Dear Muskaan,
Daddy is proud, despite his strong belief in the value of humility, at your fantabulous accomplishment.
At this school leaving examination, which also happens to be the first public examination you have taken in your life & conducted by the Indian Council of Secondary Education, you have accomplished what none so far have in your gerontocracy. Your score on each of the subjects is higher, into the high 90s, than your father could achieve or his forefathers could. Well surely you indeed have also scored higher than any other student in your school.
Soon as the results sprung out on the internet, all over the country there was a frenzy of several million test-takers discussing their accomplishments with their peers. Yet within such a busy patch of time, even as a budding teenager, you have been resplendent in speaking to me for such a length of time, even if in five pieces of conversations. This assures me, your values are deeply family driven. The simplicity with which you can internalize a big moment deserving a big celebration as this was proven yet again, when you chose to order Pizza from Dominos and savour your victory just with your family. This is touching.
Yet, as you step forward further to be much more on your own, the value of networking and connecting can hardly ever be over-emphasized. Education and performance at exams are often solitary sojourns, wherein a good student puts in endlessly long hours working on her own abilities. Wisdom however, will be in being able to apply it. The more adept you hereon become in connecting and building on your rapport with everyone, the more you will be able to utilize your learnings.
Your leanings towards numbers is apparent right from your early schooling days wherein you scored a perfect 100 in maths and high 90s in science subjects many times through years. Yet, at this key public examination, I am gratified to note, that you have done equally well in languages. The power to express is definitely as important as the power to ideate, visualize, observe, calculate, infer and deduce. The big difference between those who end up spending their entire life-times in laboratories and those who create products that fill up stores worldwide with customers is their ability to take their work to masses. I urge you to keep growing your repertoire of expressions, vocabularies, diction etc. throughout your life. Not only for enriching your ability at communications, but also for the fact that literature is the mirror of society, do invent some time to read some of the finer classics. I also urge you to begin reading Ayn Rand with a goal of triggering your own thoughts around her ideas. Yes, you got it right that while you have been progressing well on Java, C++ etc. etc. you must not lose out to any other on your ability at the old world languages as English and Hindi.
Since you do have a clear focus to put in your entire might into seeking an admission to the top Engineering Colleges in the country couple of years down the line, I will share a few recommendations of some of the finest books from an era gone by long ago and yet these are still likely the best.
To master Differential & Integral Calculus, hunt down the two volume compendium by N. Piskunov that was originally published by Mir Publishers but now out of print. An amble around the old and used book-stores markets to ferret out such jewels is yet another indulgence an erudite person must begin to savour. Over the years, the nourishment your soul may find in the company of old and difficult to find books, will surely drive your passions to be not just a good but a great learner.
To get an in-depth grip on High School and beyond Physics locate the book by Resnick & Halliday. It may subsume your mind, but it surely is worth it to create a solid foundation that will last with you.
Yet another out of print book, but surely a master-piece on Organic Chemistry was written by I M Finar. Locate it.
While you delve deep into grasping concepts, you must recognize that it is practice and practice alone that makes not just men but women as well perfect. Solve as many computations as you can each day. Go down to the steps where you went wrong and it at these steps you will iron out the wrinkles in the crevices of your sub-conscious mind so that your thinking processes are evolved through this humbling process of knowing where do you err, in advance.
An old world saying, that a good mind lives in a good body. So, I am sure you will be keeping an even focus on keeping building a good health. Yet, with the evolution through my and your generation, it may be apt to believe that a good mind and a good body are held together by a great personality. So, somehow do find the time to indulge in competitive activity on the stage (in college) and surely at the sports-field.
Lastly, yet most importantly, I gave you the name Muskaan. Your name derives from the Urdu word that means a beautiful smile. Over these years, trust me, not just because your are my daughter, I have and others have felt you have been gifted with a smile that is rare. Yet, in the recent several months in the run up to your exams perhaps, there is a recurring frown on your forehead way more than your magnetic smile. Please learn right away, early enough in life, that consistent and sustained achievement is seldom feasible while existing at extremes. The concept of optimality applies to every human endeavour. In any case, the goal of life is the pursuit of happiness and to lose your miraculous smile for sub-goals of life is something I will want you to avoid. The same way that you balanced your achievements across languages and numerical subjects, I wish for you, that you achieve a life where work and play are so finely inter-woven that each journey of achievement is as much a joy for you as each milestone will bring.
While your immediate goal and focus for the next two years is the Engineering College Entrance test in India, which without an argument is the most competed for exam in the world, since God made too many of us in this part of the world, I need you to study Statistics and at least one human science at an appropriate time. Even while the study of natural sciences is so much complete in itself, each of us will use our abilities within the human dilemmas. What can be cognized by man is what truth is. Everything else is within the domain of postulates. So the approximations and the imperfections, that create all the opportunities, must be studied well too.
The first time ever someone’s eldest child writes a public examination and beats daddy in each and every subject is a joy that comes to only some. What a bliss you have brought me. Hereon, while you keep beating me in every next exam you write, I need you to know, you will create a happiness multiplier function, should you achieve with elan, grace, happiness and health.
Here’s to my rock-star, a big congratulations! Keep moving forward, with your focus, zeal and hard work and yet do it with happiness, health and a continuously growing personage.
An amazed father!
-Sushil
Source: http://www.dailyspeculations.com
PHYSICS OLYMPIAD 