"College life was a lot of fun, though problems come as fast as the cheetah runs, but its what motivates me to do the best I can"

One of the most interesting stages in life that gives you an opportunity to explore is the ‘college phase.’ Life at college is the time when the teenage years end and we all dive deep into the ocean of new beginnings and possibilities. This golden period better equips you for all the challenges you’ll face in life and creates a strong foundation of knowledge. 

My experience as a first year student of LSR and the experience of bring bubbled at home due to COVID-19 taught me one thing ,“Life is unpredictable.”

You can be sunflowers as college might be good, it might be bad, it might be weird, and it might not interest you, but expect anything to happen. 

For example, you might have a wonderful internship this moment, and be fired the very next moment. College life prepares you for all of this. It is a Melting pot, with perfect blend of joy and hardships. A melting pot where all cultures melt to give you “Exposure”.  You meet different people, you interact with them, you learn about their cultures and grow as a person. You will understand how to talk to different people, how to judge their behaviour, thus helping you with important life skills.  

You learn to sit through a boring lecture; you try to cope up with the surprisingly strenuous syllabus, and you have the opportunity to learn from some great research minds. Academia, as they say, never lets you go free. People might try to motivate you by telling that you need to study only through your school years and chill during the college life, but that isn’t true.

Another life lesson you will remember – the learning never ends. You find campus groups or student groups where you can explore your co-curricular skills along with many other students like you. You share common interests, and thus you share common ideas. There might have been a time where you would have had to give up drawing for your Board Examination Preparation. 

Trust me, once you get into a good college, you will get an opportunity to be the artist you always wanted to be through probably a fine arts campus group. You could be that director, you could be that vocalist, you could be the dancer of your dreams – college is the Santa Claus that keeps on giving all these wonderful opportunities while you’re in it. There are also campus festivals, which draw a lot of fun crowd from other colleges and let you show off your skills. You could also enjoy with the celebrities who are invited to perform, or even show off your technical prowess in a tech festival.

And obviously, the seniors. If I were asked to play a icebreaker round and had to choose between Friends and Seniors. SENIORS!, I would scream that. Seniors of your societies or even departments are the people who mould you. Seeing them is learning as they are the best influencers in College life. Even in a party, they teach you lot. How to balance everything ? 

So, one fine day when you see pictures from the college of you and your friends having a good time, you’ll definitely land up smiling silently. That’s the beauty of college life. It stays with you long after you’ve climbed those ladders of success and forgotten the name of that cute crush you used to drool over.

Life at college is a wild mish-mash of experiences, what with all sort of hilarious stuff going down in the hostels!

The life at college is a time when you can decide your career. It’s a time of dreams and innumerable paths. You can work for a non-profit organization and even gain the satisfaction of being a humanitarian. The point is that you are free to try out these new things and no one is going to forcefully control the decisions you make. Every nook and corner of the college you’d find a peaceful spot full of natural surroundings, who’s value you will only realize once you graduate from your campus. You will always remember the early morning fog, your hostel’s adorable “puppy” or even your grumpy stationery shopkeeper and the morning ice teas of Nescafe as I miss it right now.

Uncertainty: The COVID and answer to all our questions

New sessions, results, new college, societies, new city. All the dreams and hopes were shattered due to the Pandemic. And the only answer to our questions is ‘ Uncertainty’.  The on field experiences of college campus can’t be fulfilled by online classes. The loss of  morning chit chat session about politics and fashion with cheese sandwich and  ice tea can’t be fixed.  

Circumstances and Human Race has always been close relatives as we “ HOOMANS” can fight all odds and still be productive. Colleges have offered students hell lot of opportunities with work from Home culture, which made the productivity race a proton factor.

Well, we need to understand that the ‘new normal’ has to be the reality and the race of productivity sometimes needs to be balanced.  

So, remember that there will be moments that carry a lot of sentimental value and you can’t help but procrastinate about the normal life. But even the friendships you make in college life and through the online classes is the most important aspect. These people will give you strength and be your knights in shining armor all your life. The time you spend with your friends, playing Mafia, Poker, or arguing about any random topic, your regular lecture “ online bunking” to watch a new release of your favorite star, will always stay in your heart. Planning road trips for post covid, and impulsive binge watching —all these things make you more emotional. So, just adapt to situations now and hope for the best.

The normalcy till December 2019 is dearly missed by the people across the globe, with no restrictions, stepping out at any time of the day, be it to simply hang out with friends or to sit and have a little “me time” at the café. The sudden outbreak of the deadly virus has affected people of all age groups. The normalcy was an excuse for some to escape the toxic environment of home and take a break from the reality. Alas, 2020 wasn’t in their favour.

Since the lockdown had been implement worldwide, the aim was to eradicate the spread of the virus and eventually, the virus itself. Confining themselves at home, the mental health wasn’t given much of a thought, with the routine life coming to a halt altogether.

For children, they found comfort and pastime in extreme exposure in front of Television screens, and gadgets supporting the usage of internet. In a study it was found for such a prolonged exposure can lead to lower the child’s self-esteem with the internet proving out to lead in an addiction disorder in many. With limited external interaction, the “indoor pollution” can affect the development of a child and hence results in limited cognitive abilities. Internet is a home to cyberattacks as we as cyber bullying, henceforth, affecting the mental of a child. Therefore, the children plunge themselves in an ocean of depression, anxiety, avoidance behaviour and even PTSD. The same set of problems are faced by children who have been confined in the hospitals from being infected by the deadly virus, especially with the rise of reports in children being sexually harassed during the confinement, the child lives through a traumatic experience without anyone to turn into, apart from their family takes a toll on the child.

A drastic impact proved to be on students and adults living away from home and migrant laborers stranded in their temporary homes, for those living on rent, it put them in a tough situation for them to pay the rent before the regulation of work from home came into effect.  Most adults drove into the decoy of satisfaction by online pornography. The disruption in most people’s sexual lives persuaded the individuals to use such platform to cope up from the on-going stress of rendered jobless with a deadly virus outbreak, living afar from their beloveds, which sadly could lead to depressive symptoms.

Another age group drastically affected by this were the elderly and sick. For those who were assigned caregivers to look after the sick, now were rendered helpless and alone in their homes. Such people are also known to have a higher risk of acquiring an infection, and for those who continued with their jobs were left in wonderment if they weren’t the carriers of the infection which could affect them and their families.

This year also saw an alarming rise within the cases of Domestic Violence alone. Between March 25 and May 31, 2020, 3,11,477 complaints were recorded which were made by women. The complaints recorded within a 68-day period were higher than those recorded between March and May in last 10 years. Delhi and U.P. saw the highest number of complains, followed by Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh. According to the data, 86% of women who were victims to the violence during that period never sought help, 77% victims didn’t mention the dreadfulness of the situation to anyone.  Women faced Physical, Sexual and even both. The highest number of sufferers documented were the ones who faced Sexual Abuse, which summed up to about 80.6 who never dared to tell anyone. For those who had reported the incidents were 14% but only 7% reached out to relevant authorities, but more than 90% of the victims sought help only from their immediate family.

A study was conducted by a team of researchers via an online survey which was proliferated over the social media between May 9 to May 15, 2020, using an anonymous Google form. The team used items like anxiety, depressive symptoms, symptoms of internet addiction, pornography addiction, experiences of hostility, changes in food and sleep habits, social empathy and relationship quality, to construct the overall picture of social and psychological experience during the lockdown period. They also conducted 14 qualitative interviews from May 10 to May 17, 2020. The subjects were self-selected by broad social media invitations. The survey included a total of 282 Indian adults, in which ¾ of people belonged to the age group of 30 years and younger. Following the figures, 88% were educated beyond the 12th standard about 81% were urban residents.

The concluded with depressive symptoms, higher amongst those who an addiction towards pornography. The presence of depressive and anxiety symptoms was expected and linked to a higher chance of self-reported sleep disorder and changes in food patterns. For those who were connected with their loved ones and shared their vulnerabilities shoed more social empathy and better social relationships.

The researchers concluded by stating, “To our knowledge, this is the first study to look at the differential psychological impact of the lockdown across different social groups in India. Our study also highlighted a few positive aspects of the lockdown, underscoring the increase in social empathy and strengthened social bonds among Indian adults.”

Image source-https://www.cedars-sinai.org/blog/hidden-symptoms-of-stress.html

HOME SCHOOLING: Rejection of the cookie-cutter approach to education

“The philosophy of Home Schooling is, you take real life and then you turn that into schooling.”

“Tota Kahani” by Rabindranath Tagore narrates the story of a free-spirited parrot who would hop, skip, fly and sing all day. A king ordered that the bird be 'civilized', and so it was put in a golden cage. In the flood of restrictions and instructions, it soon forgot to sing, and then, couldn't even squawk. When it tried to fly, its wings were clipped. Soon the parrot died, with not a sound except for the rustle of books in its stomach.

The same story is painted on the walls of Shikshantar in Udaipur, which calls itself a people's institute for rethinking education and development. In the mural, trapped in its gilded cage, this parrot, too, forgets how to sing. But unlike in Tagore's story, the narrative in Shikshantar has been tweaked to accommodate hope. Here, the parrot breaks free instead, snapping, as it were, the shackles of 'formal schooling'.

Homeschooling is home education. In many ways, homeschooling is a more organic form of education that focuses on getting out of traditional classrooms that focus on a one-to-many, generalist education. A homeschool-styled learning environment is more personalized to the student, with individual attention. If your son is struggling in reading or writing, parents can take the time necessary to make sure he masters the concepts. In fact, unlike a traditional classroom where curriculum and resources are predetermined, a homeschool program can change curriculum and tactics to ensure a successful outcome. Likewise, if your daughter is excelling in math or science, there is no need to proceed at a slow pace or continue using a curriculum that may not be challenging enough.

In short, homeschooling is about one-to-one learning.

Homeschooling has gained popularity in the new millennium with a small minority of households abandoning the rote learning and exam-obsessed mainstream school system to provide their children individualized primary-secondary education at home to develop their creative, critical thinking and problem solving cognitive capabilities.

Broadly speaking, home educators divide into three major groups: those who are motivated by religious and moral reasons; those who have philosophical or pedagogical reasons; and those who turn to home education because of problems their children experience in school, both academic and social.

Home Schooling in India lays down its root from the ancient gurukul schooling system which was based on parent/teacher-led education in home environments. Rabindranath Tagore's Visva-Bharati University, Sri Aurobindo's Sri Aurobindo International Center of Education and Mahatma Gandhi's ideal of "basic education had the element of home-schooling.

Homeschooling in India does not require any registration, recognition or regulation by any agency or authority. Most parents who choose to do so either follow the CBSE curriculum or opt for the state board syllabus. Home schooled children can appear for the IGCSE (International General Certificate of Secondary Education) exams as private candidates, or write the Class 10/12 examinations of the National Institute of Open Learning (NIOS), which gives students the option to get a degree or certificate and is conducted at centres across the country. Sahal Kaushik, the youngest pupil to not only crack IIT but also topple in Delhi with AIR 33 at the age of 14 is the gift of Home-schooling.

In the United States — inevitably the pioneer of homeschooling — an estimated 2.3 million children are being educated at home with this number growing by 7-12 percent annually. According to Brian D. Ray, president of the Salem (Oregon)-based National Home Education Research Institute, homeschooling “may be the fastest growing form of education in the United States”.

Expansion of the notion of learning

The truth is, children are born learning; it’s a survival skill that comes naturally to them. Genuine learning can go beyond core educational topics. The proponents of Home Schooling argue that school is a monoculture which limits the learning process of children and formal schooling forces to study only specified subjects, play prescribed sports, and mingle with children in their own age groups in strictly controlled environments. Such regimentation is contrary to the natural growth cycle of children. Home Schooling children learn socialization skills by interacting with people of all age groups and elements of nature such as animals and plant life.

 Following interests

So, if your kid loves video games, play with them. Read a graphic novel on Minecraft. If they’re interested in knights and superheroes, read books on the subject. Draw them on construction paper, or in sidewalk chalk outside. Talk about what it means to be a hero.

Flexibility.

If your child is struggling with a subject or a specific concept, you do not need to skip it and move on. Instead, you can work with your child until she/ he has mastered the material. Homeschooling allows you to take all the time you need to ensure learning is taking place. Likewise, if your child is ready to move on, you do not need to waste time on redundant or repetitive lessons. Homeschooling children can move through educational materials at a faster pace than their peers.

Practical Learning

Kids who are homeschooled also may get out in their communities more than other kids. They might get to experience hands-on education at museums, libraries, businesses, marinas, and other community resources. They also might volunteer or participate in "service learning" where they take on local projects.

 The pathway to unlocking your child’s potential.

Teach for India fellow Harshad Tathed, who worked on a documentary film titled Project Nomad about alternative education including homeschooling in India, believes this alternative schooling system is becoming increasingly popular because of its mix of basic elementary education and propensity to develop the special intelligence of children. “Children learn best when they are encouraged to question, investigate and research. This transforms them into creative and innovative problem solvers. According to a study conducted by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), USA, in 2017, at age three, 98 percent of children are creative, but by the time they reach the age of 15, only 2 percent remain creative. This shocking revelation prompted me to work on the documentary film to educate parents about the benefits of homeschooling and other alternative education options,” says Tathed, chief executive of Swayam Bodh Gurukul, a learning centre in Pune which tutors children who fail in school or “don’t like going to school at all”.

Special Care

Parents of children who have learning disabilities are another set who opt for homeschooling because they feel schools are unable to cater to the special needs of their kids.

 Lack of Socialization

The standard notions that home-based education leads to socially ill-adjusted children and limited career opportunities for them. Effects on social life can be another possible disadvantage for homeschooled kids. All kids need to have friends and be around other children. Some homeschoolers may feel cut off from kids their age or feel like they spend too much time with their families.

Lack of Infrastructures

 A kid who's homeschooled doesn't have the convenience of school facilities, such as a gymnasium, science lab, or art studio. The child may be taught at the kitchen table or at a "school" area in the home. He or she might do science experiments in the kitchen or go outside to work on an art project. Some parents who homeschool their kids form groups so their kids can go together to take art classes and take part in other group learning activities, like field trips.

With home education gaining momentum and respectability worldwide, suspicion about the academic proficiency of homeschooled children is waning.

Some of the disadvantages of homeschooling include, homeschooled children tend to be pampered mother’s darlings who can’t take the heat of competition in adult life. There’s also a good chance of their transforming into self-indulgent and undisciplined spoiled brats grown fat on extravagant meals.

Home Schooling has washed up on Indian shores, it’s a tiny minority movement because it requires extraordinary investment in terms of time, dedication, patience and relearning capabilities on the part of one or increasingly, both parents — a difficult proposition for two-income households.

At least one parent has to sacrifice her career ambitions or place them on hold. Therefore, despite widespread dissatisfaction with factory-style exam-oriented primary-secondary education, the overwhelming majority of the country’s 60 million middle-class households can’t afford to homeschool their children.

How is homeschool socialization different?

For one thing, homeschoolers do not have the same exposure to peer pressure and bullying, both of which are tied to poorer academic performance and lower self-esteem.

Homeschooling also means less daily interaction with large numbers of kids in a child’s age group. And homeschoolers can end up spending less time each day participating in organized sports and activities with their peers.

However, this does not mean that homeschoolers have no access to their peers, or have no ability to play sports or socially interact with others outside their family. In fact, on average, homeschoolers participate more in their community, are less sedentary, and socialize with a wider mix of adults (especially professionals) than their public school counterparts. As part of its flexible nature and focus on one-on-one / personalized learning, homeschooling involves more field trips, real-life experiences, and hands-on learning. When it comes to sports, homeschoolers often participate in recreational leagues or homeschool sports classes offered in their community. Some students are homeschooled because their athletic or artistic talents have them engaged in sports and activities at a higher level.