation to get admissions into their dream course. Generally, students are of three types. ‘Some make wonder happen. Some watch wonders happen. Some wonders, what happened?’ So, you must work hard and make wonders happen”!

You wrote: “I used to be a really good student academically, and then I started off with my entrance preparation, where I kind of got messed up”- you were a good student before you were 17, before you entered the Entrance Exams preparation program. It was the very competitive nature of the students you were with, and the pressure put forth by the teachers that messed you up, as you put it.

“People around me were kind of toxic… nobody wanted me in their groups.. Being around toxic batch mates, who used to kind of attempt to pin me down during classes”- because of the very competitive nature of the exams, other students tried to squash the competition/ you, to put you in the group that “wonders what happened?” (drona).

Teachers “used to always say, how they really expected exceptional performance from me”- exceptional performance is needed to make it to the top universities, but you did not function well under the intense competition and pressure to perform exceptionally.

“I used to sit to study, I used to keep obsessing over how and why I joined late, and the way things could have been.. I .. suffered everyday, there used to be so many days I didn’t.. even feel like getting up in the morning because I’ll have to go through the same pattern everyday, and I was unable to break myself out of it”- the whole experience, at 17,  was traumatic for you. You didn’t want to be there, but felt trapped. As a result, your anxiety was intense, you were depressed and obsessing.

“this used to define me, being the smartest kid in class, being really fast, but now, I was losing it, I was in a race, where there were thousands of people better than me, and I had never compared myself to anyone before, but I guess that’s what a competitive exam kind of does to you”- without competition you performed very well, academically, but when other students tried to squash you and teachers pressured you, you broke under the pressure.

You are currently attending college. Were your Entrance Exams grades high enough to get you to a top college/ a college you wanted to get into, and study the subject matter you were interested in?

* You can start a new thread if you want to, it is up to you (doesn’t make a difference to me).

anita