Home→Adolescence→VHSC→Meetings→2013-06-02
2013-06-02
Minutes
The proposed Vidyalaya High School Club had a productive kick-off meeting with a room full of participants. There were many questions from adults about the scope and content of the program. Some parents felt that this program should not conflict other offering from Vidyalaya. It was explained that the content and hours are not finalized yet. As newer ideas are coming, they are being saved here. We dispersed in the end with an understanding that the kids who are interested will write an email to umesh@vidyalaya.us. Once we have a core group of participants, we will get together to decide the next steps.
Once the idea is developed, it will be presented to Vidyalaya for approval.
Participants
| Family | Father | Mother | Last | Child 1 | Child 2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 296 | Pramod | Neeraj | Bhagat | Divya | |
| 34 | Vijay | Monisha | Khadse | Sachin | Arjun |
| 464 | Dalpat | Joshna | Mistry | Dipal | |
| 47 | Umesh | Nupur | Mittal | Kevin | Anisha |
| 48 | Bhavesh | Roma | Modi | Rianna | Saajan |
| 244 | Mohan | Amutha | Mohan | Sidonia | |
| 243 | Shamee | Anju | Patil | Manu | |
| 298 | Chandra | Sivalakshmi | Reddy | Pranav | |
| 71 | Rajesh | Monica | Sansi | Resham | |
| 75 | Manish | Preeti | Shah | Nikita |
Responded to email
| Family | Father | Mother | Last | Child 1 | Child 2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19 | Anupam | Viyjanta | Ghose | Jai | Neel |
| 23 | Saurabh | Sunila | Gupta | Rohan | |
| 39 | Mike | Natasha | Lakhiani | Serena | |
| 301 | Prakash | Vani | Maddali | Tarun | |
| 62 | Mahendra | Smita | Patel | Jayna | |
| 110 | Bansi | Sunita | Sharma | Anurima | |
| 87 | Pradeep | Savita | Vashisth | Shagun |
Opening
The reason we have gathered here today is to explore the possibility of helping you set up a club which will be used by you to help each other enrich themselves. It will be a club created, named, managed, led by you. The parents will act in a support role to share their experience (as a more experienced adult, not parental) and to help facilitate certain other tasks. It is not difficult to imagine that all the kids may not be enthusiastic about it. At any time during this conversation, if you reach the conclusion that it is not for you, please feel free to walk out. It is a significant time commitment for those around you and we are not any less busy than you are.
Let us talk about what we are trying to accomplish. America is a country of innovation and the leaders here like to relate to that word a lot. They want to innovate, generate new ideas whether it be commerce or arts or science. Chances are that if you grow up to be a leader of society, you would seek to associate yourself with people who think of themselves as innovators. The life span of this activity is till your graduation from high school.
When you are asked to describe this activity, you would want to say that you were the founding members of this yet to be named club. This club brought together kids from various schools under a large local community organization that has enrichment programs for large number of kids. In this club you developed
Working together, we can make it a serious group. In addition, if we can demonstrate to others that the quality of work that we do, it will help us in the long run. Winning is a habit and once you get addicted to it, it is difficult not to be a winner. As many of us have learnt during our life, it is not sufficient to be good, it is also important to be able to demonstrate why we are better than the competition.
Frequently Asked Questions
- how is this relevant to me It is all about productivity in life. If you look at the time your physical self has in this world from birth to death, you have a finite amount of time. You must have some desire to maximize your gains. Many of the adults in the room are very successful. Many adults outside the room have been able to achieve more success in the same time period. It is all relative. If success is important to you, you want to think about it.
- I am a kid, why should I think about what will happen 20 years from now That is an excellent point. When do you think you should start thinking about it? 19 years from now or 20 years from now. Chances are that your parents have been keeping you busy from day one of your life. You probably learnt addition before most people. Why stop now.
- I have enough of parenting at home, enough class time at school, I do not need more preaching/pressure/teaching And we do not have time for too much parenting either. Almost all of us gainfully employed. You are physically and mentally ready to be in control of your destiny. If you are able to do that, it will be easier for all of us.
- Why must I be successful, I just want to live a normal life This ia great argument. Why must we do anything. The fact that we were born and are going to die some day is pre-ordained. No material asset acquired by us here will be available to us in afterlife. There are enough tribes who live on very little and have a short lifespan. Life is full of disappointments anyway. Why should we do anything. I have no reason to do anything.
- Sunday is the only day I sleep. We do not have two and a half hours to spare in a week. I want a scoial life. I am going to be super-busy in high school, I am not sure if I have time for more studies Clearly, there is an assumption that this would make an already difficult more difficult. I would respond to it in two ways. We are equal in the sense that we all have 24 hours in a day. The other observation is that all 168 hours in the week are being utilized in the most efficient manner. For example, if you believed that allocating these two and half hours allowed you to get more out of the remaining 165.5 hours, you would not make this argument, would you. Obviously, it is not the case that other competitors have 170.5 hours in a week.
- Why in the world would I want to help with my competitors The people around you are not competitors. You have not met your competition yet. If you look at history, there has never been any war between two individuals. It is always two teams. The enemy outside is far more important than any internal competition. The internal competition is actually a resource and one should make best use of it.
- I am not a money minded person, I do not want to do extra work just for making more money The word "Money" is being used only as a measure of success. Those who are blessed with critical thinking are usually able to apply relations operations like greater than or less than. To do that you need something to measure. Money is just one way of doing it. As you grow older, you can define it whichever quantifiable way you want. It is easier compared to using words like success, balance, happiness because those are not quantifiable.
- I am not ready to lead this group, i am not experienced and i do not want the responsibility In the world of innovations, nobody is experienced, by definition. The people who discovered and conquered the new world had no idea what awaits them. They had to kill all the Indians and Buffalos and in the process they created a nation that everyone looks up to and wants to mimic its success.
- I do not identify with this, this is not for me Thank you for coming. Good luck and best wishes for your future.
It is all about building a resume. All your peers will have a high school diploma. They will have a similar course schedule and grade. Chances are that they will all excel in standardized tests just like you. In addition, they would have participated in many of the clubs and other activities and demonstrated excellence. While many of these achievements were distinguishing factors many years ago, the world has evolved and more and more students look the same with these achievements.
College is the next selection process that you will go through. Your achievements has made it more challenging for the recruiter to select one among you. That is why this idea is planned. In addition to enhancing your skills, it is meant to provide you with stuff to talk about. If you can demonstrated that you
Let us say that you decided to be a pitcher today and you have never played baseball/softball before. Do you think your body can compete with those who have been training their muscles since childhood. None of us have a unique body, our physical characteristics are very similar. The adults have brought you here beccause they believe that it is the right time for you to start training for the intellectual life that we hope you will live. Many of us started late and could never catch up to those who started before us. You have an opportunity here. If you do not make use of it, you are not going to be a failure in life but if you make use of it, you can have a more fulfilling life.
I am sure it can be easily demonstrated that a kid who is performing better has less of parental interference in their life than others. Most of us cannot do what you do and we do not have time either. However, we have a tremendous stake in your success and if we feel that you are underperforming, we do the only things we know best. We push you to do better. However, if you are doing great, we can all go back to our dance parties and claim that our kid is super-smart and how we have superior genes and we leave you alone. Everyone wins when we do well. Should you not do so well, it is your fault that you did not work hard enough inspite of superior genes that we blessed you with.
This is your group, your decision is final. While we may make suggestions, nobody is going to dictate to you. If it is your club, you are responsible for it success. It would also be dishonest for you to claim ownership if we were making decisions for you.
However, should you decide to work to achieve something, for whatever reason, chances are you would want to get most out of your time. I mean, if you could get a job of 20 dollars an hour, would you do the same job for $10 an hour. Let us leave the questoin of why we should work for the spiritual hour. Let us focus on how to make best use of time for this hour.
It is less about what other commitments you have, it is more about allocation of 168 hours and how to get most of out it. Those of us who have better skills at allocating our hours are usually able to obtain more by less effort. It is a simple fact of life. Ther person making 100 million dollars and the person making 5000 dollars both only have 24 hours to allocate in a day.
The arguments apply regardless of the measure of success that you apply. If there is no measure of success then working hard is not relevant. Most animals kill only when they are hungry and they have a fairly static life. There is nothing wrong with that option. But once you have a measure of success, you want to do the best you can given your capabilities.
Nobody is ever qualified to be a leader. One can only be qualified to be a supervisor. Leaders have to find their own way. Others select/elect a leader based on faith and how they perceive an individual. The outlook and views of most individuals evolve when they are responsible for a job compared to when they were finding fault with the previous person or running for the job. You may complain about lack of political will to fight inequality, discrimination and crime in the world but if you were President for a day and you could do anything you want, you would suddenly find that you have no quick solutions either.
The ones who are better prepared to handle responsibility are the ones who are entrusted with it. If you want others to trust you in future, you need to develop that confidence in your constituency.