School life and magic walks

Written by: Sumedha Majumdar
My dad has said time and time again that school life is the most wonderful and memorable experience that one can have. However, when I was in school I completely disagreed with him. Fierce competition, peer pressure, punishments including detentions, exams, etcetera, I never really could see the fun part. I often thought that maybe his school life experiences were different from mine. Maybe he had better experiences in school than I did. But that is not altogether true. Now when I look back I fondly recall the most cherished days of my life. The fact is, school prepares you for college. Teachers spend countless hours guiding you through the most difficult of times. They help you see your strengths and encourage you to work on your weak points. I for one made quite a few trips to the principal’s office with my friends in my school days. It seemed meaningless then but it makes perfect sense now. All they were trying to do was teach discipline. They tried to teach us the value of it again and again. And now that I am in college preparing for the future, I realize how important it really is. Of course we deal with peer pressure and many of us still have exam phobia, but now life would seem pretty empty without these. One of the things I have always disliked is exam phobia. People say that if you are at par with the speed of your instructor, there is no reason why you shouldn’t do well in your exams. Not true. For those of us trying to juggle work and studies at the same time, things tend to become difficult. No matter how hard you try, no matter how well prepared you are, at the end of the day you are bound to be stressed. However, my method of dealing with this is really simple. I set aside some time for walks. In my past experiences I have seen that long walks in the evening have helped clear things from my mind. The sunset, the evening breeze and the Starbucks coffee have often worked wonders for me. The reason being that walking helps you relax. It calms your mind and lessens your fears. For me, I won’t be able to study if I don’t go out for my evening walks.