Why perseverance is required to make a good student?

There is one thing that we like the most when we work hard for something. We want to get the results of that thing as fast as possible.

Sometime earlier, in a Sanskrit shloka we saw that “Perseverance like a crow” was an essential element required to do something. What does perseverance mean?

Perseverance means that even though the results intended do not appear, the person does not lose hope. It is the other word for determination. Perseverance is seen in a crow from the story of the thirsty crow.

A crow was very thirsty. He was flying in search of water, and he found a pot of water on the ground. He flew towards it and sat on the edge of the pot. He found that the water level in the pot was so low that even after trying its best, the crow could not reach the water. The crow had an idea. It picked up small pebbles from the area around and threw them in the pot. It continually kept throwing pebbles into the pot until the water in the pot rose up to a level that the crow could reach and quench his thirst.

How can we relate with this story? In our case, we are the crow and the water is that thing that we are trying to achieve. Just like the crow was perseverant/determined, and it kept throwing pebbles in the water, until the water came to a level that it could drink from; similarly we need to become determined and consistently do our work to achieve our goals. The crow’s work was to throw in pebbles, which led the water level to rise, and our work is to work hard and without any kind of cheating, in an unwaveringly focused way, which will lead the achievement to come to us.

In today’s world, especially in highly-populated nations like China, India, the USA etc. perseverance is required the most because of the tough competition. Only those with the highest merit can get selected. The IAS Examination which is held in India every year, has got a very less number of available seats, ranging from 50-100. But the candidates that give the examination every year are always more than 200,000. Isn’t that ridiculous? Imagine how hard the competition for this examination is. The IAS exam is just one example. There are many exams held in India where hundreds of thousands of people compete just for a few tens or a few hundreds of seats. Imagine the rate the competition.

Only the most perseverant people that give the examination pass the examination. Just like the crow, they also continuously do their work without stopping until they qualify the exam. If they do any mistake, they learn from it and try not making the same mistake again. This is what perseverance is all about.

Every person has different paces of doing things. So perseverance comes naturally to some lucky person and sometimes someone has to work hard to develop this skill within himself. So if you find it hard to be perseverant, it’s fine because your pace is completely different from someone else’s. But the thing is—don’t stop. Perseverance is all about not stopping and if you stop, then you can’t be a perseverant person.

Perseverance is required not only as a student, but also as an employee or a professional. Perseverance will help you to reach your goals. Hence stopping being perseverant will only make you further away from your goals, not closer to your goals, as a student, or as an employee or as a professional.

There are times when we need to be perseverant, and also there are times when we want to be perseverant. Whenever we are in the ‘need’ of perseverance, then the situation teaches us to become perseverant but when we want to be perseverant, then only we can teach ourselves to remain perseverant. So don’t ignore perseverance when trying to learn something new.

How is this related to today’s topic? Try to think of a similarity in today’s topic and perseverance. So, why not worry about the results when working hard anyway?

If you work hard and you work properly, then you need not worry about the result, because you know that everything is going to be fine. On the other hand, if you don’t show perseverance in your work, and you worry about the result the most, then nothing can be done because anyone well aware would not be able to do that thing. Just like those students who study from the beginning of the year don’t have to worry about their examination or their result because they know that their examinations are going to go well. But those students who don’t study from the beginning of the year and worry about passing the exam cannot do anything to pass the exam, because studying everything in one single day, is practically impossible.

Only those people worry about the result who think that their performance wasn’t the fullest of their capability. But those people who have done those things at the fullest of their capability don’t need to worry about the result and they take it as a waste of time. So become that person who does his fullest of capability and not has to worry later.