Life and A Piece of Paper

 A few days back, I was talking to a thirteen years old boy who had gone through the misfortune of bad results in exams a few months back. He was hoping to do better in the recent exams although he hadn’t made any significant changes in his studying habits. When I asked him to take his studies more seriously, he proudly said, “A piece of paper cannot decide my future.”

He was hoping to get an I’m-so-impresssed kind of expression on my face, but I laughed. He was disappointed to hear my laughter.

I told him that his exam results were not just a piece of paper. They were the X-ray report of what he had done in his school days, and they will matter a lot when he will be choosing a college and a career. If a patient refuses to take his X-ray or blood report seriously by saying that ‘a piece of paper cannot decide my health’, he will invite nothing more than pity from his doctor.

His words reminded me of a small conversation with the younger brother of a friend. He had just passed out from an engineering college, and he was going through campus placement. While talking to me, he started criticizing the stress we put on studies. He named some popular standup comedian who was bragging on the stage that he was earning more money than his ex-classmates who did much better than him in studies.

I asked him one simple question, “What’s the common length of an engineer’s career?” He said, around 25-30 years if nothing goes wrong. Then I asked him, “What’s the common length of a standup comedian’s career?” He paused for a few minutes, and then he said, “Most of them don’t survive even for 10 years.”

I told him that being a standup comedian is not a bad thing. Any career which gives you money and satisfaction cannot be bad. But this tendency of making fun of studies and nine-to-five jobs could give a harmful message to youngsters. They can defend their lack of interest in studies by giving excuses that they are going to be YouTubers, Instagram Influencers, stand-up comedians or some new hot career thingee. They should be told that despite the flood of these new career options, most of the people get decent employment only if they have paid good attention to studies in their school and college days.

That popular standup comedian has become almost unknown today. My friend’s brother has been placed in a decent software company and he loves posting the pictures of his office on Facebook. If you have a youngster at home, don’t forget to tell him or her that the piece of paper (popularly known as exam results) can play a vital role in giving him a long term and decent livelihood. If they make fun of those who are paying attention to studies, one day they might find themselves at the receiving end of the joke cracked by life.

I hope my friend’s younger brother has finally understood a simple thing. It’s not always advisable to take serious career tips from those who earn money by telling jokes.