Lessons from the School of Hard Knocks

Schooling is an important phase in our lives and everyone goes through this structured path at least for a decade. However, I feel that the education that takes place outside the controlled environment of a classroom play a more vital role in our life.

I find that learning from ‘real life’ can give us more insight into how we can become better self-directed learners and prepare ourselves for a future that we can’t predict.

I used to be a back-bencher in high school and couldn’t write even a paragraph in my mother tongue without mistakes. I still can recall the humiliation I experienced from my Malayalam teacher in front of other students. He even told my parents I had a learning disability! A significant portion of my adolescence was wasted by a school system that tries to fit a “square peg in a round hole”.

Shockingly only a few of the things I learned in the classroom actually align with the most valuable and important lessons I’ve learned from my lived experiences. There might be very little correlation between the marks you obtain in school and what you would do in the future. I’ve noticed a huge gap between formal education and the real life. I want to share with you some of the things schools don’t teach you that you should learn to succeed in life.

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