Summer is not over yet but the summer vacation is. Just like every year, much before the summer is over, the the summer vacation ends; school re-opens and a fresh academic year starts. A new start, a new beginning, new set of expectations, new goals and new hope. Going back to school brings mixed feelings. On one side, filled with sadness that the carefree vacation days are over. Life is again filled with board-work, studies, homework and tests! But on the other side, filled with joy, pleasure of meeting old friends, playing together at break time, fighting on trivial things, exchanging kiddie gossips and just being together. There is so much to tell and so much to hear – so much to brag and so much to learn. And of course, biggest surprise factor on returning back to school is the class teacher – who is the class teacher this year? Is she (or he) a strict one? What rules does she have? Is she nice? Interesting? Humorous? Fun?
As a child whether one realizes or not, but the interesting part of childhood is going to school. Of course school minus homework and tests would have been more fun but well life is not that easy even when you are just a child! Best part of schooling is that there is this concept of academic year. Each academic year ends! What a relief! The school re-opens and a new academic year starts. Each academic year gives you a new beginning – a new chance – a new start. Not just that, each academic year, you are evaluated afresh. You get a new report card. The old marks, grades are gone – at least temporarily gone from the horizon. You surely get a chance to color your report card differently each year. And this is not just for you but for everyone in the class. So you get to have a fresh start in terms of competing with each other.
How I wish we had some similar concept at our corporate world. A clear beginning and clear end of a corporate work year where the performance is evaluated and limited to that year’s work. Well, you can say that yearly performance appraisal is similar to that. But nothing close to what we have at school. In the corporate world, it is so fuzzy – the evaluation process is so complex and convoluted, there is no clear marked beginning, or end. You don’t know who all are you compared with; leave alone how you are compared. It is subjective rather than objective. It is so straight-forward when you are a child – you give a good test, you get a good grade. You keep doing that and you go to the next grade. Well, how I wish at our corporate world it was so well defined where you work good and you get promoted well! On the contrary, you start believing in fate – you work good and let the destiny take care of you!
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