Wednesday, January 16, 2013

How students excel even after missing the bus in the school

If you have seen the earlier blog, you will discover that first two steps of choosing the bankable ability and making a learning plan are required to excel. But you will find many students miss these steps. So, despite missing them, they still manage to excel in life. How?

I have found five ways that help these students to excel. Basically, they manage to fill the gap of abilities (that was not developed in school life) by using one of the five options. Let us understand these five options these students take:

1. They find a college of graduation that fosters the depth in the logical abilities

If a student has to develop higher depths in his logical ability, the college should provide the right challenges and support. Because, good marks, are not enough to excel. For instance, the universities in western countries provide the right challenges to a student. You will have heard many stories such as Larry Page and Sergie Brown who excelled at Stanford. They found a problem on which they could invest all their time and effort, and sharpen their abilities.

In India such challenging environments in technical arena are provided by IIT's and top engineering colleges. In design it would be provided by the top fashion design insitutes like NIFT or NID. In law, the top law colleges such as in Bangalore provide the toughest challenges. Choosing the colleges is therefore important to excel, because these colleges themselves provide the right fertiliser and ground to excel.

2. They find a group of friends that work together during graduation

In India, however, i have found another equally powerful way that helps students to excel. That route is  'group of friends'. This is a powerful route that even helps scientists to collaborate with each other and excel. There is lot of research on why 'a group of like minded individuals' working together enables each other to excel.

For instance, as we discussed earlier, I found Astha who excelled because she managed to find a group of friends in her college, They worked almost 2-3 hours each day together, challenged each other and needled each other to excel. I advise graduate students to do two things to excel. First is to find such a group of friends who complement each other( complementing members compete less with each other). And two, work on a real-life problem that will help to sharpen abilities. In a college, project activity is an ideal real-life problem for a technical engineer to sharpen his logical ability.

For instance, Abhishek Sen, one of the excellent performer who was interviewed in Ved program, found a real-life  problem of finding an instrument to measure haemoglobin, when he was doing medicine.

3. They find a graduating college ( or town) that develops their complementary abilities

Very few colleges actively develop other complementary abilities. A student is more likely to excel if the student can combine abilities, instead of relying only on one ability. A college, is therefore ideally suitable to help the student to develop complementary abilities such as in music, sports, communication, presentation, or any other field. A college like BITS, Pillani is very helpful in developing such complementary abilites because it offers students different groups to join.

4. They find a graduating college which enables the development of inter-personal abilities

Some colleges enable students to participate in many outdoor activities and group activities and develop their  inter-personal skills that are useful in excelling. As we have seen in the list of 8 abilities, one of the  most important ability that enable a person to develop as an entrepreneur is his interpersonal ability. As inter-personal ability also facilitates growth of intrapersonal ability, development of this ability is critical to excel.

Pradeep Lokhande, one of the excellent performer who was interviewed in Ved program, was an average student  in his logical abilities. What helped him excel in life, is the development of his interpersonal ability during his college days.

5. They have the right push of 'poverty' and pull of their 'ability' to excel

Some students have the appropriate logical ability to develop. Plus due to their average economic background, they have the right incentive to learn in the college. These two elements often combine together for a student to remain focussed in the college and therefore develop the necessary logical abilities to excel. Sunil Khandbahale, one of the excellent performer who was interviewed in Ved program, seems to be a person with this type of background.

Conclusion

In other words, students get a second chance to catch up if they have missed the development of their abilities in the school phase of their life. They can find the right college ( or the right town environment) to develop and fill the skill gaps. As you would appreciate, the real potential lies in using the option 3 and option 4.

In the next blog, we will talk about the the skills required to use the option 1. Even if the college provides the best environmental conditions to fill the skill gaps, the student must be 'skillful' enough to use the environment provided by the college. 

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