Do marks really matter?

“Education is the foundation of any society”; “Life is a race...”. “You have to be an engineer if not a doctor...” I often heard my parents say this. At school, I was pushed towards reaching the highest potential. I got an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering because I learnt that not having a formal degree will make me unqualified for being hired!

However, in my opinion one’s success in life vastly depends on how much knowledge, experience and motivation we have. Spending a few extra hours on improving an additional skill or knowledge in our area of interest can make a lot of difference.

Most of us don’t like to take risks or are rather scared of failure? Indian writer, Chetan Bhagat’s novel, Five Point Someone was made into a Bollywood great movie titled Three Idiots. In the movie one of the characters clearly defines that education is not about marks but it’s about learning, it’s not about being number one.

Many successful celebrities or entrepreneurs, who dropped out of school and went on to become very successful because of their passion, proved a point.

Bill Gates, the tech genius dropped out of Harvard and started Microsoft. Steve Jobs, cofounder and CEO of Apple, dropped out of college and later took up calligraphy class that later stirred him to use many of the fonts in some of the earlier Macs. Richard Branson, dropped out of school when he was 16, to set up a student magazine which eventually led to Virgin Records, Cindy Crawford was a valedictorian and won an academic scholarship to study chemical engineering; she dropped out only after one term but it worked out alright for her, Arnold Schwarzenegger dropped out of school but went on to become the governor of California! A nine to five job which was not their cup of tea. They pursued their passion.

College teaches us essential skills but success in life is not quantified by numbers on a piece of paper!

- The reader is the head of manufacturing in a company based in Dubai