Crucial two years

' Those were the best times I have ever had sitting in a class room. '

If you ask me the crucial two years of my life, I would say those were the years I spent in my higher secondary classes. My school was Arya Central School situated in a prime locality in the city of Trivandrum. I have been studying there since my eighth standard. And i still think this school is majorly responsible for whatever I am today.

After completing the tenth standard there is a big confusion and decision-making-event in every child's house. There will be some relatives saying that 'in today's world you have to be a doctor to earn respect in the society and blah blah' while some saying that 'an engineer's profession is the best these days n blah blah again'. There are very few who even think about other options and mostly because they are oblivious of the these.

As far as my case goes, the most interesting subject was mathematics for me. So my fate was almost decided as to go into engineering. For this I had to take Computer in school for my higher secondary and though I did not have much of an interest for computer science, I had no choice.

Now after this decision is made then comes the question of where i wanted to go for coaching. Earlier board exams where of prime importance to students but now the scenario is different with the entrance exams introduced. For every engineering student, it was like a rule to write a minimum of three entrance exams - the IITJEE, AIEEE and the respective state entrance exam plus additional ones like the BITS entrance n plenty others. And despite this they also had to face the twelfth boards(which is the least important.. :P). And for challenging these exams you had to go for some or the other coaching center. Else it is thought that you are a know-it-all nerd. So just before classes begin for eleventh there is a rush at every coaching institute(and god its party-time for those at the coaching institutes, mind you. The cash that pours in unimaginable).

So even I started enquiring about the better centers. And then i decided(after a month long interaction with seniors and others), that i would go for board exam tuition rather than wasting money on these institutions. So from then on i started going for tuition - to three different places - maths, physics and chemistry.

Although I was a bit reluctant to go for these classes in the beginning(partly out of fear), as time went by I just began to love these classes. There are students from almost every school in the city and you get to meet your old friends and interact with new ones also. Plus the way of teaching was entirely different from that in school and there was loads of free time in between studies where even the teachers used to pass comments on various issues. They tried their best to make it interesting and succeeded.

Those were the best times I have ever had sitting in a class room. Schooling had become a side business. All the topics were covered first at these tuitions. So it made life easy in school. And like in primary and high school, you don't need to take notes of the classes you missed.

When the time for the exams neared, we had mock-entrance tests in these tuition centers helping us tackle difficult questions within the prescribed time limit. Early morning classes and full weekend tests were like drill sessions and they saw to it that we were able to extract the full potential out of us.

And I would proudly say that my these three tuition sir's played a major role in my becoming a student of the National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirapalli