Vivekbhai ran his mouth not too long about how the American youth don’t do it right. More science fairs and math competitions. Less sleepovers.

Sharam nathi.

That’s enough modern politics. What I want to talk about is “academics” over developing healthy social skills.

Tabla lessons, “academics”, and commuting to pray. What more does a kid need.

This is the culture that provided zero so guess where I’ll start (granted the Mayans also got there independently). Math League was boring. It was a good way to skip class in exchange for attempting to solve problems. It definitely pissed at least one English teacher that the “smart” kids got to miss class.

The other is more interesting. I was a late start to the science fairs, I missed the first one in 7th grade because the American school system surprisingly doesn’t come with an instruction manual on how to “play the game”. Of course that’s somehow the eldest one’s fault but moving on.

The following school year, I did the school and PJAS. Some project on temperature and dissolving substances in water. High school. I still did PJAS, but I also did the feeders for Intel, LVSF and Del Val. First year in that circuit was a measuring power output windmills project when you vary wind speed, wind angle, and blade angle. The following year, measuring signal strength in fiber optic wires as you introduce curvature.

You’d think with all the emphasis Desi culture has on metrics, they’d teach you how make measurements. Sadly nope.

The year it mattered was an interesting one. Unfortunately my father loved referencing late Masaru Emoto and William Tiller. Enough so that my project was the perfect opportunity to do “research” on the “memory of water”. Did what I could with the lemons I was handed. Took apart a shelf to build boxes to isolate my “memory water charging”. Tried to use the same kind of flowers to measure mold/bacteria growth over time. Took way too many pictures. And boy oh boy did I make charts. Unfortunate I didn’t know Python back then.

But.

It was the first year I didn’t score an award presenting at Penn State. Also had the significant drop in my booth attendance at the feeders. Ohh well, apparently Gurudev’s “mission” was progressed and that’s the important part. It did sting a little when the science teacher sent me an email stating that they were baffled I even got to States and made it quite apparent that my experiments did not measure to the subject they taught.

Losing whatever respect my teacher had for me did it; skipped competing senior year.

Not gonna lie. Would’ve preferred the sleepovers. Deeper friendships are arguably worth more than awards I don’t care for. To brush off my high school Français, il est la vie. On the bright side, it was good public speaking practice.

Sorry bhaiya, Marshall Mathers is probably the only place where we agree.