Why Marks is not equal to Success

I watched Three Idiots some time back and its adapted from Five Point Someone which i loved very much. One thing that struck chord with me was about the Education System and its over emphasis on marks and the most flawed equation of life

MARKS = SUCCESS

A spurious equality without sufficient proof. In mathematical terms marks are sufficient but not a necessary condition for success. We were hardwired from our childhood to get more marks. Its even more important that you need to get more marks than the immediate neighbour you know(human mentality). There have been many successful people who demonstrated that the above equation was wrong, say a Bill Gates or Apple founder Steve Jobs(these people are rather well known but there are several others who proved this equation wrong time and again). A better equation keeping the right hand side term the same is as follows:

PASSION+ OPPORTUNITY = SUCCESS

Yes thats very true if you have passion for something and the right oppurtunity comes about, it will bring the best out of you and definitely you will succeed. I am not a good mathematieian but some learned intuition tells me that the above equation requires little more elaboration to make it more precise. Particularly the right hand side term.

So what is SUCCESS. Success is a very subjective term and depends on the person who identifies with it. Its not what others say about you. You have achieved success when you feel you have accomplished something close to what you are capable of. A small example, If you feel you are you can run for a mile and if you are able to run without much exhaustion you have succeeded and thats according to YOU. Someone may have run 10 miles but his success metric is compared to his own perception that he can run 10miles. To an outsider the guy who ran 10 miles might be a successful person but for the one who builds stamina to run that 1 mile is able to achieve it, he is a successful person too. Ofcourse as a popular quote suggests SUCCESS is a journey, the person should continue building his stamina based on his passion to run for much more miles. Isnt it. So if one feels that with his passion and his energy, he achieves his goal based on his target(not others target) with the resources available, he is a successful person. In simple terms Its all about what you have achieved compared to what you think you can achieve of.

Mathematically, SUCCESS is obtained if and only if

YOUR ACHIEVEMENT = WHAT YOU CAN ACHIEVE OF

Now all this ranting about brings me back to moot discussion of how our education system values success in terms of marks only. We see many people who are so called successful(with their 100/100) or centile scores feel empty within. First the very metric people are judged by our system is based purely on marks. However there are several exceptions when companies choose people but lets concentrate on education system. Everybody wants to be successful. But when only the above first spurious equality comes into picture it could be a total disaster sometimes. Meanwhile the other true equation gets jeopardized in our system because the Passion part is killed as we grow up. We are made to believe that attaining marks is the ultimate aim of our life and people start judging you by this. But who cares when you grow up. Nobody is interested in how many marks you got in your 10th or bachelors etc. Finally your work and your skill determines your success as a person. But here again people tend to bring in some unknown equation when you grow up that "MONEY= SUCCESS". All these spurious equations are only for the other people who are looking at you. What you feel within matters most because the truth is after all nobody cares.

There are many more pitfalls in our education system which refuses to bring out the inner talent in a person to make him successful. Remember we are hardwired differently when we were born and also the apparent software(environment you grow up, learnings) that runs over it is also different and that makes us different "systems". I apologize for bringing too much technical stuff into this blog but i just wanted to let people know about the analogy. That makes us like different things and also the degree of liking differs. One has to accept this and take the route that suits best to him which will enable him to feel successful. In my next blog i will talk more about the ills of the current system and how much pressure that brings on our children because of exams(or rather pressure to attain the required marks since i feel exams are important) and hence the subsequent dissappointment. Another equality i would like bring to forth and which i believe in strongly is

DISSAPOINTMENT = EXPECTATION

PS: I need to catch up some sleep before i write much more lucidly:)