(From an Adolescent’s Perspective)
Origin of the thought
This thought struck me when I was in my “Development Alternatives” Class. That’s my Minor course and I must say Prof. Jyotirmaya Tripathi rocks in his own way!
He has completely eradicated my misconception that Development is chiefly Financial. He claims it’s more of World politics, History and the evolution of Philosophy over years. It’s usually very rare that some of your opinions are influenced by other people.( this one especially because the moment we listen to the word “Development” we immediately think of poverty, money etc.)
During one of its class, the Prof. was explaining various problems, difficulties faced by society in course of history. The problems were not very direct in the sense that some of them had long lasting psychological impact. This led me to think about the various issues that don’t affect us (the adolescents) directly but do have a large impact on our minds and emotions. Some of them are as follows:
Incomplete Control On Own Life
The fact that we ourselves can’t completely control our own life is sometimes unbearable. The world from the outside seems to be a place of infinite possibilities. But, often we face situations where in spite of all our efforts, we fail to achieve what we had tried so hard for. This has a really big impact on one’s sub-conscious. It is really difficult to convince ourselves that the structure of the world has evolved in such a way that it can’t support the fact that we can have complete control on our actions and future.
Struggle For Recognition
They say the fourth basic necessity of a human being (after Food, Shelter and Clothing) is Recognition. Call it Ego or a feedback system necessary for survival, people in some or the other way struggle for this and its impact on one’s subconscious is very deep. Failure to gain recognition sometimes even leads to nervous breakdowns. They say most of our actions are influenced by the need for recognition and as we all can see it’s the era where all people want is fame and there’s no limit to what people can do for it. Eg:- The Reality Shows (especially the ones in Channel V and MTV)
Statistically Impossible Targets Set By Profs and Teachers
First of all, the sub-heading deliberately has the phrase “Profs and Teachers” since they both aren’t the same in all cases. Only a few Profs qualify to be considered as teachers.
Almost all things in nature are assumed to follow a Normal (or Gaussian in technical words) Distribution from Statistical perspective. This means that when you consider any system, the fraction of the system that can be rated above 9/10 will be hardly 5%.(meaning the remaining 95% of the system is either ordinary or below average). In such a case, why do Profs and even teachers expect everybody to do an excellent job?
And after receiving the results from students (which follow the above mentioned distribution), Profs aren’t satisfied and express their ‘deep’ disappointment in front of students. This is only the beginning. Then the Prof very conveniently, aiming at student’s Ego, indicates that they are probably not even worth sitting in his class and listening to him. This might not have a really major impact on teenagers (since they adapt themselves to such lectures by Profs by then). But if we consider the same case in primary education, it has a quite deep effect on the vulnerable and sensitive minds of children. In some cases, might even develop an inherent inferiority complex on being repeatedly given such brainwashes.
Hidden Talent
Very aptly named, this sometimes has done harm on being undiscovered and also on discovering it.
As far as it being undiscovered is considered, one of the examples is me myself. Tried a lot of stuff (Sciences, Memory, IQ, Sports and even Music) till date but couldn’t discover it. Although it doesn’t really have a direct effect on a person or his actions, but sometimes it creates a kind of void space at some corner of our mind thinking about the absence of a talent.
For the people who have successfully discovered it, it sometimes becomes such an obsession that they tend to neglect their mainstream activities. (the activities we do for a ‘living’) The society or parents in general aren’t open to adolescents moving in the direction of their talent.
And in some cases, people who, due to peer pressure, don’t give much time to enhancing their talent feel inferior for the fact that they aren’t doing justice to their talent and that they are completely wasting the very thing they were born to do.
