Dhirubhai Ambani, Sachin Tendulkar & Mary Kom are terrible examples to cite when students are struggling because of the CBSE or NEET fiasco.
They succeeded despite being extraordinary, not because they skipped degrees.
Telling aspiring doctors that they're "bigger than a degree" sounds comforting until one is lying on an operating table & discover your surgeon didn't quite make it through medical school.
Every time a system fails, we turn to the students, ask them to be more patient, more understanding & more resilient.
Perhaps it's time to expect the system to be reliable instead. How about holding the system accountable for the extreme steps taken by the students as a result of being let down by the system?
All superheroes don't wear capes, some wear uniforms.
Amid heavy rains in Bengaluru last night, a differently-abled youth was struggling to cross a road with gushing water. Police Constable Anil stepped in, stopped traffic and then carried him across to safety.
"It had the same anxious urgency of a parent asking a child who just topped the class whether he can do it again next year The boy had just done something no human being had done before in this sport. And we were already bored. We needed tomorrow. This is about a child who has become a screen for our projections."
Excellent, and timely, from @ABsay_ek 👇
I am going to write something personal here. Not because I am chasing engagement, but because maybe this reaches someone who thinks their life has ended because of a number on a marksheet.
I scored 49 percent in my 12th.😂
Yes, that kind of number that makes relatives go quiet, neighbors suddenly interested, and well wishers turn into philosophers overnight.
I ended up doing a BSc, the kind of course people treat like a backup plan.
There were reasons. There always are. But I am not here to explain those.
I am here to look you straight in the eye, students and parents alike, and say this. A child’s life does not peak at 17. They have an entire lifetime ahead of them. They will stumble, recalibrate, change direction, and figure things out in ways no one can plan for them.
I figured it out. Today I work in a niche field. I am doing well. I earn more than enough to run a home and even buy some whimsies, I work with global clients, and I am trusted with work that actually matters.
This is not me bragging . This is me providing evidence.
A low percentage in 12th is not the end of the road. It is not even a proper beginning. It is just one data point in a very long story.
I grew at my own pace. Others will grow at theirs. And if you let them breathe, truly breathe, they might surpass everything you thought was possible.
So maybe instead of pushing harder, we pause a little. Just put your hand on his/her back and laugh with them.
Because sometimes all someone needs to succeed is the space to catch their breath.
One of the most viral videos on India’s conservation crisis starkly showing how booming tourism and disturbing visitor behaviour are turning forests into stress zones for wildlife.
A kid drew himself sleeping in bed between mom and dad and labeled it 'safe.'
In Japan, this exact sleeping arrangement has a name. They call it 'the river.' Mother is one bank. Father is the other. The child between them is the water. Roughly 70% of Japanese mothers sleep this way with their kids, sometimes through the teenage years. The Western model of putting a kid alone in their own bedroom is barely 200 years old. For most of human history, in most cultures still alive today, kids slept beside their parents.
James McKenna runs the Mother-Baby Behavioral Sleep Lab at Notre Dame. He spent decades watching what happens when parents and kids share a bed. The bodies sync up. Heart rates align with the parent's, breathing falls into the same rhythm, and by morning even sleep stages have started matching. The parent's body, in McKenna's words, acts as a kind of biological jumper cable for the child's.
In 2013, researchers in the Netherlands tracked 193 babies through the first year of life. They measured cortisol, the brain's main stress hormone. Babies who had spent more weeks co-sleeping in the first six months produced less cortisol under stress at 12 months. Sleeping near a parent had rewired the kid's stress system to be calmer under pressure.
Inside the kid's brain at night, the amygdala, the fear alarm, gets more sensitive as the body gets tired. Darkness makes it worse. A 2021 paper in PLoS One from Australian researchers showed that light directly suppresses amygdala activity. Lights off, alarm louder. The whole brain is wired to read 'alone in a dark room' as a threat.
Now add a parent's body to that bed. The kid's nervous system reads warm body, breathing nearby, familiar smell. The threat alarm dials down. Two parents on either side dial it down twice. The drawing is the kid's brain calculating maximum safety: I am surrounded by the people who keep me alive, and nothing can reach me without going through them first.
The arrangement in this drawing is what most of human history called 'sleeping.' Sleeping the kid alone in another room is a 200-year-old Western invention that we forgot was an invention. Every kid who has ever padded into your room at 3am and crawled into the middle of the bed is just trying to redraw the picture.
@saffrontrail@raggedtag The problem with Clarks is that it always has a suede base.... Looks ugly so soon in India.
Surprised to see this. Will be bought :)
Over-optimising everything in life has reached annoying levels. Sugar, sleep, workouts, screen time, carbs, protein, steps, calories, macros, water intake, coffee timing, caffeine cutoffs, skincare routine, posture, morning routines, productivity hacks, journaling, meditation, breath work, gut health, supplements, cold plunges, dopamine detoxes, financial engineering, side hustles, systematic investing, step counts, sleep scores, sunlight exposure, meal timing, fasting windows, habit trackers... At some point, we have got to loosen up and just live a little.
The real estate mafia has started the fire on a large plot of land in Electronic City Phase One, burning weeds and dry grass. This could cause serious damage to apartments located in the area. Not surprisingly neither the police nor the fire brigade seem concerned about this. Looks like a well coordinated “joint operation”. Criminal act. @CPBlr@KarnatakaFire