There's Nothing You Can Do About It

I took out the dusty, quite old, black and yellow slam book from my cupboard and flipped through the pages on which my friends, when we all were in the fifth and sixth grades, had filled in all kinds of stuff (nonsensical and sensical), thinking we'd never meet after growing one or two years older.
Today, I stand graduated. And what do I have with me? A handful of friends from amongst the hundreds I had just three years ago. And along with that, the so-called title of 'most amazing friend'. Ironical, right? The *most amazing friend* is now connected with just a few friends here and there. And if this is my condition today, it's damn freaky to imagine what my condition would be in the near future. I say near future because that is the speed at which things are changing.
The funniest part is, only a minor part of the handful of friends left with me today are actually humans. As for the rest, I have animals, plants, the sky, my books, my blog and stuff like these. And my only wish is that this minor part doesn't go extinct as the dodo and brachiosaurs.

Life's funny, no? It tells you when you enter school that "This miraculous mesmerising mind-blowing journey is gonna end in ten to twelve years, and as you depart, you're gonna take away tons of memories and so many friends." And turns out that this friend called *life* is an irritating feelingless liar. Memories? Okay. But friends? Oh please. I agree, I am taking away friends, but a ton of them? Utter nonsense.
And this is an endless thing. Maybe it'll end for you or me, but it's gonna go on and on; on and on- for generations as a whole. I don't even remember the last time I actually spent quality time with my best friend from the first grade. Today, she's only a friend. Perhaps the only thing that keeps me from despairing over this painful situation is the fact that I am in close touch with atleast two of my friends I befriended in Kindergarten (Phew!)

But what can I do about this? It was always obvious that this would happen one day, and perhaps my only mistake was, and is,
that I realised this way too late to prepare myself for it. And now, I can do nothing about it. And there's nothing you can, too.

Scary-less.

30 days of study + 10 days of exams = One month of Board Exam.

Equation doesn't sound right? Well, that wasn't even meant to sound right (LOL).
Anyway, jokes apart.
Every tenth grader in India (I say India bcoz I'm not sure about other countries) has to take this one exam at the end of their academic years- The Board Exam. Basically the Boards are just another set of exams, with the only difference that this is supposedly a life-changing exam. It is scheduled over 30 days, where you actually write the tests on the subjects you've been studying for practically one year (or three years, in case of a few subjects) over 10 days. Confusing? Lemme put it this way. 10 subjects, whose papers are distributed over 10 days, for which you need to spend 30 days of non-stop study, even after you've studied it over a period of a few years.

Well, I had to give my Boards this year. It's over though. It was all done in March. And perhaps the only thing I've learnt from that that is worth mentioning, is that Boards aren't that freaky. In the words of my mum, "They're just 10 papers, which will be corrected by people you never even knew about. That's all."
So on the first day of my Boards, I was really cool. (English Language na, that's why) Everyone around me was literally shivering. They were all like, "Oh God dude, it's the Boards!" And I was all like, "Umm, should I feel like, scared?" I get into our centre and start getting a lil nervous. But after those two hours of writing our first paper, I was all like, "Yaay!!" In fact, almost all my batch-mates were acting as though the entire Boards were done.
That was pretty much the case on all days. The major change came about on the day we had Math. Honestly, that was the lengthiest Math paper I had ever written. I guess I saw only one student who was actually cool after the paper. Math was what gave me that little bit of mood of- BOARDS!
Next came Science. Considering that I hate Science (no offence), I was pretty nervous. But as and as time went by, I realised that all my papers were actually going good! Even Science rocked, and surprisingly, Chemistry was the best.
An amazing paper of Computer Applications gave a rocking end to one month's struggle.

I didn't really mean to actually tell how my papers were. I rather wanted to explain my experience.

The transition from the first day to the last day was perhaps what caught my attention the most. On the first day, every one of us, right from our teachers to our parents to us, were very nervous. But it felt like I was running a race with my fellows, with angry honeybees chasing all of us, where I just stood knowing the dangers but feeling all chilled. It was rather awkward, you needn't doubt that. But as and as we started writing our papers, the feeling of nervousness started going crazy. One day we'd all be cool, and on the other, totally freaked out. As though we all had a sort of Split Personality Disorder or something. Towards the last paper, we were all so... I don't know how I should describe that. It was somewhere between ecstasy and sadness. We were all excited cuz' Boards were almost done, but sad cuz' school life was all done.

But all I wanna say through this long post is that Boards aren't so scary as we are told. They are a little nerve-racking, but nothing that can cost you all the peace you ever had. But the latter depends on the final result though (winks)!!