Our daughter, in grade 7, got her half yearly exam transcripts and scores yesterday. Almost all subjects ended up being at 50-60%! In the run up month of the exam, she insisted that she will study by herself and does not need parents facilitation.

When I got to know her scores from Indira, my better half, I thought it is best not to ask scores and do whataboutry, and left her alone to introspect and reflect. I noticed last evening, she was studying immediately after coming home, which she usually resisted.

This morning, I heard from the parent of daughter’s best friend, that while going to school in her car, she shared that she will not let such a disastrous performance happen again!!

Here is an amazing story, to inspire more parents and children.

“MIT professor Moungi Bawendi may have won this year’s Nobel chemistry prize for helping develop “quantum dots” — but he flunked his very first college chemistry exam as an undergraduate.

Talk about bouncing back. MIT professor Moungi Bawendi is a co-winner of this year’s Nobel chemistry prize for helping develop “quantum dots”—nanoparticles that are now found in next generation TV screens and help illuminate tumors within the body.

But as an undergraduate, he flunked his very first chemistry exam, recalling that the experience nearly “destroyed” him.

The 62-year-old of Tunisian and French heritage excelled at science throughout high school, without ever having to break a sweat.

But when he arrived at Harvard University as an undergraduate in the late 1970s, he was in for a rude awakening.

“I was used to not having to study for exams,” he told reporters Wednesday, adding that he was intimidated both by the enormous size of the hall and the stern presence of a proctor.

“I looked at the first question and I couldn’t figure it out, and the second question I couldn’t figure it out,” he remembered.

In the end, he scored 20 out of a 100, the lowest grade in his entire class.

“And I thought, ‘Oh my god, this is the end of me, what am I doing here?'”

Though Bawendi loved chemistry, he realized he hadn’t learned the art of preparing for exams, something he quickly set about rectifying.

“I figured out how to study, which I didn’t know how to do before” he said, and after that “it was 100s on every exam, pretty much.”

His message for young people is simple: “Persevere,” and don’t let setbacks “destroy you.”

“It could easily have destroyed me, my first experience with an F, the lowest grade in my class by far,” he added. “

https://phys.org/news/2023-10-nobel-chemistry-winner-flunked-college.html

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When Indira shared with the Principal of the school, about daughter’s performance and her stubbornness of studying even for exams by herself without any ones help, the Principal said, “Glad she is taking the responsibility of her performance. She will grow and evolve being responsible for actions and outcomes. Mental health is the most important thing and this will help her grow into a balanced and purposeful human being.”

On reading this story I wrote on the my website, one of our wise friends, an educationist, immediately sent a message on my whatsapp, “Svwara is already on Self learning path and which is truly commendable with nurturing by both of you consistently. She is going to be a person we all are going to be very proud. Best wishes for all her amazing new explorations and endeavours.

Indeed! Just need to be the banks nudging the river to flow productively!😀 I responded!

Absolutely and surely that will be there and continue. Her grand parents presence all through is also huge and she is lucky to have them all through her growing years.” – His immediate response

Still, I Hope, our daughter will allow me to sit with her and facilitate her to learn, how to learn, how to analyse and synthesize information to retain and how to respond too in the examinations or elsewhere, in the coming week. She does enjoy my facilitation in math problem solving, but she says tired, within half an hour of discussions where she expresses ‘Wow’s and “Eureka”s. Hope things will turn out better.

A parent’s unending concerns, I must say! Still learning!!