10th Grade: The Roller Coaster Year
Hello everyone and welcome back to month 22 of #faltufriday!!
For people who are new here, I recently gave my term 2 of my 10th grade ICSE boards which FINALLY marked the end of an incredibly cosmic roller coaster ride.
The past 15 academic months have been absolutely crazy - dealing with online studies and keeping up with the '10th grade pressure', so I thought, why not share my journey now that I'm finally over with them!
I'm a science student so my boards ended on the 19th of May, 2022.
However, I started preparations for the same, back in March-end, 2021.
15 dreadful yet the most memorable month's of my entire academic journey.
About a week after my 9th grade exams had ended was when 10th grade commenced for me.
Both school and tuition began and the end goal of 10th Grade was set.
The first couple of weeks did seem a bit overwhelming considering the huge pressure and importance that is given to this aspect of your life, however, I dealt with the same soon.
One thing I did from the beginning was not procrastinate.
Dimaag may soch liya tha that I will nail this year of my life.
That's also the reason why I excelled in my initial tuition classes and tests.
Couple of month's in, I, like any of my peers also experienced a bit of a "slump" and burnout and did have my share of setbacks, luckily, mostly in tuitions.
Jumpstart to August, the council announced that they would be conducting TWO BOARD EXAMS.
Each of them would have a prescribed bifurcated reduced syllabus and we were to have our first 40 marker boards in NOVEMBER and the other in march.
A chill of nervousness ran through our spines coupled with the burning lumpy sensation in our throats.
The next few month's marked the loop of the roller coaster.
The dates weren't confirmed and nor was the pattern, all we knew was that we were to give our boards online and MCQ!
For my peeps who're unaware of the ICSE system: Our finals are always a theory paper of 80 marks clubbed with 20 marks practical's for most of our subjects.
The new pattern however stumped us.
Confusion blew through the atmosphere of 10th - so much so that most schools' prelims ended up getting postponed.
Nevertheless, a circular came a few days later which cleared out the air and we were set with one end goal: Boards I in November.
Around September end- October start, our timetable was released.
Yet another occasion for our crippling anxiousness for the same to kick in.
And, ironically just enough to leave once we were greeted with the arrival of an ambiguous notice that stated our boards were postponed indefinitely for "reasons beyond control".
No sooner did we heave a sigh of relief than the council announced the new scheduled dates, which only had a difference of 2 weeks with the earlier one :)
And this time, it was offline.
A million all-nighters and mcq's later we finally finished our boards I in mid December.
But, this is where the real stress started.
I distinctly remember crying the night boards ended as it did not mark the ending of one challenge, but the beginning of another one.
The reason for the same: I had about 7 month's to prepare for my first set of boards, but only 3 months to prepare for the next.
The worst part of all - I had forgotten how to "ratta" solving so many mcq's, so the newer challenge was to get back to my system of rote-learning.
In the prior circular it was announced that our results for semester I would be declared soon after the exam. Since clickbait drives the shoal of the internet, most of us spent the entire month of January checking out random unofficial websites that kept announcing that the results would be declared that very week - postponing it everyday.
At the end of January when most student's felt that "Hmm..maybe they'll release a cumulative score" was when BAM the council took out a notice saying we should brace ourselves for the results were going to come out in THREE DAYS!
Fast heartbeats and sleepless nights later when our results were released it all came to a halt.
I was lucky enough to have passed my first semester with flying colours in all my subjects, including Physics (ICSE friends know what I'm talking about here :P)
Preparing for my boards II, my school announced it's first set of Prelims that was to start from mid-Feb.
The catch here was that no one, absolutely no one, from my grade was prepared. We were all in hopes of passing it with "tukka".
Luckily, our lovely council came to our savior and announced that they had postponed the boards to April end and our prelims should consecutively be postponed so we have ample time for revision for the same.
This was also clubbed with the commencement of compulsory offline school, whose experience I've written about in this post: Here!
Followed by which was my school exams. boards preparations and finally, BOARDS (II).
The feeling that came at the end of my last exam is absolutely indescribable.
The end of a ever-lasting long voyage with so many up's and downs all to finally come to an end!
15 strenuous month's, 15 thousand #cancelboards petitions,15 million all nighter's and 15 billion questions later, we were finally at the end of it.
10th grade was over.
One piece of advice I'd give to my younger readers is if you're approaching this phase of your life soon, try to be meticulous with your work and don't sit back and give up (I know it sounds clichéd but trust me, it works) A lot of people spent their time cheating their way through online classes in my grade and the result day was a proof of the same.
It'll feel hard at first, but you'll get the hang of it soon.
Just don't procrastinate.
That was it for today's post! Hope my fellow 10th and 12th grader readers from all over India could relate to the same!
(Aaj thora jyada hi lamba ho gaya)
Here's a glimpse of my Tenth Grade:
Don't forget to share, follow and comment down your experiences below. Stay tuned for new content, every friday <3
Signing off,
Kuhu :)
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