As a student, we receive several feedbacks from our teachers and also from parents. Some of these feedbacks are positive and some are negative.
Now how we perceive these feedbacks affect our career. It’s not because of a particular teacher’s negative feedback, but acceptance of that feedback by us is the main reason affecting our career. It starts with student life and goes long in your career.
How improper feedback works?
We shall understand this with few examples. If you, as a student receive feedback that you are not good at math. There are two possibilities, either you accept this feedback or reject that feedback. If you reject feedback and after some time you were again given the same feedback. What can be your action, a good possibility that you will accept that, but your willpower is strong, then you can reject it.
If you accept that feedback on the very first day, then this is how things will move in your student life. Math will become more and more complicated for you. You will hardly understand anything in math lectures. The thing will go off your head. When a teacher is explaining the math exercise, you will be at some other place in your thoughts.
It’s not you, who is doing all this. You want to understand math at least to pass the exam, but not able to concentrate. Every time you are focusing on a lecture but your mind drifts to some other place.
As on one side, you are willing to perform well in math, but at the same time, you have accepted the fact that you are not good at math (as per your teacher, and somewhere in your mind you have also accepted that). So when you are having contradictory thoughts in your mind, it doesn’t support any.
Let’s understand how our mind works if I ask you to think about the person who takes good care of you in childhood. The image of that person flashes in your mind instantly. If I ask you to remember your best friends, again you visualize all your best friends. You also visualize that how you are enjoying with them in both cases, you may have goosebumps right now.
Think & visualize happy moments of your life, now see the miracle, you are able to see the clear picture of each moment one by one, be it your birthday celebration, the gift you mother or father has given to you, winning moment in sport and cheer from all the people around there, appreciation by your friend, teacher or principal on your academic result, picnic enjoyment with your friends or family members, etc. This list will continue and till now you have cherished each moment. I can see the happiness & smile on your face.
Now if I ask to think about bad experiences, here also the list will be long. All the bad memories will be recalled by your mind instantly.
So the point here is your mind, especially the subconscious mind has tremendous power to recall each and every moment of your life with which you are emotionally connected, be it positive emotion or negative.
This mind records each and everything that happens to your life through 5 senses (Sight, Sound, Smell, Taste & Touch) till this movement. Even it record the complete environment around you. It stores all the related things in one compartment in even more effective way than a supercomputer. Whatever subject you want to search, it will show you all the related results in a fraction of a second.
Here comes the most important point, what if when you are thinking about math?
What do you think, what will it recall? Are you able to visualize it? Obviously, it will show you a complete web series as ‘when your teacher says to you that you are not good at math’, all you academic low score result of math; be it class test, main exam test, critics from your elders on low scoring marks, etc. Slowly you will feel low in energy. Now you do not want to think about all this, then you suddenly change the topic in your mind or move to some other place.
Once you admit that you are not good at one particular subject, even with good preparation for the exam, will hardly give you a good score. The reason is your subconscious power will try to prove your own firm belief that you are not good at math. Things will fumble in the exam and in spite of knowing the question well, you will not be able to answer it properly. Each student must be aware of this phenomenon.
How to deal with it?
My humble request to all the teachers is not to criticize any student for their understanding of any particular subject. Just recall the cases of your own school /college, where initially so-called dumb students shine later.
Now to students, do not accept negative feedback directly as you are dumb on any particular subject. In this world, no two students have similar intelligence. You can take the following approach. Whenever you get such feedback from teachers or relatives, simply say to yourself that ‘Maybe right now I am not able to perform, but I will improve on this subject soon. I shall put extra effort, take help from friends or ask my teacher.’
Now once you change your thought process, some wishful thing will happen. Some hidden power will start guiding you to improve on that particular subject. It will suggest to you all the new ways to improve your skill. Your concentration will improve. Things will be much clear in the classroom during lectures. You will be amazed to realize that this is the same subject which was really tough once but not now. Do you know what is this hidden power, it’s again your own subconscious mind.
My good Practice of college time
You can try this useful practice. Generally, many teachers suggest a ‘next day topic’ after the completion of their lecture. What I used to do was this, I simply go through that topic quickly in just a few minutes before going to college. Now once the lecture starts, I was able to connect on that topic quickly. My understanding was better. Then once I arrive at my home, I used to sit alone for a few minutes and visualize what the teacher taught in the lecture. I could visualize in detail line by line, what the teacher had written on board.
Actually, what happened, I had gone through that topic three times. My performance started improving drastically. You can also adopt a similar practice. Then there is a high level of chances that you will be able to recall a good amount of content during the exam and your performance will improve.
Anyway, I topped the exam in the final year of my engineering.
“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”— Benjamin Franklin
