I don’t even know how to say this out loud without getting judged or scolded, so I’m confessing here. I just finished my 12th standard and I’m waiting for my competitive exam results.

Like millions of other Indian students, I’m on my way to becoming an engineering student. I was in an integrated program that focused on preparing us for JEE Advanced, but things didn’t exactly go as planned.

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I didn’t score very well in JEE Mains I got a 65th percentile, which meant I didn’t qualify for JEE Advanced. I also appeared for MHTCET and got a 94.6th percentile there. I gave BITSAT too, and my raw score was 123 after negative marking, or 156 before subtraction.

My HSC board results were okay, but my PCM aggregate was only 53%, so I didn’t qualify for some of the top colleges I had in mind. I even tried the SATs and scored 1260, which isn’t bad but also not great for international universities.

Here’s my confession I didn’t complete a single piece of homework throughout my 11th and 12th. Not once. I used to take notes, pretend to be studying, and just go through the motions. I wasn’t lazy exactly, I was just… lost. For the first three-quarters of 12th grade, I wasn’t even sure I wanted to do engineering. I had no direction. And while everyone else was stressing over rank and cutoff lists, I was silently falling apart inside.

My parents’ marriage was crumbling. Home didn’t feel like home anymore. Every fight, every argument, every night spent hearing shouting through the walls drained me. I had two major mental breakdowns in 11th grade during lockdown, when everything was already dark and lonely. I stopped caring about myself or my future. I just wanted some peace.

But somehow, despite doing almost nothing no homework, no long study sessions, no serious prep I managed to do okay. Decent even. And that’s where the guilt eats me up. Because deep down I know that if I had just tried a little harder, if I had given even half the effort that others did, I could have done so much better. Maybe I could’ve gotten into a great college. Maybe I wouldn’t feel this lost.

Now that everything’s done, I can’t help but wonder what my life would look like if I hadn’t given up halfway. I know I can’t go back and change it, but part of me wishes I could just tell my younger self that effort really does matter not just for marks, but for peace of mind.

To anyone reading this: sometimes it’s not about being lazy or careless. Sometimes it’s just about trying to survive when everything around you feels like it’s falling apart. I’m still figuring it out my career, my family, my life but at least I’m still trying. And maybe that’s enough for now.

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