Do it The Azka Way

169 Views

Though now eclipsed by new exam schedules and more rigorous academic expectations, achieving 10A* in my Ordinary Level examinations was indeed the technicolor daydream of my younger self. I consider myself the hero of no personal epic. Whatever I have achieved is the product of a great support system. My learning curve throughout the three years has been massive, not just in academic aspects but also in social and personal dimensions. Be it battling through barriers in education created by the Coronavirus, or making my way through quite a few changes in career streams, my major takeaway has been the power of perseverance when it comes to one’s academic challenges. Simply seeing minor ups and downs as not black-and-white experiences, but rather opportunities for growth, is what the journey is all about. 

I started my high-school as a commerce student but then ventured out to engineering, sensing that I had a long-term interest in the latter. This career change entailed catching up on months of coursework that I missed was quite an ordeal, but tons of free educational resources and regular online school classes made the transition easier. Little did I know that I’d also be taking a commerce subject, Economics, as one of my electives, and would end up achieving a regional distinction in it. What I learned from this uncomfortable but worthwhile chrysalis, was that the future has its own quirky ways to unfold itself and that one should sit with their mistakes to analyze what went wrong, but not ponder over them to the extent that they start to paralyze us. 

Grade 10 was the next step up the ladder. It was time for us to appear for our CAIE examinations for the very first time. I recall it as a pretty nerve-tattering year, especially because a considerable chunk of it was marred by the Coronavirus and there was a lot of catching up to do. In hindsight, this was the year where I really learned what arduous self-study meant: having a handful of self-motivation and discipline, ensuring that you are being as resourceful as possible, looking up several studying and repetition techniques, and filtering through them to see what suits you the best, reaching out for crucial feedback, and developing not just one’s knowledge but also answering techniques to set yourself up for ease and flow. In addition, this was also the year where I made some of the most cherish-able friendships. They not only created an environment of support and encouragement but also helped me de-stress immensely. Despite the exams being postponed to the next exam series, the entire journey proved to be really fruitful for me. 

11th grade started with apparent traces of the previous year because we were yet to appear for our O-2 exams. Having to prepare for the remaining half of the exams was a constant banshee wailing in the back of our minds. Paving through with individual grit, my batch appeared for its exams in the November 2021 series. The first time you sit an official exam is like no other. Learning to keep your nerves under control, juggling not just the workload but also exam-induced anxiety is a pretty Herculean task. Thankfully, coupled with this is unrelenting support from well-wishers, which makes the whole process not just sail smoothly, but also become memorable. With flying colors, the exam series was over and we were preparing for yet another exam series scheduled in May 2022. Regular group-study sessions, alongside extensive past paper and query-solving sessions were the trademarks of this time period. I also decided to appear for another elective, Sociology, as I wanted to have another social science under my profile. 

In these three years of surviving rigorous routines, learning different tricks of the trade for each subject, and trying my level best to ace the tests, I have learned a legion of lessons. Your best is going to look different every day. The process is the best part of the achievement. This might not seem like the case when one has to come back to unfinished to-do lists and unsolved past exam questions on a daily, but when time has gone by, one begins to miss it, the high and low tides alike. In the words of Fyodor Dostoevsky, whose intellect encompasses issues greater than a high school journey: “Oh, you may be sure that Columbus was happy not when he had discovered America, but when he was discovering it.”