The "Perfect Score" Epiphany
I've touched on this topic before.
In high school, I've been the type of person from whom people expected great things. Among those "great things" was getting a perfect score on tests and exams. It didn't matter if it was an inconsequential exam. Teachers expected a perfect score from me in an environment where 45 out of 70 was the highest score in my class during the half yearly exams. Make no mistake – the final year of school is the hardest.
Now, getting a perfect score is usually the least of my worries. But I haven't been very kind to myself. In my senior year, I got greedy. I pushed myself to the point of "ready to drop to the floor right now" exhaustion. Perfect attendance, perfect scores... I deluded myself into thinking that this is what constitutes the perfect senior year. All the while, my perfect health kept slipping.
It's funny how long epiphanies take to happen, but when they do, they rock your world to its foundations. My epiphany came to me in February, and it wasn't an epiphany so much as a reminder of what I already knew but brushed aside the entire year. Thankfully, it came just in time for my practical exams.
Now, this may abstruse...
The dynamic factor of an exam is the variety of scores everyone gets. Same questions on every question paper, but varied scores. No matter how hard you try, you can never create a "standard" question paper, because we students are like snowflakes – no two of us are alike. There can't be a "standard" student. These scores are not our aptitude – they show how the perfect score gets affected when one set of questions is distributed among all these people with wildly different ways of approaching questions. And that's what I like about exams, I realize now.
It's not a race or a competition where only one student can get a perfect score. The only good that comes out of a perfect score is the feeling of satisfaction that only lasts for a few moments. Personally, that feeling is not worth the amount of time I spend toiling and being horrible to myself. To hell with the perfect score, and to hell with anyone who expects it from me. It must be a wonderful view from up there on the Devil's throne.
It is often quite rightly asked: What would you try to do if you knew you could not fail? In the question of perfect scores, what test would be worth giving if you had to let go of your individuality and do everything by the book? What, then, happens to the gut-wrenching feeling of anticipation you feel when you're waiting to find out what you scored?
No one in their right mind would expect a perfect score. It is tantamount to expecting no mistakes, expecting you to know everything. And as someone who learned to be afraid of making mistakes, I feel qualified to tell you: this expectation will suck all of the fun out of you, all of the individuality out of you.
The best score I've ever gotten in all my years of school is the 9.8 CGPA I got in my 10th grade. I prepared the way I would prepare for 10 CGPA, but 9.8 is better. You know why? The missing 0.2 is for all the fun I had that year, like listening to live classical music the night before I had to submit a very long math assignment. It's a very small price to pay, if it is a price at all. So there!
So keep the suspense alive and don't stress yourself out over a measly hundred out of hundred.
Original date of writing: April 21, 2018
In high school, I've been the type of person from whom people expected great things. Among those "great things" was getting a perfect score on tests and exams. It didn't matter if it was an inconsequential exam. Teachers expected a perfect score from me in an environment where 45 out of 70 was the highest score in my class during the half yearly exams. Make no mistake – the final year of school is the hardest.
Now, getting a perfect score is usually the least of my worries. But I haven't been very kind to myself. In my senior year, I got greedy. I pushed myself to the point of "ready to drop to the floor right now" exhaustion. Perfect attendance, perfect scores... I deluded myself into thinking that this is what constitutes the perfect senior year. All the while, my perfect health kept slipping.
It's funny how long epiphanies take to happen, but when they do, they rock your world to its foundations. My epiphany came to me in February, and it wasn't an epiphany so much as a reminder of what I already knew but brushed aside the entire year. Thankfully, it came just in time for my practical exams.
Now, this may abstruse...
The dynamic factor of an exam is the variety of scores everyone gets. Same questions on every question paper, but varied scores. No matter how hard you try, you can never create a "standard" question paper, because we students are like snowflakes – no two of us are alike. There can't be a "standard" student. These scores are not our aptitude – they show how the perfect score gets affected when one set of questions is distributed among all these people with wildly different ways of approaching questions. And that's what I like about exams, I realize now.
It's not a race or a competition where only one student can get a perfect score. The only good that comes out of a perfect score is the feeling of satisfaction that only lasts for a few moments. Personally, that feeling is not worth the amount of time I spend toiling and being horrible to myself. To hell with the perfect score, and to hell with anyone who expects it from me. It must be a wonderful view from up there on the Devil's throne.
It is often quite rightly asked: What would you try to do if you knew you could not fail? In the question of perfect scores, what test would be worth giving if you had to let go of your individuality and do everything by the book? What, then, happens to the gut-wrenching feeling of anticipation you feel when you're waiting to find out what you scored?
No one in their right mind would expect a perfect score. It is tantamount to expecting no mistakes, expecting you to know everything. And as someone who learned to be afraid of making mistakes, I feel qualified to tell you: this expectation will suck all of the fun out of you, all of the individuality out of you.
The best score I've ever gotten in all my years of school is the 9.8 CGPA I got in my 10th grade. I prepared the way I would prepare for 10 CGPA, but 9.8 is better. You know why? The missing 0.2 is for all the fun I had that year, like listening to live classical music the night before I had to submit a very long math assignment. It's a very small price to pay, if it is a price at all. So there!
So keep the suspense alive and don't stress yourself out over a measly hundred out of hundred.
Original date of writing: April 21, 2018
Superb elucidation, Soumya. In a world so desirous of "perfect score", such thoughts are indeed weird!
ReplyDeleteYour thoughts amaze me, they change my overall perception about such small details of life which affect us big time!
ReplyDelete