Your 12th Board Exam Scores Aren't The End Of The World.

When I was a teenager, I saw my worth in numbers.

And these numbers? Were my test scores.

Now, I wasn’t the school topper to begin with. But by the time I hit my teens, doing well in school mattered to me. A lot.

Why?

Because you see, if you’re a teenager from India, you had to, had to do well in school. And that meant hitting it out of the park in your 10th and 12th grade board exams.

For those who don’t know it, board exams in India are like the Hunger Games.

Kids aren’t preparing to learn; they’re preparing for a war.

For two years, they have to forget the fact that they’re actual functioning, breathing human beings. All they do is, go to school for 6 hours, then rush to their extra classes for 3 hours and finally, in the night, slog for 2 hours to make sure that they got everything that was taught.

Nothing matters except for these exams.

At least until you get into a decent college or (if you're lucky) the Holy Grail of IIT, IIMs and DU.

In my case, I did well in 10th grade.

But in 12th? It was a whole other story.

In 2015, when I got my 12th grade percentage on that fateful day in May, my world came crashing down.

And that’s putting it mildly.

I still remember that afternoon, 8 years ago, vividly.

There it was, all my subject test scores, flashing on my phone’s screen.

And there I was, feeling a horrifying, sinking feeling in my stomach.

What was worse? My phone was buzzing with my batchmates gloating about how they’ve crossed 90% average. Some topped subjects. Some had gotten the highest possible score in the entire state of Maharashtra.

And there I was, feeling like the world’s biggest idiot.

Because unlike most of my batchmates (who clung to the legendary Chartered Accountancy course like Rose DeWitt Bukater clung to the wooden door in Titanic), I needed a good score to apply to other colleges for courses like Bachelors in Management Studies or Bachelors in Mass Media.

Because unlike them, I really, really didn’t want to do CA. And while I didn’t exactly know what I wanted to do, but I knew that I couldn’t stand the thought of tugging my hair out and balancing yet another godforsaken balance sheet.

My score, if I’m being fair to myself, it wasn’t an astronomically bad score at all. Considering my subject combination and the fact that I’d given the Maharashtra State Board 12th Grade exams (which was, at the time, known for its absurdly strict grading), I had done just fine.

But my score wasn’t so great that Mumbai’s top colleges at the time would warmly welcome me like Jaya Bachchan welcomed Shah Rukh Khan in Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham to join their undergraduate courses.

If that wasn’t enough, I didn’t do that great in the other entrance exams to colleges either. Over the course of that fateful summer of '15, I’d unsuccessfully attempted IIM Indore’s IPM program and St. Xavier’s BMS entrance program with minimal prep as well.

And all these setbacks came one after the other in a week’s time, like it a dozen wrecking balls, hitting me with no mercy.

Looking at these scores and rejections at that time, I genuinely felt that I was… worthless.

Yet, eight years later, when I think about my 12th grade percentage and the entrance exam rejections, that whole experience was perhaps, my biggest learning curve in my adolescence.

That agonizing journey taught me three big lessons. Three lessons that continue to stay with me, till date:

If you think everything is under your control, the joke’s on you.

The reason why my 12th grade score dipped was because of my Economics paper. In every other subject, I’d done pretty well.

Economics, at that point, was my favourite subject. I always got the concepts right and I was able to complete the paper on time with reasonably good content.

But in my board exam, I don’t know what midlife crisis my Economics examiner was going through, but they gave me 74 out 100.

Which didn’t make any sense to me at the time, because my paper had gone really well. My friends, in fact, had left questions worth 20-25 marks and they got 84/100.

So, out of indignation, I sent it for revaluation. During the preliminary round of revaluation, when my teacher corrected the paper, I was told that given my marks, I ought to have had a hike of about 7-8 marks.

But when it went through the final round of revaluation to the Maharashtra State Board examiners? That examiner, very generously, gave me a hike of 2 marks. And thanks to the rules at the time, there would be no further hikes. ?

Which was… honestly, the most frustrating thing ever for my 17-year-old self.

Because, you see, I stubbornly knew I’d worked hard, done my bit and even then, I got a score that was way less than I should’ve gotten.

Unfortunately, though, there was nothing I could do about it. Or the fact that I didn’t clear the entrance exams.

The only thing I could do was improve my economic concepts and do better in my exams in the future. Also, all I could do was to be mindful that if I have any entrance exams in the future, I overprepare to the point that I’m confident that I’ll ace it.

All these rejections and frustration taught me one thing, though: There are only a very few things you can control in your life.

And instead of getting upset about what you can’t control, you just do your best with what you can do.

Because, at the end of the day

Setbacks, like rejection, are redirection.

As I mentioned earlier, my 12th grade percentage wasn’t so high that I could get into the top colleges.

That meant, if I wanted to go to a college which didn’t have any entrance tests, my 12th grade scores had to be astronomically high for me to get through.

But unfortunately, I didn't get that. I felt like I had hit rock bottom.

I knew that I did not want to do CA or CS or any of the dreary professional courses.

But I also hardly knew what I wanted to do. Sure, marketing was a pipe dream, at that time.

But I had no idea whatsoever how to concretely go about it. Except for the traditional approach of doing BMS in Marketing.

And so, my 12th grade score, really forced me to re-evaluate my life choices. Really narrow down on the paths I wanted to choose, the approaches I wanted to take to reach each path and explore the opportunities that I could access, despite my score.

It wasn’t easy and I was, deep down, scared and dismally wondering: what if it didn’t work out?

Especially given the fact that my plan wasn’t exactly like what most of my batchmates were doing.

Once I finally made my plans and kickstarted them, I still remember being met with a few eyerolls, subtle digs that I wasn’t “ambitious” enough because I wasn’t doing CA and taking the traditional path and whatever I chose to accomplish wasn’t “worthy enough”.

It’s an insecurity that somehow stays with me, till date. Like I know what I want to do and I’m doing what I want to do, but subconsciously, I do have to battle that fear of “What will people say?”

But at the end of the day, I realized one thing:

No matter what, you'll survive.

Luckily, I had my inhouse seat at RA Podar, thanks to the fact that I got in there at 11th grade due to my 10th grade scores.

So it wasn’t like I was going to be degree-less and RA Podar, to be very honest, is a great college.

Once I joined Podar’s BCom course, suddenly, life just… opened up again. Along with my studies, I could take up things that excited and challenged me the most. And be a part of a cohort of some of the most driven, intelligent people, who’ve taught me so much, till date. ?

Today, I feel like I'm in a far better mental headspace than that 17-year-old Chitra was.

I thought, at the time, my 12th grade board exam score was the end of the world.

But it turned out, it was just the beginning of a truly beautiful learning curve.

And for that, I'm truly, truly grateful.

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