Let Us Paint Our Own Skies

Hi! I am Gursimran Sohal, a Grade 12 student at Vishwajyot High School, Kharghar. I will soon arrive at a crossroad where I will have to choose a career for myself and select a professional course to pursue. However, I find that most of my friends either don’t know what they are truly passionate about, or simply want to pursue what their parents/family want them to do. Worse than that, many-a-times parents end up judging their own children based on their marks. They seem to focus more on the numbers than their children’ actual talent and interests. Here is an address from a daughter to all the parents out there.

A very good morning parents and teachers.

Today I stand before you to speak about something I find to be very unreasonable, unjustified and unfair — Grades.

We, by caring too much about grades, have missed the whole point of education.

Before stating what education is, let us first know what education is not.

Education, dear parents, is not about two digit numbers on our mark sheets.

Education is not about those degrees hanging on our walls.

“There is room for everyone in this world.”

This is what education really is — attempting to figure out our place in this world.

What these twelve years of education have to teach, what one has to learn and what one has to search for, is his place in this world.

Dear parents,

Allow your children to search where they belong.

Let there be freedom.

Freedom to follow their passions.

And most of all, the freedom to choose irrespective of what their mark-sheet says.

Dear parents,

I know you care for us and you want us to be happy and want us to settle. And if you push us a little harder, believe me, we will settle.

We will have an okay 9 to 5 job and an okay life.

This okay job will pay our bills and we will have happy hours during weekends.

But do you know what this okay job won’t be?

This okay job won’t be thrilling!

This okay Job won’t be the reason I will go to bed late and wake up early!

This okay job won’t be my passion.

“Passion”, now that’s the only difference between a job and a career.

“I am merely sixteen years old at present, quite naive, immature and inexperienced but there is one thing I know for certain — Ten years from now or maybe forty years from now when I will have a crooked back and probably a slightly wrinkled face, I will make sure that I can say that ‘I’ chose my life and I didn’t settle for it and that my parents allowed me to paint my sky.”

How many success stories do we need to hear until we give our children permission to write their own success story?

And its okay if that success story doesn’t bring them a paycheck with five zeroes .

Its okay if that success story doesn’t buy them a Lamborghini.

Its okay.

Dear parents,

Let your children write their own success stories.

Without letting their mark-sheets define and dilute.

Let them be free to chase own their stars.