Exams

The title is self explanatory. Exams. Why do they have exams anyways? Is it even legal to have strenuous tests which bisects students according to their intellectual ability? I don't know if it should be done away with.

I looked around, people were scribbling away rapidly onto their answer booklets like as if they were trying to vomit out all the facts that they had carefully crammed into their minds. I looked at my answer sheet, it was blank. Panic started seeping in, and I somehow became a person who was stuck in an air-tight container and there was water trickling in. The person was doomed if he didn't get out of that container and I was doomed if I would not start writing now. 

I bit my lips and looked at the clock, it was 8.10am. I had wasted 10 minutes simply just figuring out what to write. I had studied everything yesterday! Why couldn't I remember anything? I saw the first question, shit! I had just revised this! What was the first line to this answer? If only I could get some cue as to what the first line was, I could successfully complete the entire answer. But how? And then a song started playing in my head. Wasn't this song the exact song which was playing when I had studied this answer? YES! I remember! I quickly started writing down my answer as the information started gushing in. 

After I was done with the paper, I thought to myself- why? Why do people blank out like this? It's so petrifying. I don't know why I thought to blog this, but I had to. Because as I was writing my exam I could only remember songs and useless jibber-jabber popping into my head. 

Well, not everything was nonsensical. There was some stuff that made sense. Like how I had an argument with someone the previous night or how I wanted to solve a problem and it kept on bothering me. We are so preoccupied with our thoughts that even as we sit to write what might be the most important exam of our lives, we think about our problems along with our answers. 

We worry about our futures as we try to recall the sequence of the lines. We reply songs in our head while our hands move to the rhythm of our answers. We think about that movie that we watched while deciding which question to attempt. We think about the plans we will make after exams as we hand in the papers of our first exam. 

Why are we human beings so divided when it comes to attention? Why can't we only focus on one thing and keep the rest of our mind blank? It's not possible. Try thinking of a blank sheet of white paper in your mind for two whole minutes. It's almost impossible! While imagining the paper, you will start thinking about its shape, the pointed edges of the paper, the smoothness it had. Even though it's just a thought, our mind has the power to make things feel real. Why else do you think schizophrenic people "live in another world"? They are trapped in their own mind, a prisoner to their false thoughts. 

We are all slaves to our thoughts, even as I blog this particular post down, I am thinking of a million other things- some of which, I'm not even aware about. Are we our mind or is our mind a part of us? I don't know. 

"TRINGGGGGG!!!!!" The alarm rang. I snapped out of my thoughts. As the realization sunk in, I stared at my blank answer sheet in horror. I had written nothing. It was a plain white sheet of paper lying in front of my while I myself had become a prey to my mind.

The theory of parentism

I know I don't blog regularly, I know I'm a lazy sloth and I also know that I don't have many readers who would be disappointed that I'm not a regular blogger because- I don't have any regular readers. I mostly blog for myself. And today, I'm blogging to rave about the theory of parentism.

I know I'm going to sound like a hypocrite, with one of my previous posts being about mutual understanding with one's parents, but hey, everyone, every kid to be exact has a certain breaking point. And I think I have reached mine today. 

Parents (definition according to dictionary): father or mother (wow, bravo to the dictionary for clearing someone's doubts on what parents are).

Parents (my definition): people who have amazing abilities to twist their words into something that makes us believe we are wrong and if that does not work, the final statement always works a.k.a, "it's our house, so it's our decision". 

The final statement always works 99.99% of the time, unless of course the kid is undeniably rebellious in which case the emotional blackmail is used to bring him/her down a.k.a, "we have worked so hard to bring you up, and this is what we get in return?" Usually it's, always something among those lines. 

It does not matter how your parents were during their childhood, it does not matter if they made the same mistakes that we did and it definitely does not matter that their grades did not match up with ours. All parents somehow, learn the theory of parentism on their way to adulthood. I personally imagine the situation to be such:

Doctor: It's a boy! Congratulations!

Mother and father: *parenting mode activated* 

Maybe it's just me, but sometimes I feel that parents just wait for their child to commit a mistake so that they can have the satisfaction of saying, "AHA! Told you so." I mean WHY? Is there like some secret system which calculates points and the parent who says, "I told you so" the most times gets some award? 

Mothers and Fathers from everywhere, please stop comparing us kids with each other, it's not healthy. It's in fact, extremely hurtful. Every kid is different, we are not the same. Each and every one of us has different positive and negative aspects in our personality. Comparing us would just make us dislike each other. My mother just compared me to some friend's daughter and although I have not even met that girl, I already dislike her. 

I know that we should all be grateful to our parents and listen to what they say and be good children and what not. But even parents are humans and humans have tendencies to make mistakes. They might also be wrong sometimes. But unlike us kids, there is no one to make our parents admit that they are wrong. Unless of course, our grandparents are in the picture. Then, the situation might go something like this:

Mom: I think you should be a doctor, not an architect. 

Girl: but mom, I want to be an architect! 

Mom: I don't think so. 

Grandpa: You did not listen to me either about what you wanted to be, I think you should let the kid decide what she wants. Don't force your decisions on her. 

Mom: *silence* 

Girl: *smiling* 

Yes, grandparents have the alpha final statement. You just can't argue with them because they know all the dirty little things your parents had indulged in while they were young. 

Anyways, that was my rambling about the parentism theory. The theory, which you and even I, will be applying on our kids one day. Trust me, it always gets to you.