Thinking of school

Dear Xavi,

You will start school in about a month. This will be a very new experience but won’t be completely new due to your three year day care practice. Your backpack is ready, you have your new tiffin box to go in as well.  In a way, it feels like it took forever for this day to get here, but in another, I can’t believe you turned three and a half and are starting school. In a way, to get you into school wasn’t too easy and simple, courtesy to the inconvenience of Dhaka. I will tell you more about it when you’re old enough to remember.

I wish and pray that your school years will be at least as good as mine, but also hope that your academic prowess will be far greater. Your curiosity is going to get you so far and help you move past things that are difficult for you. In the years to come your differences may become evident to others and vice-versa and I hope that these differences will add colour and diversity to life.  I just hope you continue to feel comfortable and confident and that this is the beginning of bigger things for you.

If I remember well, first days aren’t the most comfortable ones at school. It’s a whole bunch of strangers coming together by someone else’s choice, with teachers trying to use the same technique to manage thirty unique individuals who never experienced school. You will meet a lot of people and learn a lot of things starting from the first day. The importance of time and its management, the ability to hear stories from fellow students and tell yours too. School is a learning platform but it’s not the only platform to learn from. Everyone you practically meet in life probably has something to teach. 

Learning is a collective experience. Family, friends and school teach young people like you how to make the right choices and take the right chances. It is important to learn well, to be able to make the right choices later in life. I know that you didn’t have a voice on whether or not you wanted to come to the world, neither were you given a choice of the school that you wanted to go to, but all this is going to change very soon. Soon you will realize that taking decisions and making choices aren’t as easy as it seems.

Friends and family are part of the glue that holds life and faith together. You will probably find most of your friends in school and very likely a lot of them will be in this class. Gone are the days of running around the neighborhood with your best buddies. The concept of neighborhood has seen major shifts There is too much homework and too many digital alternatives. There is the beckon of pervasive social networks and the changing dynamics of the modern family. However, school remains relatively unchanged in terms of its infrastructure and order. So, it is good to make friends at school. It lasts a lifetime!

I wish you all best. I know it’s not too easy to wake up just after dawn, however, people have done it and it shouldn’t be too difficult. In the end, hopefully, it’ll be a great experience for you to remember and to tell us stories when we are old.

Looking forward,

Baba