These are the best times for SEE appeared students to find out what they can do to excel in life and decide their career path
About 5, 00,000 students across the country sat for Secondary Education Exam (SEE) this year. After all the hectic days of rigorous reading, revising and practicing, now they have become completely free for at least a couple of months. This is the longest vacation they have ever got since they joined school and they want to spend it in the best way possible.
There are many good things one can try out during this period. In fact, post SEE break is the most appropriate time to go for things that have always fascinated you as your hobbies. If you are a music lover, you can try your skills in it by joining music classes. If travelling is your hobby, you can go to visit some new places. This way, you can meet new people and get to know about their way of life. Traveling not only refreshes you but also adds to your knowledge and broadens your mind. It is the most effective means of learning by seeing. Traveling enriches one’s knowledge of geography and culture. You can also go for some vocational training and courses such as knitting, tailoring, gardening and so on. For book lovers, this is the golden time to immerse into the world of fantasy and facts. Reading both engages and entertains you. Most importantly, it enriches your imagination. You can thus make your leisure time as productive as possible by learning something new.
Kanchan Sharma Regmi
Options to explore
On the contrary, if you are among those who don’t want to trouble themselves with learning anything new, don’t worry. There are fairly a number of things you can do to make your vacation count. You can use this leisure time as an opportunity to have a quality time with your family, friends and relatives. For instance, you can catch up with some old friends and hang out with them. This way, you can freshen up the memories of good old days. You can go to movies or organize small parties. You can help your parents in their work. It may not help you learn anything significant but it will surely help you socialize. After all, social health is one of the key components of our overall wellbeing.
Also this is the best time for you to find out what you can do to excel in life because this is the time when you have to decide your career path. You can hardly manage time for this once results are out. You will have busy days running around for your admission procedures. So, you can use this free time to better identify your own interests and potentials so that you can direct yourselves accordingly into the desired course later. For this, you may have to go through a series of consultation, counseling and even expert advice. In many cases, you alone may not be able to decide what can be the best choice for you. You may not be familiar with all the courses available and their scope. Even your parents may not have all the ideas about the most appropriate career path for you. They may think it wise to consult the experts before taking any concrete decision. You can, therefore, consult seniors, visit your school teachers and seek information about courses and fields of study of your interest.
The other and the most widely adopted option these days is joining bridge course. It has been like a popular fashion trend, overshadowing all other creative ways in which students spent their vacation earlier. Long before the SEE exams are over, there are banners, posters and hoarding boards all over announcing admissions for bridge courses. There are different alluring schemes and packages offered to students. These advertisements and displays have exploited the students’ psychology in such a way that they have begun to view it as mandatory. As a result, bridge courses, popular only in the Kathmandu valley initially, are run extensively in almost all parts of the country these days. In Kathmandu, these courses are often run by institutes that are associated with different +2 colleges so that students who study there are automatically motivated to join them later. Most of the teachers are the founders and lecturers of these colleges. They spend the largest part of their time advertising their institutions rather than teaching. The institutes running these courses point to the gap between the syllabus of tenth grade and that of grade XI and claim they help in bridging this gap. Because of this, even students who don’t need such course tend to join it.
You don’t necessarily have to join such courses. You can be wiser in your ways to do things that please you and sharpen your extra skills. For instance, if you have poor English language skills, you can go to British Council and take up English speaking and writing courses. This is likely to help you later in your studies too. Those interested in cooking can try out some new dishes. Doing this, you may help your mother get some rest, and at the same time gain some appreciation from your family members. Learning swimming is another option, and the knowledge of it never goes in vain as it is an important weapon of self-defense. The list goes on. It’s for you to decide what to do in these gap months.
The author is a teacher of language and literature
