This is a story from my childhood days of me navigating and understanding how the world worked. This is a particular example of how I dealt with my arts course, and a new senior teacher, and getting into his good book.
In fourth grade, we were introduced to KK sir, a very senior
drawing (arts and crafts) teacher. I had always thought of this subject to be
my favorite, delving in the scribbling doodles from a very early age.
But I was not given the opportunity to shine in this course,
in the very first class, KK sir asked for only the first, second and third boy
to stand up (this being an all-boys school), he asked their names, with no
interest in getting to know the others quite so fast.
After the first-class test, I saw that they were getting a
bit higher marks than me, even though I thought that I was better at it than
they were. I had no interest in becoming the top placed student though, I just
wanted my classwork to be recognized, or at least that is what I told myself. I
realized if I had to get my art some validation from the teacher, I needed to
become one of class toppers. But that did not suit me, way too long a process
and way too much work needed to be put into that.
So, I went on drawing extra tidbits at home and showing it
to the teacher, the pretense being “asking for feedback” on improving myself. No
one else seemed to care what I was up to. But in a few months, lo and behold, I
became KK sir’s favorite and started to get highest marks in most tests. He
would go on to teach us for 2 more years, and I had this good spell continue
till Seventh grade, when I suddenly we faced a new teacher.
This new teacher did not bother about who was placed where,
she marked based on the actual artwork, and I realized suddenly that my quality
had fallen over the years due to complacence. When I started getting lower
marks than my peers, even they felt sorry for me. “RADI should get good marks
in arts”, a friend of mine even protested the class test results, even though
he got more than me by submitting what I realized was clearly a better artwork
than mine. I vaguely remember that friend even asking this new teacher to
reconsider my grades. Yes, he has a bigger and kinder heart than mine, I now
realize.
I looked around and checked all the other submissions for
this test, and it was suddenly pretty obvious that I was a mid-tier artist
among the 50 students in this seventh grade, “section C”. I had to get back to
drawing, training myself and learning if I had any chance of asking for the old
glory in this new landscape.
The fourth grade me figured out the rules of the game in
place to getting good marks in a course, but playing that game led me to ignore
the more important core of learning the basics and winning with quality. I
played the game right at the cost of losing the core that made me tick.
Life is full of games like this, getting ahead, getting
recognized, reaching the goals you set for yourself, in each game there will be
rules that you can take advantage of to set yourself up for victory. The
important thing is to remember that in playing the game, one should not lose
sight of the core thing that brought you here to begin with. Losing sight of
the core is like when a newspaper opts for clickbait titles at the expense of
truth, losing trust from readers in the long run. It is like emphasizing more
into appearing successful rather than putting your mind into being successful
and nurturing the qualities that attract good things. So, from time to time, it
is good to check with yourself, if you are playing the right games, or harming
yourself in the process of trying to win every game.
So the moral of the story would be: Choose your games wisely.
Recommended reading: Oliver Emberton– Life is a Game: https://oliveremberton.com/2014/life-is-a-game-this-is-your-strategy-guide/
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| Photo by Mike Fox on Unsplash |