Do you remember the day when your Class 12th board exam results were declared? Perhaps we all do. It is a memory, bitter or sweet, that has remained engraved in our hearts. And we will keep talking about it time and again. And then suddenly, we see one of our classmates who secured 60% in Class 12 is an entrepreneur and is staying in the US. All of the calculations come back to zero. And surprisingly enough, the toppers who flaunted their degrees and medals work in the same company. This might seem like a Bollywood movie twist. But it is a reality in many cases. Ankur Warikoo’s recent post made us rethink our obsession with clearing the exams.“The exams that feel like your life at 19 become funny trivia by 40,” Ankur Warikoo said in a post on X, looking back on his failures in the examination twice. At 19, he said, the result felt like the end of the plans his family had imagined for him. But decades later, the same disappointment looks remarkably different.
When a result becomes bigger than life itself
When we talk about India’s obsessions, competitive exams can never stand at bay. For students who are appearing in the competitive examinations, that single paper appears to be the only gate towards a bright future. They become loaded with expectations of parents, teachers, and relatives, and eventually, the students themselves.A rank can begin to feel like a measure of intelligence. A college can become a symbol of worth. And failure can appear to mean that the carefully imagined future has collapsed.It should not be comprehended, as if the exam has no importance. But failing an exam cannot limit your abilities. Definitely a 90 percent scorer will have better chances to get admission to the University of Delhi or other prestigious universities in India. But, not being able to get there is not the end of everything.That is particularly true at an age when students have limited experience of how unpredictable life can be. At 19, there may be no evidence to suggest that another opportunity will emerge. So one examination can appear to carry the weight of an entire lifetime.
Time has a way of changing the meaning of failure
Warikoo’s reflection offers a powerful reminder: the importance we assign to a setback is not necessarily permanent.He is now 46 and says nobody has asked him about IIT in 25 years. The examination that once seemed capable of deciding his future has become little more than a piece of personal history.His larger point is not that examinations do not matter. They can open doors, create opportunities and shape careers. The point is that no single result can reliably predict the entire trajectory of a person’s life.
For students, the lesson is bigger than IIT
In India’s high-pressure education system, students often need to hear this perspective before, rather than after, a setback.Not getting the college, rank, or examination result they wanted can hurt deeply. It deserves to be acknowledged, not dismissed with easy motivational slogans. But disappointment is not destiny.At 19, the future can look like a narrow road with one destination. With time, it becomes clear that there were always several roads. The exam may feel like your life today. It does not have to remain so.
