How to find what student loves

Having understood the dynamics of how one loves a subject (See the blog of 18 August), it is important to understand how to monitor a student’s growth and channelise his growth intelligently.

We give below five possible methods:

1. Pursue growth in subjects where a student gets higher marks

Although marks are earned by smart studying and reproducing, they also represent a student’s engagement with that subject. It shows that the student is growing incrementally and gracefully in that subject. That also means that a student’s skills are expressed well in that area. This clearly points to the fact that the stock of ‘liking’ may get converted into ‘interest’, ‘Love’ and ‘Passion’.

For students with higher marks, help them pursue growth and kick start the virtuous cycle in that subject/area. Get them to compete with other students in other schools and towns. Make them attend the Olympiad exams. Find the best teachers in those subjects and see how they are growing in that ‘subject area’. If a student does not grow in that subject area, it gives us a clear indication of ‘what student will not love’

2. Disregard marks and recalibrate

A student may miss learning of a lesson for some reason, such as illness, distraction or because he or she is a slow learner. Once a student falls behind, he/she cannot catch up easily because ‘school system’ of teaching is like an assembly system of car making: if one car accidentally misses a fitting attachment, the car cannot be stopped in between.

In a student, this may lead into another dynamic. As the next lesson is based on the earlier lesson, he/she may not understand the next lesson. A student unknowingly falls in this trap, which non-linear thinker calls, 'success to the successful pattern'. A small initial difference in understanding something can become larger and larger with days and years.

If one can ‘spot’ this early, it is easy to get them back on track. Time is of essence here, because the farther he falls, the difficult it is for him to get back on track. Getting a person back on track may be redoing the entire set of lesson once again. Or it may mean getting a brilliant teacher who has a knack of simplifying a complex subject.

3. Beware of subjects that are not mainstream

A student, who understands a ‘niche’ subject deeply, is penalised by the system. For instance, students excelling in languages are not encouraged for their excellence, but are compared with others on other mainstream subjects like mathematics or physics, which is supposed to be an indicator of ‘good student’. Abilities in languages, extensive subjects like geography or history are ignored. The same attitude is displayed for students excelling in fine arts, music, elocution and other ‘senses-based’ subject.

For such students, it is important to nurture their growth in this subject. Paradoxically, it is difficult to find good teachers in these subjects. But the effort is worthwhile, because it saves a child from being sidelined.

4. Beware of skills and strengths which are not measured by a school evaluation system

Another flaw in a school’s evaluation system is inability to measure a student’s skill of managing relationships. Managing relationships is a critical ability for successful jobs in an organization, besides being critical in ensuring that an individual can find ‘love’ and happiness in his relationships.

Another critical skill to succeed in future life is a student’s ability to take charge of one’s self. Now a day’s this ability is measured by Emotional intelligence. However, emotional intelligence, as is done currently, is not enough. One needs to understand and monitor how beliefs and stress are generated and managed by a student.

Such ‘soft’ skills can only be measured and monitored by observing students, and by offering them ‘assignments’. This is what we call ‘Prolifing’. Prolifing is a method of gaining self information by observing him/her in different settings, and by tracking his record in select assignments.

5. Use the wider definition of ‘learning’

Learning does not mean reading books, giving tests, and appearing for exams.

Learning means learning to apply the knowledge learnt in real life. For instance, learning means understanding how student uses mathematics to understand the EMI on House loan, or to calculate the interest earning on savings deposit.

Learning means exposing students to different situations and observing how they respond to it. The situation could be a picnic or it could be a simple method of ‘preparing’ for a elocution competition.

Learning means using a student’s various ‘support systems’ to help him/her explore. For instance, students learning in Mumbai learn a lot by using the ‘commuting’ time.

Beware of the career advice 'Choose what you love'

Kamal Hasan, in his interview with Mumbai mirror, says that ‘I was a reluctant actor who was cajoled into acting. Now I enjoy it too much to give it up’.

Sonu Nigam, who is now recognised as an accomplished singer in Indian Bollywood industry, says that after having accomplished everything, my dream is to ‘get into agriculture farming’. He says he will spend rest of his life in it.

Jessica, one of the interviewees in the Po Bronson’s book of What should I do with my life, found that ‘Medicine’ is not her love after spending 30 years of her life in undertaking the course of medicine.

Abhijit Kunte, the Pune-based ecologist researcher, found that he loves ‘forests’ when he was forced to accompany a researcher into a forest after he failed in his first year science. It took him 5 years to find that he ‘loved’ forest.

Love is not an emotion which sprungs from within. It is not something that resides ‘deep’ in the recesses of unconscious which suddenly emerges from the inside one fine day and, lo behold, one has discovered one’s love. This image of ‘love’ is not only inaccurate, but also invalid.

Love is a stock which accumulates with our engagement with that object or action.

First, we take action based on our liking. Let us call it a stock of liking. When we like something, say dancing, we do it. We watch dancers on the TV. Suddenly we meet someone who is a dancer. The stock of ‘liking for dancing’ grows. Then we meet a person who is learning dancing. Stock of ‘liking’ has grown now. It now becomes stock of ‘interest’.

Once the stock has grown to ‘interest’, we dance gracefully and easily. People tell us we have talent. Stock further grows. As we learn dance, we realise that it helps us express other part of our Self - such as our love of music, or our fetish for exercise. Stock further grows. We appear in a dance contest. We win, or we get special recognition from some known dancer. The stock grows. As we engage with ‘dancing’ more and more, we start liking the people around it, the work around it, the work-related beliefs about it.

Once this stock of interest has grown beyond a ‘threshold level’, we call that stock ‘love for dancing’. Once the stock has grown beyond threshold level, the stock takes hold of us. Now instead of waiting for opportunities to come, we start finding opportunities. That is why we call this stock ‘love’. At this point, the stock of love drives our actions, decisions and priorities.

As the stock of love takes us into more and more actions and opportunities of dancing, we start learning it more and more. We become known as a dancer. Our self-belief changes. We love the way we think about ourselves, the people we meet, the Selfs it helps us to express. The stock if it grows further becomes ‘passion’. Now the passion of dancing envelopes us.

As we engage with the world outside, the stock of ‘liking’ got converted into ‘interest’, ‘love’ and later to ‘passion’. This has perhaps happened with Kamal Hasan and Abhijit Kunte.

However, at any point of time, the stock may also stop growing; either because we do not find the right people to engage or because we do not get the right opportunities. This is what happens when many of our childhood interests vanish away.

Or because, after engaging for a long time, we do not find that it is helping us to express our Self fully. Or the beliefs that it entailing us to ‘imbibe’ are not compatible with the beliefs we advocate. Or we do not like to be called as ‘dancer’. This perhaps happened with Jessica and Sonu Nigam. I have met many people who, after years of working in a profession, leave it for something else. Or they keep on changing their professions because they do not find a ‘calling’ which expresses their multiple talents into one calling. Like for instance, Robert Fritz.

In other words, we cannot tell our future and guess what will happen to us. We cannot guess which ‘stock’ of liking will become ‘love’ and which will vanish away after engaging with real life. And we cannot understand what we love and what we do not until we engage with life.

On the contrary, lack of understanding what love is can mislead a person. I know of a student, Jaya. She was excellent in drawing. But since her childhood she wanted to become a doctor. She was caught in the horn of what love is and what it should be. She continued to believe that she should become a doctor, while on the other hand, she continued to engage and excel in drawing. Her special abilities with drawing and singing clearly told her that her engagement with life, based on her senses, is far more pronounced than her cognitive abilities of understanding biology or medicine. But she refused to heed to the feedback of the environment. Even when she entered HSC she continued to strive for CAT exam for medicine.

Therefore ‘do what you love’ is a catch 22 advice. We cannot love until we do it. It is therefore a trap.

One cannot determine what one loves while deciding the course or discipline to take. Based on the ‘liking’ and ‘interest’ at the age of 15, one has to choose a path and hope that the engagement with the path will convert the initial ‘liking’ into ‘love’. But there is no guarantee that it will. We are human beings who know what we know. We are not gods who can peer into our future and determine what we will continue to love.

Children are not confident, shy or impatient

I had gone to meet a friend of mine. He introduced me to his young daughter, Cheryl, and said that she is very shy. After being with her for more than a day, I realized that she is as ‘forthcoming’ as any other person.

Ritika is a good painter. She was told to draw a painting consisting of a background of a box which is shaded with a pencil. On that box, she had to draw three birds. She drew the box beautifully. But she botched up the birds. Her teacher complained that ‘Ritika’ is impatient. And if she could learn to build patience, she has a bright career for herself.

I met Siraj. He looked withdrawn and isolated. Her mother told me that he is an average in his studies and lacks confidence. When I started playing ‘chess’ with him, I saw a different Siraj.

What is the mistake that parents of Cheryl and Siraj or the teacher of Ritika make? They are assuming that ‘confidence’, ‘shyness’ or ‘patience’ are absolute traits. They assume that these traits are within a person and a person displays them ‘irrespective’ of a situation.

Now look at the following examples. Have you met Amitabh Bachan, the famous Bollywood actor? People who know Amitabh Bachan say that he is a very shy person. The same is true about another Bollywood actor, Dharmendra. Shahrukh Khan once told in an interview that going in a new country is very nerve wracking for him because people do not know him. And remember, these are actors, who are in a profession which demands outgoing nature, confidence posture and vocal articulation.

Confidence, shy, patience are context-dependent attributes of a person. A person may be very confident in buying a company worth millions, but can become very diffident when buying a vegetable. Do not get misled by the newspapers and other discussions which brand a person as ‘confident, disciplined, and matured’? Psychologists call this fundamental attribution error. It means that we ascribe many behaviors of a person to his ‘fundamental nature’, when they are infact ‘contextual’.

Psychologists also say that individuals make this mistake because it is simpler to do so. Instead of saying Harish is ‘honest while dealing with friends, confident while studying mathematics and impatient while studying painting’, it is more easy to say that Harish is ‘honest, confident and impatient’.

One of the problem of attributing these traits to a person is that the person himself/herself starts believing in it, and slowly ‘develops’ that trait. A child called ‘shy’ becomes more and more shy, a child branded impatient becomes more and more impatient, a child branded untidy becomes more and more untidy and so on. It is a surest way of ‘making’ your child acquire all the wrong traits and habits.

The second problem in attributing these traits is that it could be totally wrong. For instance, when i talked with Ritika and managed to ask her ( in the right way) why she did not draw the 'birds' properly, she said that she did not understand the 'relevance' of birds in the drawing. Because she did not understand the relevance, she simply lost the interest and drew the bird 'shoddily. Being a child, neither she could articulate her thoughts well enough and therefore could not muster the required conviction in questioning her teacher's wisdom. In other words, Ritika's 'impatience' was absolutely appropriate to the situation.

Therefore, please take care, next time, when you are branding children, friends and others in a specific manner. It may be true in a very specific situation or may be completely wrong description of a person, as was in the case of Ritika.

Why famous colleges of yester years will flourish for a long time

Mr Anirudh, one of the parent of an engineering student, was arguing that he has put his son in one of the best colleges, where teaching is done seriously. He was citing examples of a famous engineering college, where many students bunk classes because the teachers are not good enough. He was arguing that this 'famous' engineering college will soon 'vanish' because of its ill attention on the faculty, student teaching and so on.

Mr Anirudh was underestimating the importance of ‘stock’, virtuous cycle and contagion effect, the three concepts in non-linear thinking, because of which the famous engineering college will not only exist, but continue to flourish for many more years.

Stock of reputation is a stock which does not get erase easily. The famous engineering college will still be visited by the best of the companies for getting their fresh engineering students because the stock of reputation of this college will remain intact for a long time.

Morever, these companies will get the ‘best’ students because ‘best’ students will keep on joining the college. Why do best students join this college despite the information that college faculty is not so good? Bright students join because they know the engineers get the ‘jobs’ quickly after passing the degree exam. They therefore join this college because of job assurance.

Paradoxically, these bright students ‘somehow’ manage to fair well in the exams due to ‘contagion effect’. Bright students fare well because they remain in a group. In a group, they challenge each other, and therefore learn from each other. Because of the lack of good faculty, they compete less and collaborate more. Collaboration creates good learning for them. It is this same contagion effect, which is also called diamond effect by strategy guru Michael Porter that makes companies in a ‘cluster’ flourish than the companies in distant locations.

When companies therefore visit the campus of this college, they get ‘best’ students, despite the difficulties. Companies therefore return again next year because they get good students. Virtuous cycle is complete. Because of companies, bright students keep on preferring this famous college despite the difficulties. Virtuous cycle is reinforced.

When will this cycle break? What effect has to become more pronounced to break this virtuous cycle?

Beware of student being branded as average

Marks are obtained by 'smart' studying and reproducing. To get higher marks, one need not understand a subject deeply. Students can earn higher marks by avoiding to 'understand' a chapter or chapters. Marks therefore act as an indirect 'benchmark' to separate good students from average students. Although higher marks only measure the student's ability to reproduce a subject's understanding in 'canned' manner, we mistake marks to represent 'intelligence'. This can cause three unintended consequences.

One, because a student is evaluated by marks, student with lower marks is termed as 'average'. This changes his/her self-belief, which rubs in other actions and relationships. This further makes him/her feel worse about himself and hastens him to become ‘average’.

Two, groups in a school are 'sometimes' formed on the basis of marks. Students of higher marks group together. They inadvertently isolate a student with lower marks. Being together with 'smart' students can hasten a student's learning. This 'contagion' effect on learning can hamper growth of an average child further, because he gets less chances to exercise his 'brain' because he is challenged less.

Third, a student who understands a subject deeply is paradoxically penalised by the system. Because marks are obtained by the ability to reproduce standard results, not exceptional results, exceptional understanding of a subject is not encouraged. Student's 'uniqueness' and 'exceptionality' is ignored. And therefore nothing is done to nurture it. Virtuous cycle of growing the exceptional talent is stopped unknowingly. We call these students 'average'.

In other words, average students may not be average at all. They just miss the boat at an early stage and fail to catch up with it later. Or they may have some exceptional ability which is ignored by the system. Or they have skills like ‘relationship skills’ which is not measured by any marks. It is therefore important to understand average students over a long period of time so that their ‘uniqueness’ can be identified. Because even the aptitude tests do not measure their uniqueness, as these tests also rely on the past experience of the student.

Do not confuse action with initiative?

I had gone with my niece to a girl’s hostel for finding accommodation. She had got admissions to JJ School of Arts. But when we met the concerned clerk in the girls hostel, she told us about the 500 odd applications received for 80 odd vacancies, how the process has happened two months back and so on. As we were talking to some of the persons in the hostel, we realized that getting accommodation in a girl’s hostel is not easy due to the constraints of budget, location preferences and other criteria.

But while moving out from the hostel, the clerk women gave us a list of ‘hostel addresses’ where we can find accommodation. We naturally wrote down all the addresses. Some of the addresses had telephone numbers. As soon as we reached the nearby local station, my niece wanted to go to all those addresses and start the search. I told her that these addresses may not represent the true ‘reality’, and they were given to the girl-applicants to give them hope and reduce their ‘anxiety’, instead of really helping them. Keeping an updated list of girl’s hostel is not the responsibility of that hostel, neither does the clerk women happen to be ‘part’ of a system which helps her get that information.

My niece however said that ‘we have to do something’ to make things happen. We cannot just go home and expect to get a hostel. Given her anxiety, any action was good for her, than not doing anything. This is a common pitfall of all the students (and even executives). Whenever they are anxious, they act. They confuse ‘action’ with ‘initiative’.

We therefore went to the first address recommended by the clerk women. We managed to ‘unscramble’ the address and reach the place in an hour and half. We climbed four stairs to the top of a building. We found that the hostel was boy’s hostel. We were shocked. The effort of reaching the place and the eventual outcome punctured all our enthusiasm. Instead of searching for another place, we headed homewards. This is how ‘any Action’ can also result into ‘failed result’, instead of intended result.

As my father used to say, ‘swinging arms’ alone does not constitute swimming. Coordinated action of arms can take you from one position to another position in water. The same is true with any action in life. ‘Coordinated action’ is necessary to produce result. Unfettered action can help us ‘release’ our anxiety, but is useless in producing any result. And action is not equal to initiative.

It would have been far more productive to sit with the list, call few of the available phone numbers, ask intelligent questions to them, and then expend energy on going to select places based on the received information. Smart action produces results better than uncontrolled action. It is far more important to control our anxieties and channelise the nervous energy into productive action, than promptly responding to the nervous energy.

I also advice parents about ‘smart action’ to seek counsel as to what their child should do in the holidays. Every parent wants to send their children in the program for dancing, acting or other courses. A course in computers has become a most popular course now a day. All these courses invite lot of action and help a child until VI-VII class to channelise energy in a specific direction. But after VIIIth class, parents must understand their child’s liking, potential abilities, and their resources to channelise their energies in ‘productive avenues’. Just action for the sake of action is not going to help their child find the right things to do in their lives.

Career planning is about building five skills

As we discussed in 6 July 2006 blog, for a single-edged individual it is fairly easy to decide the platform that you will use to generate work output. For instance, single-edged individuals in sports have to decide early in life which sport to focus on and thereby make choice of a platform that will help them generate the work-output. The same is true of single-edged individuals in music, painting or any art field.

On the other hand, multi-edged individuals (which incidentally form a majority) cannot decide which platform they will use in the future to generate their work output. Neither their self-info is enough, nor is their ‘maturity’ enough to help them make an early choice. Their work-platform emerges as they interact with the world.

If multi-edged students cannot focus and work on a platform-building path, what can they do. Should they wait for their careers to happen? Or can they do something to prepare for their eventual careers? They can learn five skills.

Outputs are not only created on work platform, they are also created in people-relationships. Understanding the dynamics of generating outputs in relationships is therefore a first skill that they can learn.

Second crucial skill they have to develop is the skill of managing their mental state. Emotions, stress and beliefs affect one’s mental states. None of three are in the conscious control of an individual. What one can do, at the most, is understand how he/she is affected by these three variables and learn to ‘anticipate’ the impending change and prepare for the situation. We call this ‘mental-state’ enablement.

Third skill is the skill of preparing for the ‘output’. When they are going for exams, they have to learn to ‘prepare’ well for the exams, and deliver the performance in a given ‘time-window’ so that appropriate marks result. This skill is skill of output preparation. This skill is most often used skill required later in building one’s career.

Fourth skill is the skill of taking decisions. Often individuals rely on wrong variables, search for redundant data, worry about inconsequential issues while taking crucial decisions in their lives. For instance, all bachelors worry about ‘whom’ to marry when they know that ‘eventual consequences’ will not matter the decision a bit.

Fifth skill is the skill of course correction. After they have ‘failed’ in an event or a situation, be it interview or convincing a friend, they draw wrong conclusions from the situation and therefore take an improper course for correcting themselves.

These five skills are the skills that one can acquire in the career planning phase of student.

Today's parents are partners in the career growth of children

Akshita is a fine painter, who passed her both grades of drawing exams easily. It was obvious that she would be choosing fine arts/commercial arts. For single-edged individuals like Akshita, the choice is not difficult to make because one of their skill dominates over other skills. But despite that, they have many choices.

Here were the questions she faced. The first choice of fine arts was obviously J.J. College of Mumbai. Every 'art' students dreams to join that college. But if she does not get admission in that college, what option she has? Preparing back-up plan is an important part of decision making.

The second question was: should she choose fine arts or commercial arts? A course in commercial art is better to get good jobs. The difference between commercial arts and fine arts is like a difference between training for a light music singer and classical singer. Everyone knows that ‘fine arts’ is the foundation of painting (like classical singing is foundation of singing), making a career in classical singing entails different challenges. A classical singer makes his/her career after 40, so too is the fine arts person. A fine arts person depicts ‘life’, therefore he/she has to be a well ‘developed’ person to become a good painter. I told Akshita about the challenges on these two paths.

What would Akshita, or any other person, do after hearing this? One chooses a path of least resistance. She chose ‘commercial arts’. And this is where the role of teachers and parents is important.

Only a long period of observation of Akshita can make one understand Akshita? What does she read? What are her other interests? Has she grown emotionally more than her colleagues in the class? Only if her other ‘behaviours’ are observed, can one truly guide Akshita? Because, unlike men, Akshita had no pressure of making a career, and could have easily chosen course of ‘fine arts’.

In such a situation, where the path of least resistance is not the best choice, support of parents is very important in helping the child to make the right choice? Parents cannot leave the choice in the student’s hand by saying ‘the choice is ultimately yours’. The child is just not mature enough to make the choice of ‘high resistance’. Parents need to display ‘tough love’, as the famous child psychologist, Haim Ginnott says.

Infact parents have to negotiate many such points of high resistance for the child. Should a child study in Mumbai or Pune? If a child was not staying in Mumbai, a child will always choose Pune, because that is the path of least resistance. The child needs a support of her parent to choose the path of high resistance. The parent’s responsibility, in such situations, is to reduce the risk of staying in Mumbai and help the kid to reduce the ‘resistance’, and not scare the child by saying ‘it is your decision’.

Parents cannot absolve their role in decision making of their children’s career choices. They need to make up back-up plans for the chosen decisions. They need to identify the ‘high resistance’ points and support the child in negotiating them. They need to ‘control’ their emotional biases and fears and not let them influence the children. They need to understand the challenges of career-making in 21st century and help their children develop those career-proofing skills.

Today's parents, unlike our parents, have to be partners in their children's career growth.

Understand data from information

Currently, all newspapers are abuzz with articles on different careers in radio, teaching, shipping and so on. I also read about different career workshops which talk about the different careers in information technology, biotechnology and so on. On the surface, this looks helpful in enabling students to choose careers after secondary or higher secondary levels. But if you dwelve on it a bit more, you will realise that students are inundated with ‘data’ and not ‘information’.

Giving data about different careers at the age of 15-18 is like gifting a student with box full of different chocolates, and telling him that he has to choose only ‘one’ without tasting any of the chocolate. He is most likely to walk away from the chocolate box confused.

Although he is rightfully angry because he has not been given any meaningful information to make a choice, he cannot even ‘articulate’ his anger. The counselors, on the other hand, can smugly put the entire onus on the student with a look of ‘ I told you so’. They may even increase the pressure on the student by telling the student that ‘in their times, they never had so much of information’. The counseling process, instead of empowering student, only makes him/her feel inadequate. I am sure that this is not the intention of a counselor, but this is exactly what he unknowingly achieves.

When I was approached by a student, Jyoti for choosing a discipline after her higher secondary level, I went through a different process. I found that she is extraordinarily good in drawing and music, but she was also considering ‘medicine’ because her father wanted her to become a doctor. From her performance in drawing, Fine arts or commercial arts was a better choice.

I gave her data about the different courses, and to help her experience ‘what a work in commercial arts or fine arts’ mean, I helped her meet two/three different experienced professionals in advertising industry, animation industry and even ‘painters’. She met them, asked them silly looking questions, went to their work place ( 3D animation shop ). She imbibed the various data I gave her on the people who have made their careers in these. It took her more than 4-6 months to get the ‘feel’ and the conviction to make that choice. I have always observed that it is easy to make mainstream career choices like engineering or medicine, however it is extremely ‘difficult’ to make niche career choices such as arts and music.

I therefore always advise students to approach career choice over a long period of time. Sometimes, when a student is talented in more than one fields, he or she may even take a longer time to convert the ‘data’ into meaningful ‘experience’. The student needs to be given enough options to 'taste' the chocolate before he/she can decide which 'chocolate' is right. The student not only needs to know what is possible in that career choice, but what it will demand from him/her in terms of skills, competencies and mental set.

Data of different careers is useful, but meaningless without the context of a student’s mental make up.

More the talent, more difficult it is to make choice

Single-edged individuals are blessed with one single deeply etched skill. For them, their other skills are overshadowed by their single skill and therefore remain unnoticed. It is therefore easy for them to focus on one skill, because the choice is automatic. As focus is intense and automatic since early age, one skill grows at the expense of others. Because of their one skill growth, they choose an outcome platform relevant to that skill; zero in their effort, which naturally increases the probability of excelling in that platform, thus achieving eventual success. Sachin Tendulkar, Shakuntala Devi or Vishwanathan Anand belongs to this category and so does Steven Spielberg.

Multi-edged individuals (whom we often term as all round talented individuals) , on the other hand, have a wider set of skills to ‘choose’ to focus on. It is a problem of plenty/prosperity. These individuals have a multiple set of skills each of a sufficient level of proficiency to be useful, but not deep enough to steer them in any particular direction. I call this Japan-India puzzle.

Someone once asked me in one of my Management Consulting seminars, “Why Japan with no natural resources and a small strip of land was able to succeed, while India with so much of natural resources and land could hardly achieve anything in the same time span?” Paradoxically, prosperity of India offered it too many options to choose from, which itself became a bottleneck in making the choice. Japan, due to its poor resources, had fewer options to choose from. India therefore could not make those choices, while Japan made them quickly. Japan prospered, India faltered.

Multi-edged individuals too face the same difficulty. As they have more skills, there is a natural desire to practice and develop every skill. Parents also unknowingly encourage development of all skills. With limited time at their disposal, multi-edged individuals therefore tend to spend less time on developing any particular skill. Consequently, none of the skills grows beyond the threshold level where it starts producing results. They falter, while single-edged individuals, even with less talent, succeed.

Talent is not enough to succeed in career, especially when the talent is expressed in multiple skills and areas. Talent in many areas throws many choices which students are hardly equipped to make.

Indian students face a difficult choice than American students

Indian students enjoy lot of advantages, but they face one big disadvantage. They have to commit to a choice of a discipline - engineering, medicine, entertainment, media - at the age of 15. Americans do it after graduation i.e after the age of 21-23. Even to do their medicine, they have to graduate.

This presents a difficult challenge to Indian students. At an age of 15 or 16, Self-information is not enough to make such a long-time commitment. Further, our methods of gaining self-information are also fraught with inaccuracy. For instance our reliance on aptitude tests to gain self-information is highly risky.

Aptitude tests tell us what has got developed in the past, given the situations we interacted with. They give no indication of what could have developed differently if we had engaged more with the world, or if we have worked in different cities, towns or schools.

Self-information is not a treasure that can be dug by serious effort or can be dug by smart experts. Self-info depends on the amount of engagement we have with the outside world. If we engage less, we get less self-info. If we engage more, we get more self-info. That is why you will find people at the age of 40 or 50 still change careers. For instance, ad film maker Prahlad Kakkar has found his passion of Scuba diving when his hair have turned grey.

If you have read about an individual, Abhijit Kunte, you will understand how the process of gaining self-information actually works. ( He has written his autobiograhy in Marathi) Because he failed in MSC, he went with his professor on an expedition in a jungle to collect some sample data. Because of his free time, he kept on meeting different researchers who researched on different aspects of forest, ecology and animal behaviour. As he went in the forest again and again, he discovered his passion of 'forest'. Now, unable to pass his MSC, he is doing a PHD in one of the subject related to ecology.

Aptitude tests are like snap-shot photographs, taken at a point of time. They fail to tell the ‘process’ that made us look ‘smart’ or 'careless' or 'lazy' in a photo. What we need is a video-shoot; the process to go through and find more about self.

Students need a structured process of gaining self-information: engaging with the world, meeting real-life people in different professions/careers, a method of understanding oneself beyond academic scores, developing on the wish list of what to do by asking intelligent questions to right experts, and by understanding the process of career-building.

We cannot short-cut this process of gaining self-info by attending one time career fairs. Or by understanding the multiple career options we have after Xth standard. Or by giving aptitude tests.

We need to start this process when a student enters secondary school at Vth standard and continue it, till he passes out in Xth, in order to gain enough self information. During these five years, he should be guided on his overall development, learning bottlenecks, strength areas, options available in the world, process of building career and so on. The process should be structured.

Marks are generated by being part of a system

Output is created never by an individual alone. Image of a hero working in a dungeon alone over a invention and shouting 'Eureka' after his discovery is a myth. That era of creating output alone is over.

Even a sportsplayer who is supposed to play his or her game to succeed has to be part of different systems before his/her contribution can produce rewards. For instance, a tennis player has to part of four systems to ensure that he plays consistently in a tennis circuit: adminstrative system to ensure that tickets, staying and support activity is managed without any hassle, coaching system to ensure that prospective competitors flaws are tracked and specific localised situations are understood, physiotherapists who helps him/her keep fit, and his emotional support system to ensure that he/she feels does not get homesick and 'alone'. Without these four systems, no tennis player can 'perform' consistently. A failure in any of these four systems can derail him/her and therefore affect his/her output in a negative manner.

The same is true of a student who is trying to get good marks in a subject. Depending on which lesson/portion he finds it difficult or easy, he has to use different strategies. He may use other colleagues to understand difficult lessons , or he may use teachers, parents, coaches and other resources.

In a recent interviews in a daily newspaper, i read how the students living far off in Kalyan and Ambernath were using the long commuting time to solve difficult questions by using each other's time and resources. This is one innovative way of using the 'system'.

I have often observed that students do not take help of their colleagues and other systems because they are embarassed in asking questions or find it difficult to say that 'I do not know xyz'.

What other systems are involved in ensuring that a student gets better marks in a subject?

Careers have to be built

When one thinks of careers, one thinks of work-life. Therefore students blissfully ignore to listen to any discussion which is related to careers. They start listening only when they reach the SSC or HSC level.

Unfortunately opportunities in career can be encashed only when one is equipped for meeting career challenges. When one is not ready or equipped, one gets surprised. The moment passes away. One has to wait for the next opportunity.

Right from the stage when students enter secondary school ( Vth standard in India), they can get equipped with the right skills. They can start building on their strengths, learn the skill to manage their inside-life. As they move ahead to higher secondary levels ( VIIIth standard onwards in India), they can get prepared to take future decision:they have to choose the discipline after they pass HSC or SSC.

In short, students can equip themselves in facing the challenges that they are likely to encounter in the future.

In this blog, we shall enable students to equip for career building. Teachers teaching students and parents of students can also play a major role in building the careers of these students. Therefore we shall discuss all the issues faced by these three constituents in career building of the students.