Article#18: School Days

School Days are one of the wonderful days in everyone’s life. Wherever we go, whatever we do, at any point, we cannot experience the same flavour that we do in our school life. The uniqueness lies in the discoveries about ourselves, the environment, the world, day in and day out. Initially we don’t think, slowly we do. Gradually, we get to know many things and by the time, we graduate from the school, we even have some personal things to hide as a person. This kind of learning and development as a human is the most important phase because that leaves its own impact on the society. Here, I would like to present the beauty of school days through this article including my personal experiences.

As a kid, we have only our parents and the surrounding neighbours. But, by the time we join a school, we get our second parents in the form of teachers. Yes, in fact it requires a lot of patience for a Teacher to handle students of Kinder Garden. Usually, they cry, they make noise, they fall sick easily and there can be times where they don’t really listen to the Teacher. It would be a bit hard for some of the students to go to school daily because they get used to their parents and miss them, especially their mothers. But once they get habituated to school, it would be fun to carry their own baggage of books, to apply covers for the books and decorate them with variety of stickers. Here, I would like to share one of my personal experience from Kinder Garden. One fine day, my dad told me that there was going to be a strike in the town and I would be sent back home. So, it was there on my mind and I didn’t take the books out of my bag even after going to class. When Teacher asked me the reason, I told that anyhow the school is going to be closed, so what is the necessity to take the books from the bag? My Teacher was shocked. Even I used to be much active most of the times as a kid, I always appreciate those early mornings wherein I used to stare at the sunrise, and notice how the small red ball slowly turns into a big one and thereby starts spreading the light. At the start of each year, Getting ready to school with a new uniform, new belt, new Tie, new bag, new books, new lunchbox is something that every kid enjoys.

In my school, the day used to start with the Morning Prayer in which we used to sing the national song, “Vandemataram” followed by regional prayer song, “Maa Telugu Talliki”, then we used to take the pledge of India, that says “India is my country. All Indians are my brothers and sisters. I love my country and I am proud of it”. After that, maybe it’s specific to our school, the “Thought of the Day” wherein any of the students can go on to the stage to deliver one beautiful thought regarding anything. Of course, I always used to be in the line. That’s an awesome feeling to see many students standing in front of me listening and I was the one talking with mike on the stage. Sometimes, we used to have such thoughts from our teachers as well. After that, the last part of the prayer includes the news in which any of the students preferably from higher classes should prepare the news and then read it out with the mike on the stage. Yay, I even used to like this and steal all those chances from my friends who have had stage fear. That brings a good confidence in anyone and eliminates stage fear if someone practices it on daily basis. I can proudly say that in this way, my school helped me a lot in developing my personality today. We used to get feedback on the news sometimes from our Head Mistress. Then, after the prayer, we had to form lines while going to our class and we were asked to maintain the discipline of having our standard school uniform with proper belt, tie, badge and shoes. If any of these are missing, we had to take a punishment after the prayer. Of course, there’s an exception in our birthdays. Once after we reach the class, we used to have another round of prayer that includes “Saraswathi Namasthubyam” dedicated to Saraswathi, the Goddess of studies and “Hey ish, hume aisa vardaan dedo”, the prayer in Hindi for the God. Then, it’s the beginning of classes for different subjects. Lunch break used to be for around 1 hour. Again, after the afternoon classes, we used to have evening prayers in which we sing, “Sare Jaha se Acha Hindustan Humara”, another national song followed by the national anthem, “Jana Gana Mana”.

School is in fact the place where we learn everything, reading, writing, General Knowledge, Languages, the basic etiquettes and many more. It’s the place where we get to know the area that we are good at. It shows us the best possible way that we have to move in terms of education. Irrespective of what we are, School is the only place that brings a change within us. It is not just about studies, but even the extracurricular activities that completes one as a student. One more personal experience here is the way my Teacher encouraged me to participate in a Chess competition and how I went on to become the runner of the year for the game. I used to play chess with my father who takes lot of time before proceeding with a single step during the game. I never think too much because I always want to end up the game as soon as possible. This way, I can say that I was only aware of Chess that time. So, one fine day, we got a notice to our class that there’s going to be these competitions. Two or three of my friends turned towards me and started taking my name for some reason, maybe because they are aware of the fact that I am interested in Chess. However, there’s an entry fee to be given before we nominate. I was not sure if I had to participate because neither I have money nor the confidence that time. My Teacher asked me twice if I would participate and even told that she would arrange the participation fee for the time being so I can give later. I gave a nod and joined the competition. During the first round, I won over the other guy and maybe to my luck, the second round I played with a senior who won with 2-3 members. Finally, he won the game and became a winner, myself the runner. That was the first prize I received in the extracurricular activities of my school. If my Teacher hadn’t push me, I would have never had this memory.

Those days when we imagine the characters of stories in our books to the known faces around, those days when we get to know that there is much to learn our own language than we speak, those days when we face the initial failures in little things, but never give up on them, those days when we learn a new language and find it funny, those days when we were much active only during Games classes, those days when we find lot of reasons for coming late and not doing homework, those days when we cry for silly reasons, those days when we feel so much loved by everyone around, those days when we laugh for unknown reasons, those days when we have lot of energy to do anything, those days when we don’t worry about the next day in queue, those days when we try to impress our teachers with many techniques, those days when we have unstoppable fights with our friends, those days when we stare at TV or film without analysing it, those days when we do a professional role-play imagining ourselves becoming a doctor or engineer or some other, those days when we mimic any actors or anyone around us, those days when we eagerly wait for a Sunday and easily fall sick on a Monday, those days when we talk to everyone without any secondary thought, those days when we make friends without any reasons, those days when we appreciate the little things around us, those are the amazing days of our childhood spent mostly in School.

To conclude, don’t forget your school life for it is the best part that we would never get. At the same time, School friends are the real friends because in that stage, friendship just happens. All thanks to my school for giving me enough memories to hold and special thanks to my friends who are still in touch with me and are going to be forever.