South Asians and Academics
The last four contestants on the recently concluded Scripps National Spelling Bee were desi. Talk about national dominance. I was contemplating doing grad school in the US but if the 12-13 yr old desis can spell better than me it might not be such a good idea (thank goodness I'm in a technical field? I don't think so).
Well it seems that many of the readers on Sepia Mutiny went through this whole spelling bee thing (some having never overcome the emotional scars they received from doing so). But in my good ol' Indian school, we never had spelling bees. I was a hardcore trivia geek though. I participated in many quiz contests, including one by that dude Derek O'Brein. I wonder if he's still around.
Ah, the good old high school days. How I've fallen from being a valedectorian to a guy happy enough to just pass. I like to blame the cold winters in this country for my relatively poor academic performance. I actually have a whole list of things to blame, but let's not go there. Not having an A average is further disconnecting me from my south-asian roots :P.
Well it seems that many of the readers on Sepia Mutiny went through this whole spelling bee thing (some having never overcome the emotional scars they received from doing so). But in my good ol' Indian school, we never had spelling bees. I was a hardcore trivia geek though. I participated in many quiz contests, including one by that dude Derek O'Brein. I wonder if he's still around.
Ah, the good old high school days. How I've fallen from being a valedectorian to a guy happy enough to just pass. I like to blame the cold winters in this country for my relatively poor academic performance. I actually have a whole list of things to blame, but let's not go there. Not having an A average is further disconnecting me from my south-asian roots :P.
posted by QuickSilver @ 9:07 AM
2 Comments:
At 11:39 PM,
Neha said…
OMG, Derek was sooo dreamy. I blame the winters too. That plus the fact that they don't teach you about plagerism and how to write 20 page essays in Indian schools. Did you school in dxb or the motherland?
At 1:35 AM,
QuickSilver said…
We also had to memorize all the equations and formulae (here you get to take a formula sheet) and we werent allowed to use calculators even in 11th/12th. We had to use log tables. What a waste of time. On the bright side, the math/science curriculum was really heavy and comprehensive and was great preparation for university. The fact that I ripped the first semester because of this and got complacent is another matter. The Canadian and US curriculum is a joke. My cousin was studying in OAC stuff I learnt like class 10 and 11.
I actually schooled in kwi. Used to go to dxb on vacation sometimes.
Derek, dreamy? Bah.
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