Because for a lot of us, marks are all that matter. But are they really that important?  

It’s definitely a reason to celebrate when someone succeeds in an examination. But what if a student fails? Are exams the ultimate parameter to judge a person’s capabilities? We live in a society that gives utmost importance to numbers and fails to recognize that not all doors are closed if a person fails to get through. The pressure on students builds up to such an extent that some even end up taking their lives. 

All those who couldn’t score up to the expectations of their parents, don’t lose your heart because there are people, who despite flunking boards or not scoring well, have been able to do exceedingly well for themselves. 

All you need to do is identify what you’re passionate about and give it all you have. Just like Vaibhav Jha, a 26-year-old who failed his 12th boards, but is running his own business today. And he could do this because he didn’t lose faith in himself. 

Here’s Vaibhav’s story in his own words:  

Confession Time!

I flunked in my 12th Boards. Me, coming from the Maithil brahmin ‘paida hotey he ladka hua toh engineer banega ladki hui toh doctor’ family.

I was almost abandoned by everyone around me. There was a constant cloud of SHAME, in bold, hanging out everywhere I went. Neighbours loathed me, parents hated me and the mother wouldn’t go a second without cursing her womb for carrying me, a failure, for 9 months. Like that thing comes with a display “fail hoga ye baaraveen mein, isko gira do doosra upload karo”.My family didn’t like me. Or so I thought. In reality, they didn’t understand me. They didn’t understand that brainwashing a kid into taking up Science stream for a better prospect in the future does exactly that. I will be dead honest. I am an intelligent dude. I failed because I would do anything. And I mean ANYTHING to avoid studying. I would sit on the study table for three straight hours, making little balls out of papers and playing a mock football match to avoid memorising a Gatterman-Kotch reaction. And the results spoke for it. I failed. Boo fucking hoo.

Now, I wasn’t depressed. Because I knew that this was my doing. I didn’t want to study what was piled on me. I hated for my parents to be ridiculed by the relatives and others around so I kept at it. But it showed the unpreparedness. The results came out and it was out there for the world to see. Vaibhav Jha has flunked his 12th standard CBSE Board exams. But what irked me, or rather, made it very amusing, was the fact that rather than my world comes crashing down (I was pretty cool about it. I knew what I had written in the papers after all LOL), everyone else around me acted like I had committed a crime. 

Relatives who I to this date think are folklore and urban legends, who I have never even seen a picture of, all of them had something to say. And everything they said was underlining the sentiment of “Now this dude done fucked up and he gotta be grounded for possibly forever and made to sit in a small shop that his dad invests in or join a call-centre because the dude can at least spit LOL), everyone else around me acted like I had committed a crime. Relatives who I to this date think are folklore and urban legends, who I have never even seen a picture of, all of them had something to say. None of that happened. Nope. I decided that I will study a bit(I swear that was hard), cheat a tad, and pass my compartments. Kaisa bhi karkey. Tution masters who charged as high as 1500/- an hour (And this is way back) were summoned. They realised in a day that I simply loathed the subjects I was made to study, so to make sure my parents got their monies worth, they thought me innovative ways to cheat or put a word to the invigilator in my centre so that he let me cheat. The world conspired to make sure I passed. I swear to god, the pressure was so much, that some dude told me that he could get me the question papers a day before the exams from CBSE itself and I needed to pay 25k a pop. So, me being a 17-year-old, went to inquire how much a kidney sells for. No shit. I bought into the pressure too. So I know it gets to you. If it got to the cool cat that I thought I was, it ought to get to anyone.

Cut to today, the 26-year-old me runs a small design/advertising setup and has worked with the biggest names in the business. I have marketed start-ups, Production-houses, Film Festivals, Feature Films, Restaurants, Hotels, Actors & Directors. You name it. I make a pretty decent living and so do the people that work with/for me. So, I pay salaries. Me. The dude who was scheduled to sit in a grocery store or a telemarketers chair. I know countless other folks like me. People who failed thrice! (OMG imagine how that would be) And they make 6 figures every month doing what they love.

You can read the full post by Vaibhav here:

There’s so much more to life than exams.