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Title |
You Can Score More |
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Sub Title |
A book on career management |
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Author |
Suvasish Mukhopadhyay |
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ISBN No. |
813090229X |
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Binding |
PB |
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No. of Pages |
142 |
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Book Size |
140 x 216 mm |
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Publishing Year |
2006 |
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Original Price |
Rs.150.00 |
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Original Publisher |
Viva Books Private Limited |
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Published in |
Viva Books |
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Exclusively Distributed by |
Viva Books Private Limited |
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List Price |
Rs.150.00 |
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Worldwide |
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About The Book |
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Does success always belong to a select few? No. Success
comes from systematic and disciplined study, and it comes to anyone who
tries. Knowing yourself better is the first step. Knowing the right methods
of study is next. But for both, students need an experienced guide to advise
them on what is best. In You Can Score More Suvasish Mukhopadhyay
proves himself to be the expert counsellor every student must have. From
managing your sleeping hours to numbering your answer sheets, here you will
find practical tips on everything one must take care of during student life.
They include: • Ten golden rules for every student • Adjusting with the friend circle • Hostelmates and roommates • Attending classes • Communication • Self-motivation • How to use books • Time management • Overcome shyness • Examination fever • Finding the right job Written in a personal style, this book will tell you how
you can score more not only in an examination but also in life. About the Author: Suvashish Mukhopadhyay has been teaching for many years.
Career management is his area of research. He has guided many students in
their college lives and later careers. He has three more publications. |
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P
R E F A C E
This book is about examination
management and students’ psyche. My ocean of experience about the students’
community motivated me to write this book. My observations and years of
experience are unfurled in this book. Difficulties of many students lightened
many dark corners of my mind. Right from the starting of my teaching career I
found many students failing in many subjects and one more thing, which I
noticed is, students are unable to score more in spite of hard work. I have
tried to counsel the whole students’ community across the globe through this
book. It took two years to write this book, but I observed the students’
community since 1990. Whenever I resolved to begin writing this book, some
unseen force stopped me. The delay resulted in an increased number of case
studies. There is so much to be done, so much to be seen and so many fresh
avenues to be explored. I have tried to keep the book as concise as possible.
By the title of the book it seems to be a guide to help the students to score
more. Actually how to score more in examinations is discussed in detail, but
that is only a part of this book. Apart from that probably all the aspects of a
student’s life (related to their examination, academics and too some extent
personal life) are discussed at length. This book touches upon varied facets of
students’ community. I do hope and trust, if anybody assimilates the total
content of this book than he is bound to score more in every fields of life.
More emphasis is given on the selection of the right vocation. True education
should also help the students to discover what he is most interested in. If a
student doesn’t find the vocation that he is most suited to, he will find life
worthless. He will feel frustrated, doing something, which he doesn’t want to
do. True education is to learn ‘how to think, not what to think.’ This concept
of the famous mentor and philosopher J. Krishnamurty is highlighted in this
book. The only absolute in the world, Marx said, is change. How the students’
community has to act with the changing environment is discussed at length.
Nothing based on imagination is written in this book. My years of experience in
the field of education is its source. The whole book is written from my
teaching experience. It is written in English so that it can reach the wider
cross section of the globe. I have narrated very minute observations
accumulated over twelve years of time. I am thankful to those moments, which
helped me to observe some incidents very minutely. I am a person who could
never separate himself from teaching and thinking positive for the students’
community. According to my view students’ community is the most sacred and
innocent community, but mostly neglected in our country. In a country like
Suvasish Mukhopadhyay
professor_sm@rediffmail.com
C
O N T E N T S
1.Ten Golden Rules for Every Student
2. Different
Ways to Make a Teacher Happy
3. Not to be Influenced by Anybody in the
4. How to Select the Right Profession
5. Why Not to Allow Anybody to Discourage You
6. How to
Accept Unexpected Results and Failures
7. Language Problem and Solution to it
8. Effect of
Handwriting
9. Importance of Discipline
10. Expose Your Hidden Potential
11. Impact of School and College
12. Impact of
13. Importance of Communication
14. How to Choose Questions
15. Time Management in the Examination
16. How to Tackle Objective Type of Questions
17. How to Tackle Negative Marking
18. How to Learn from Mistakes
19. How to Give Interviews
20. Motivate Yourself
21. How to Develop Your Personality
22. How to Tackle Stress
23. Essential Qualities of a Student
24. Values of Physical Attendance
25. Manner of Submission
26. First Lecture of Any Subject and Its Importance
27. First Chapter of Every Subject
28. Completing the Whole Syllabus: a Necessary
29. How to Adjust with Hostelmates and Roommates
30. Why Bunking Lectures is to be Avoided
31. How to Use the Books
32. Role of Textbooks and Reference Books
33. How to Use the Library
34. Sleep Management
35. Why to Purchase the Books
36. Why to Use Your Own Calculator
37. Why the Recycle Bin is the Costliest
38. How to Take the Notes
39. Effect of True Vocation
40. Study Routine of a Student
41. Be Aware of the Subject, Don’t Beware of It
42. Do not Label Subjects as Easy And Difficult
43. Make Your
Work Your Play
44. Be Sincere but Don’t be Serious
45. Importance
of Good Results
46. Knowledge
of English
47. Basic Knowledge of a Subject
48. Why Not to Think Much about the Job
49. Importance
of Site Visit
50. Why Not to Crave for Anything
51. Rapport between Students, Teachers and Parents
52. Time Management
53. How to Give
Written Examination
54. How to Give Oral Examination
55. How to
Complete the Project Work
56. Computer
Knowledge and Its Role
57. GRE and TOEFL
58. Effects of Practical Training
59. Role of Good Recommendation
60. Value of Teaching Habit
61. Value of Participation in Different Programmes
62. Value of Group Discussion
63. Why Study after Examination
64. Examination Fever
65. How to Use Vacation
66. How to Present a Seminar
67. How to Tackle the Research Work
68. How to Maintain Relations with Your Seniors
69. Down-to-Earth Examples
70. Comparison between Degree and Knowledge
71. How to Overcome Shyness
72. Why Try Not to Develop a Complex
73.Need to have a Higher Aim
74. How to be Professional
75. Relation between Marks and Knowledge
76. How to Control Homesickness
77. Choice of Elective Subjects
78. Why Not to Repress Anything
79. Importance of Marks
80. How to Use the Preparation Leave and the Gaps
Between the Examinations
81. Why the Question Papers of the Last Three
Semesters are Very Important
82. Test of General Knowledge of Science
83. How to Complete the Whole Syllabus
84. Importance of Teamwork
85. Concentration Versus Attention
86. Remember, Life is Not a Journey of Few Years
1. How to Select the Right
Profession
It is one of the most difficult
tasks in anybody’s life. So many people are in wrong professions. It may be due
to wrong decision taken or tough competition faced. It requires enormous
self-introspection and counselling from right people to select the right
profession. If a person is able to make a right choice of his profession, he
can be very successful even with comparatively less labour. The reverse is also
true. Though we say that success is a function of labour and effort, it may not
be always true. No man is equally skilled for all the professions. Every person
is perfect for one unique profession. The most important phase in a student’s
life is the period between his school and junior college and the second most
important phase is the period between the junior college and the college life.
A student must know what he wants to be and he must strive to be only that. A
boy, who has allergy of mathematics and drawing, can’t be a successful
engineer. Initial indications are always
there, but we overlook or ignore them. Neglecting these indications if anybody
goes for a wrong profession he is bound to fail. In this regard I would request
the parents and senior members of the family not to impose any vocation on a
student against his will. They must allow the child to think freely. One more
example can be given. A boy whose favourite subject is chemistry, becomes more
successful as a chemical engineer. But in our society people confuse the young
minds and all the time they provoke the young minds to go for the stream, which
offers more money. In last couple of years there was a craze for IT
(Information Technology). It was observed that students totally disinterested
in ‘IT’ took it up as their career due to the pressure of their family members.
They may earn fat pay-packets but their money will corrode their soul. One
should not read merely to pass an examination. Similarly he should not read
only to get a job. If money earning is the only mission in life, why go for
education at all? There are many short routes to success. The juncture between
the junior college and college days can be compared with the meandering of a
river. This meandering is the most important turn in a student’s career. A
student must cling to the subject for which there is a positive propensity in
his mind. A wrong profession can be compared with hot water. It may satisfy
one’s need but can’t fulfil his thirst. The guardians, the well-wishers and
other family members must observe the mental condition of the students very
carefully. They must have a probing glimpse into the student’s mind. Only the
proper counselling can help a student in selecting a right profession. Only if
a student gets the right vocation, he will succeed in life, as there will be a
total unfurling of his creative energy.
One should observe the nature and learn a lot from it. If we really
think about a particular issue, many doubts will disappear and we will be able
to arrive at a proper conclusion. Gradually our dilemmas will dwindle into good
decisions. Education is the pivot, on which the career of a student is mounted.
It controls our future, because,
“Education is light;
Education is understanding;
Education is awareness;
Education is authenticity.”
- J. Krishnamurty
2. Time Management in the
Examination
Time
management in the examination is the most important management for a student. I
have observed hundreds of good students who failed to complete their whole
paper due to lack of time. Truly speaking it is not the lack of time, but the
lack of time management. Within the same frame of time a particular cross
section of the students complete the whole paper and the second group of
students fails to do that. Let us take a practical example. Let there be six
questions in a paper and they are to be answered within the three hours.
Generally the students start with a difficult question and complete it in the
first forty minutes. In this way by the time they reach the fifth question,
they already have consumed more than two and a half hours and hardly any time
remains to answer the last question. It becomes very difficult for the students
to write the full answer of the last question. Chance of rechecking of the
answers does not arise due to the shortage of time. The reason is nothing but
the sheer lack of time management.
Now let me
tell you about proper time management and I am taking the same practical
problems discussed above. If there are six questions and time on hand is three
hours, you first calculate the time per question. After the uniform
distribution of time it is found that you can give half-an-hour time to a
question. In this case you attempt any question for twenty-five minutes and if
it remains incomplete, keep some space and switch over to the next question. By
one hundred and fifty minutes you will be able to attempt all the six questions
and in the last thirty minutes you can give the finishing touches along with
the rechecking. Secondly recheck after answering a question immediately and it
is always preferred. Please note one thing.
Very neat and tidy answers of five questions will bring less mark than
comparatively less tidy answers of six questions. It is essential to attempt
all the questions. If you can’t, you will be side-tracked in this age of cut-
throat competition.
3. Motivate Yourself
In this world people are very busy
and nobody is there to motivate you. Either they don’t have the wish to motivate you or they don’t
have the time. In this world of rat race even the parents are too busy and they
can’t give the required time to their children. Due to lack of motivation many
young minds die and they stop giving positive result. They start underestimating
themselves. In this connection I would like to refer to one quotation,
“Never underestimate yourself. You are the most important thing in
this universe.”
-Edward L.Kramer
In this cruel atmosphere if a young
mind dies, nobody bothers for it (except few family members). Even the family
members stop being considerate after a couple of months. Your grief is
absolutely yours; the external world doesn’t have the intention and time to
share it. In this place you are requested to do self-counselling and it can
extract the highest output out of you. Never suffer from fear of failure. Fear
of failure is more acidic than failure itself. You must have high self-esteem.
You must motivate yourself and it must be a continuous process. Single time
motivation doesn’t stay for a long time. It evaporates very quickly. You
have to be self-made and all the time you must say to yourself, ‘I CAN DO IT.’
There was a famous psychiatrist and he cured many dreaded diseases just with
positive thoughts. Negative thoughts itself is death. Motivation and specially
self-motivation is the gateway to success. A man with positive thought rarely
becomes tired even after a tiring work schedule. On the other hand a man with
negative thoughts becomes tired even after minimal work. This happens due to
the difference in the states of mind. A positive mind continuously supplies
energy while a negative mind can be compared with a black body. Black body
absorbs energy. Details regarding the black body can’t be described here. It
comes under the area of the subject named Heat Transfer. Unless your mind is
tired, you can’t be tired. For the negative-minded people their mind is tired
even before the work is started. Self-belief is another aspect of
self-motivation. There is a saying,
“In order to succeed, we must believe that we can.”
-Michael Korda
How true it
is! If you have self-confidence no
external resistance can prevent you from getting success but if you lack
self-confidence, even the slightest difficulty may become the cause of your
failure. A green jackfruit can be softened by blows, but not made sweet,
because sweetness is an internal matter and that can’t be imposed. One must be
internally driven to be a successful person. You must have some commitments. It
will give birth to excitement and ultimate resultant will be motivation. If you
say to yourself, “NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE” then 99% of the difficulties
will be eliminated. Lastly I would say that life is very precious. No one
should waste it. I do say, for creating fire we require only a spark.
Motivation is that spark. Stand in front of a mirror, see yourself and just
say, ‘I Can.’
4. Sleep Management
Sleep management is a very important management in a student’s life.
Generally it is observed that the students sleep too much through out the year.
While they hardly sleep for 3-4 hours per day during the preparation leave and
examination. Both are damaging. The hostelites keep up very late in the night and
generally they are late risers. On holidays they prefer to skip even their
breakfast for having a sound nap and directly they go for the lunch. It is my
personal observation right from my college days. There are imbalances in the
pattern of sleep. First there can be a question; i.e. how many hours of sleep
is required? Somebody says eight hours; some people say seven hours whereas
some assert that six hours of sleep is sufficient. Another group is there who
say even nine hours of sleep is insufficient. Often we forget to note the time
when you start sleeping. If one goes to bed very late at night, even twelve
hours of sleep may not be sufficient, but if anybody goes to bed around10.00
p.m. then I do think seven hours of sleep is adequate, at the most it may be
extended to eight hours.
During examination and during the gap between two examinations
generally the students’ community sleeps very less. It is very dangerous. It
creates a lot of stress, indigestion and other disorders in the body. I have
personally observed many students getting totally confused in the examination
hall. The reason is simple. They don’t sleep the night before the day of the
examination. If you don’t give proper rest to your body and mind, they may
betray you at the most critical time. If anyone wants to manage everything at
the eleventh hour, the efficiency of the job performed will suffer. So it is
advisable to have a regular and uniform pattern of sleep. This is the key to
sleep management. It is observed that the boys just lie in the bed when they
are not sleepy. It is just the canalization of lethargy. You can awaken a man
who is asleep, but not one who is awake. It is advisable to go to bed only when
one wants to sleep and post-pandrial nap is not recommended at all. Though I understand
that it is not possible to change the age-old habit overnight but one can mould
his life-routine gradually. If we can’t manage our pattern of sleep, the
sleeping pattern will rule us and failure becomes inevitable due to wrong sleep
management. Many of the times it is found that a very intelligent person may
become a great failure and in most of the cases the reason behind it is a life
style without any discipline. The reverse is also true. Many times it is observed that a very
ordinary person with average intelligence scales the flight of success in his
career. The reason is nothing else but the disciplined life style. So why not
to be disciplined? After all, it pays though it is initially difficult to
adopt.
5. GRE and TOEFL
These are the two examinations, which
have gained a steady popularity since 1970, and now these two names are so
common that there is hardly a student who doesn’t know about them. It is
essential to pass these two examinations for pursuing higher studies in the
U.S.A. Thousands of students go to
Before writing in detail about GRE and TOEFL I must give the
full form of these two abbreviated terms. GRE means ‘Graduate Record
Examination’ and TOEFL means ‘Test of English as a Foreign Language.’ There are
very few students who get low score in TOEFL. One must score 213 out of 250 in
TOEFL. But the students from the vernacular medium face difficulty in TOEFL.
For scoring well in this exam, it is essential that one is very familiar with
the American accent. There are audio aids, which help the students. But in GRE
the score matters a lot. Out of 1600 if you get 1200 or more than you are on
the safer side. Though it depends on the stream. For the streams like Computer
and IT relatively higher GRE score is required. For branches like Civil,
Metallurgy a comparatively low GRE score can serve the purpose. In earlier days
there used to be GRE examination on paper and there used to be particular
dates. Till last year the total score of GRE was 2400. Now-a-days the pattern
is absolutely student friendly. Now-a-days the exam is to be given on line and
you can appear on any day, which suits you. Only you have to take the date from
the examination authority. You may not have to be a graduate. One can appear
for GRE exam in the pre-final year or final year also. Earlier there used to be
three sections in GRE. One was the language and vocabulary, the second one was
basic mathematics and aptitudes related to rudimentary mathematics and the last
one was test of logic or test of reasoning. Since the second part was related
to school level mathematics, it was the easiest part of the whole exam.
Now-a-days there are only two sections. They are English and aptitude. Apart
from that there is essay writing. For that the marks obtained are not counted.
For an exam like GRE a candidate must not have great imagination or very high
intelligence. What is required is the speed with accuracy. Any American
university, before giving admission to a student, considers four factors. They
are given below according to the descending order of importance. Though the
order given by me may vary from university to university, the general order is-
i)
GRE
score
ii)
Overall
academic progress
iii)
Recommendation
(generally three recommendations are required)
iv)
SOP
i.e. Statement of Purpose.
Assuming that the candidates who
appear for GRE possess an above average academic track record I would like to
give stress only on GRE score. Good GRE score requires good and regular
practice. Go on giving dummy examinations as often as possible. Don’t have a
half-hearted preparation. For approaching any exam, whether it is GRE or other
exam, you must have a sound preparation. You must try to have good results in
the first chance. In my teaching career I have recommended innumerable students
to various American universities. From my personal experience I can say most of
the students get a standard GRE score, which is neither bad nor very good. So
you must try to have a very good GRE score so that by your score itself, you
can eliminate others. To get admission is not a very difficult thing but if
your score is low, you have to compromise with the choice of your university
and you may have to even compromise with the branch of study for which you opt.
Lastly with a low score in this age of cut-throat competition, you can’t think
of financial aid. So when the score is so important, adequate labour and time
must be given. Sometimes it becomes really difficult to prepare simultaneously
for GRE and your subject of graduation (it may be engineering, science, arts or
commerce). I have found many good students appearing for GRE after completion
of their graduation. Obviously they lose one year. They pursue their M.S. after
a gap of one year. But during that gap they mainly prepare for GRE and
sometimes they take up some job. It is up to you, which way you would prefer to
choose.
6. Effects of Practical Training
“It is good to have enthusiasm. It is
good to have will, but it is essential to have training.”
-Jawaharlal Nehru
How true the above saying is! It becomes more true when the
training becomes a practical one. It may be cooking or surgery. There is no
short cut to it. You can zip the contents in a floppy and use the same space
for keeping more bytes but when it is practical training you can’t zip it. In
our country there is an ever-widening gulf between the theoretical examination
system and the practical application of learning. Students solve fourth order
differential equations; partial heterogeneous differential equations and pass the
examinations. But if you ask them the physical significance of a differential
equation, they falter, because they don’t know it. All the time the academic
activities are at low ebb due to lack of practical training. Unless the gulf
between the theory and practical is bridged, we can’t go ahead with a good
speed. For having the thorough practical knowledge there is only one remedy.
One has to involve himself continuously in the practice of the practical
training. There is a very famous Chinese proverb. It is given below for your
perusal.
“Tell me and I will forget; show me and I may remember,
involve me and I will understand.”
I do think you must have enjoyed the essence of the above
proverb. Nothing is more important than involvement. There must be totality in
the involvement. If you are a team member of mechanical engineers in an engine
room of a ship, never try to keep distance from the machines. Touch it, feel
it, love it, repair it and get totally blackened by the oil and grease of the
engine. That machine oil is the true ornament for an engineer and unless you
get yourself blackened, you can’t really understand the working of a machine.
In a partially cold atmosphere if you continuously think of hot water for
taking bath, you can’t enjoy the winter. For enjoying the winter, you must pour
cold water over your body at least once. That is essential. I would like to
share a joke to show how theoretical people can be. While on a visit to wild
life sanctuary a group of students along with the professor, was suddenly
attacked by a lion. The professor advised the students to keep calm. He told
the boys, “Have you not read my book about lions in which I have mentioned that
if one stares at a lion and keeps calm, it will not be harmful.” One student
replied, ‘But has the lion read your book?’ This above joke makes it crystal
clear how the theory and practical are miles apart. If proper steps are not
taken, the gulf will be wider. I have met many doctors who don’t know how to
push injection in a comparatively less painful way. This is due to lack of
practice. They are not familiar with the pushing angle. If you ask them, their
ego gets hurt. Immediately they say, “To push the injection is the job of a
nurse, it is not doctor’s job.” They can’t shrug off their responsibility by
giving such a reply. They are not supposed to do the job of a nurse. I do agree
with them. But there is a question. Are they doing their own job properly? Once
one Bengali person went to
“A touch that never hurts;
A temper that never tires;
A heart that never hardens.”
-Dr. Lucis
To how many
doctors is this quotation applicable? Probably very few doctors qualify for
such a compliment in this money-making age. Everybody knows his lacunae; only
they try to hide it behind the curtain of their puffed-up ego. Whether a man is
a student or teacher, the cause of his ego is his lacunae. In this world no one
will come forward to teach us. It is we who have to take the
initiative. If you are a student of mechanical engineering, just go to the
nearby garage and get yourself thoroughly trained. Be a garage boy who knows
the differential equations and its applications. It is priceless. If you really
do that, then you will be the best mechanical engineer of the world.