Overcoming transition blues

It isn’t enough for parents to merely secure admission for their children. They need to eliminate or minimise the possibility of ‘transition blues’ by following a few steps

We often say students are our future, especially when they are planning to take professional courses. In a way, they are also the future of business. However, due to the lack of an ecosystem to guide students, they end up making inappropriate career choices, join the wrong institute (illusion effect) and then find it tough to assimilate in a new environment.

Soon, entry to almost all professional courses in India will be entirely through All India Common Entrance Tests as the present government is set to launch the NTA (National Testing Agency). However good the intent may be, such exams are quite often eclipsed by litigation, stay orders and delays, thus making the admission process a harrowing experience.

The growing business of education through coaching classes has created such a smokescreen that students feel absolutely insufficient and inadequate if they do not enrol for coaching classes. Money spent on front page advertisements boasting of students cracking exams and doling out cash awards has led to the creation of factories where students are slowly converted into exam-cracking robots. To do this, they are spoon-fed with question banks, answers, complemented by nerve-wracking practice sessions. The dependency on these is so high that students find it difficult to manage on their own when they join professional institutes. They can hardly interact and adjust to hostel life, but these issues are conveniently buried. Further, at the pace at which we live…who cares? The truth, however, is that the magnitude of problems arising out of this is alarming.

The most anxious months for students are June-July, when several lakh Std XII students, irrespective of their streams (Arts, Commerce and Science), try their luck at the All India entrance exams. Once the results are declared, every student is at a career crossroad with multiple dilemmas. There is palpable doubt, anxiety and expectation brewing not only amongst them, but parents as well. The information deficiency further adds to the confusion and there is very little time to decide. Sometimes, a student gets selected by two different institutes and their counselling dates clash. Such transition blues often leave them with emotional and financial damage, which haunts them for a lifetime.

Being aware of these transition blues on a proactive basis, we made a road map to face and facilitate it. My son Aumkar just moved to AIIMS Delhi for his MBBS course.

Year after year, we go through these complex transitions, which is why I decided to pen down what we’ve learned, what we’ve had to unlearn, as well as the trials and tribulations. I hope that this provides valuable insight not only to students and their families but even young managers on how to cope with uncertain situations successfully and prepare to overcome transition blues.

STEP 1:  Understanding the self and searching for resonance

This has been a universal pain point. Practically, none of the schools, institutes, coaching classes or even parents have or are keen to create an ecosystem which will facilitate a student’s understanding of self, their inner potential before proceeding to explore career choices. On the contrary, what is done is aggressive conditioning and dumping of career choices, which has a probability of 50:50 success. This basically means that deciding on a career is akin to tossing a coin!

Schools, colleges, and coaching institutes should acquire the services of talent analysts, psychologists and academic experts who can create ecosystems which enable students to have deeper insights about their potential. Today, we can find online descriptive and predictive psychometrics with very high reliability.

Once understanding of “self” is in place, it will create the required urge to explore and this is exactly when students should make it a point to visit as many professional institutes of repute they can without any prior judgemental notions about careers. This exposure will stimulate potential and also help the most reliable and authentic “inner voice” to be heard. This will aid career choices and help students decide if these are in or out of sync. This process triggers one at the sub conscious level, which leads to “resonance” or an “aha moment”. Once this happens, it’s an early indication of a right career direction. It also gives the student a feel of what type of life s/he will have on campus. Above all, it inspires the student to prepare for entrance exams. In my experience, only a handful of students and their parents make it a point to visit such institutes by clubbing it with their vacation trips.

STEP 2: Equi-finality (There are multiple roads/options to your career destination)

In my opinion, there are no career choices. Rather, there are “career directions”. Very often, career choices are equated with getting admission to a particular institute. To me, that is a bit risky as it will suddenly stall growth and development the moment the student gets admission into the institute of choice. This will also result in disillusion, resulting in low motivation to sustain learning. I can share umpteen cases where students have or are conditioned to have only one goal – join IIT. I’m not saying such goals are bad, but without understanding personal potential, pushing students to blindly jump can be fatal to one’s career. This is the root of the problem. With lakhs of students taking entrance exams, percentile scoring and normalisation of scores, you never know in which direction you will swing and then all hell breaks loose, when the student finds that s/he is unable to make it to IIT. This soon becomes a social taboo; then, seeking admission in even a very good local institute seems like a punishment.

Right from secondary school to junior college, every student should be guided on how to find a “purpose”. If step one and two are implemented, the third step comes almost naturally. I shall elaborate with an example. If a student, after the first two steps, realises that his/her purpose is “fundamental/applied research”, they soon realise that there are multiple ways to do this. Irrespective of whether they get admission to the institutes they have aspired for or not, they take it positively and join local institutes.

This positive coping mechanism is very critical for students, which will enable them to be holistic and not anarchist in their careers. I also see few coaching classes consciously damaging this process because, for them, students are products and their focus is on statistics of cracking exams!

STEP 3: The transition handholding

In India, we have a peculiar pressure of “settling down”. Hence, roles and responsibilities are more like tasks to be finished. But, in reality, our roles and responsibilities keep changing. So, on the one hand, our task may end by helping our child get admission, but our responsibilities change. We need to help them adjust to this new phase in their lives. Hence, it is important to plan and account for a well thought “hand-holding” phase. Remember how we were taught cycling when we were small? The cycle had two additional support wheels, which were eventually removed in phases, once we got used to balancing and cycling. We were not made to sit on a cycle and pushed. Nor were we expected to be experts in a single attempt.

Money spent on front page advertisements boasting of students cracking exams and doling out cash awards has led to the creation of factories where students are slowly converted into exam-cracking robots. To do this, they are spoon-fed with question banks, answers, complemented by nerve-wracking practice sessions.

I see several parents doing this. Once admission is secured, they feel they have done their responsibility, and simply move on. In fact, it is important to be around for some time and provide the psychological assurance that you are present and can be reached out to till the child settles down. This does not take more than two weeks.

Goa is a very serene, peaceful place; our children have grown up in a tension-free environment which is very protective. However, cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Kolkata – due to their pace and complexity – indirectly contribute to making the students cope the uncertainty and make them relatively tough and strong. In a lighter vein, these cities “rag” us and prepare us. But for a Goan student to settle outside is a relatively tough job. There needs to be a handholding and smooth plan which needs investment of time, effort and money. Once this is done, transition blues will either be avoided or minimised. We will have more holistic professionals who will add value to business and the economy at large. On August 15, we celebrate Independence Day. Let us facilitate student freedom with a design and not a trial and error method because each child is unique; his /her emotional and cognitive make-up differs.

It is better to look ahead and prepare than to look back and regret! Happy Independence Day