Thursday 25 / April / 2024
Muscat: What is important is not how much you have studied, but how well you have studied.
That’s the opinion of Aliva Das, who discovered she had topped the Class XII CBSE Board Examination results in Oman, when they were announced on Saturday afternoon.
“I think of hard work as being focused and diligent,” she said.
“What many people do is study for quite a long time, but they are not really focused on what they are learning. I think that one hour of studying is much better than just sitting with your books for seven or eight hours. You should not be studying all the time and you should develop your extracurricular activities; so, you need to have that balance between work and play.”
Das scored an incredible 98.6 per cent in her final exams, a feat made all the more daunting, given that she was a student of Indian School Muscat’s science stream, which is often said to include some of the toughest academic subjects on offer as part of the Indian Central Board for Secondary Education (CBSE) syllabus.
“Obviously, I am really excited, and I am happy that the hard work that I have put in along with my parents and my teachers has paid off,” she said, in an exclusive interview to Times of Oman.
“I was really not expecting such high marks, but I think it is thanks to God’s grace that I have managed to make everyone proud. ”
As was only natural for someone in her situation, Das wasn’t able to sleep the night before the results were announced, as she was nervous in anticipation of seeing them.
“I couldn’t sleep the night before, I was pacing up and down and I was keeping my parents up as well,” she admitted.
“They told me it was going to be fine and supported me, but when the results were announced, I was too scared to open the webpage so my father did it for me. I consider them to be my good luck charms.”
“I was speechless and couldn’t believe the results I’d got,”added Das.
Felt surreal
“I started screaming and hugging my parents, people began calling me and it felt surreal. Most of my relatives were really glad that all our hard work had paid off. When we go to school, many people tend to goof off and not listen, but when a teacher is teaching, that is when you build your background. Obviously, you will not get everything in the first try, but that is important for remembering certain important concepts.”
It is important, she added, not to chase marks, but to chase education. Das believes that once you chase education, success will come on its own.
“I think you must enjoy what you are doing because then studies don’t become a chore,” she said. “I advise kids to take up subjects they are passionate about, because then you are doing what you care for, and if they do that, it’ll be much easier to do well.”
Having spent most of the last few months at tuitions, at school and hitting the books at home, although she only did that last bit for a couple of hours every day, Das is now planning to embark on the next step of her career: she’s just been offered a place to study computer science at Cornell University in the United States.
“I love computer science, I am a big fan of the big computer companies, and people such as Steve Jobs and Bill Gates,” she revealed. “I am also a fan of women who lead by example, such as Michelle Obama and Malala Yousafzai, who fight for education for everyone.”
