Of course, I knew this was an absurd idea. I even tried to fight the routine, I would even say some of my teachers too tried to help fight this routine, but there is only so much one can do when you’re stuck in the environment our education boards create in the schools. No matter how hard my school tried to be flexible and add to our education, the pressure of the exam always determined what we studied. We were learning how to pass an exam, and this left much less time to focus on other life skills that are used more often than the marks you get.

This summer, I completed a two-month internship. This was my first time in a real work environment, doing and observing tasks I would want to be doing after the completion of my undergrad degree. I worked on various assignments, ranging from data collection to speaking directly with clients. Though these assignments might seem basic to an advanced office-goer, to me this was all very new. For all the marks I had gotten over the years, not one helped me when I was stammering while I spoke to the clients. In all those years, not once had I worked on an excel sheet to this extent. It occurred to me that there are so many more skills that, if taught in our education system, would make us better, smarter, and more confident individuals. These range from both internal skills like confidence, self-belief, hard work, discipline, team-work, and external skills like wealth management, coherency in speech, understanding taxes, management of bank accounts, applying for various government id’s and papers, language, etc.

Now don’t get me wrong, our education system is designed to instill in every student several life skills such as pushing yourself to the limit and working hard, which I consider to be very important. But the idea of studying for an exam and the importance this system gives to marks is doing more damage and is ignoring the real need of today’s world. So, I ask you to ask yourself -

Are you really ready for a job?