It’s a very odd thing, to be regarded by everyone around you as a model student, while the inside of your own head is a battlefield – strewn with the blood and guts of every thought and ambition that ever dared lift its head above the parapet. The carnage stems from the dual frustration of being incapable of communicating your reality, while desperately wishing to become the person that everybody already assumes you are. This was the bitter lesson of my adolescence: that even if you have mastered the art of bluffing your way through your day-to-day life, you cannot bluff your way to stellar exam results.

It’s not that I wasn’t working hard. I was working extremely hard. I studied the assigned materials, and I ‘read around’ the subjects. I spent hours learning, revising, and consol...

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