Life Over Marks

Marks may get you a degree, but life skills help you survive, adapt, and lead once you leave the classroom.

- Irfan Jaffer

By conventional academic standards, my journey should have ended early.

I failed my 12th-class examination three times.

In a system obsessed with marks, ranks, and first attempts, repeated failure is often treated as a final judgment on a student's intelligence, worth, and future.

When you fail, expectations collapse: sometimes your own, often everyone else's.

You are silently written off.

What saved me was something often absent in our classrooms: the steady support of my parents and the structured training I received in life skills workshops.

Schools had taught me science, mathematics, and theory. They had not taught me how to cope with failure, manage fear or disappointment, rebuild confidence, or think clearly under pressure.

After failing repeatedly, textbooks could not rescue me. I needed tools to understand myself first.

Life skills filled that void.

Through these workshops, I learned how to regulate my emotions, solve problems, communicate effectively, think critically, and cultivate courage.

I understood that failure is an event.

I learned to pause and reflect instead of panic, to plan instead of withdraw, and to persist instead of surrender.

That shift inside me changed everything.