A Leaf From One's School Diary!!!

     School days however uneventful always has a special locker within our hearts. The people we met, the people who guided us, the innumerable heavy subjects that we somehow managed to lift!! That place definitely changed us and has a vital role in making what we are today!!

       To those of who do not know My school... Udyogamandal school, the brain child of the visionary, Late Mr. M K K Nair, earlier CMD of FACT, is affiliated to ICSE board.

       Having studied there for 12 long years... This place definitely had a role in moulding me into the person I am!! So, by the time I left I knew how much I was going to miss this place.. Because it had been ingrained into my blood and its memories shall never perish!!

        Yet, as I entered into that building again after quite a few years... I felt so detached and misfit... The place had been recently renovated... It had been repainted... The cemented floors had been replaced with shiny white tiles... Quietly I admired the divine splendour that the cheap but cemented floors bore!!

I couldn't recognize the place.. All my memories were so attached to the place that I once knew!! The place had new students, new teachers.. The faces that seemed familiar were few!!

I felt like being lost in a once known land that suddenly became strange and unknown!!

       May be all these were my inertia to change!! Or is it inherently embedded in the human nature to not to change.. Even when changes are for good.. Human reflex is to say no to change!! Most of us are afraid to change... Is there anyone who've not thought- Would the change grab away everything I have now?? -

Have u got any idea as to why!! If so do enlighten me!!

The Coffee a Wonderful Story!

He met her at someone's wedding. He requested her to have coffee with him, she was surprised but due to being polite, she promised. They sat in a nice coffee shop, he was too nervous to say anything, she felt uncomfortable, and she thought to herself, "Please, let me go home..."

Suddenly he asked the waiter, "Would you please give me some salt? I'd like to put it in my coffee." Everybody stared at him, so strange! His face turned red but still, he put the salt in his coffee and drank it. She asked him curiously, "Why you have this hobby?" He replied, "When I was a little boy, I lived near the sea, I liked playing in the sea, I could feel the taste of the sea, just like the taste of the salty coffee. Now every time I have the salty coffee, I always think of my childhood, think of my hometown, I miss my hometown so much, I miss my parents who are still living there." While saying that tears filled his eyes. She was deeply touched. That's his true feeling, from the bottom of his heart. A man who can tell out his homesickness, he must be a man who loves home, cares about home, has responsibility of home... Then she also started to speak, spoke about her faraway hometown, her childhood, her family.

That was a really nice talk, also a beautiful beginning of their story. They continued to meet. She found that actually he was a man who meets all her demands; he had tolerance, was kind hearted, warm, careful. He was such a good person but she almost missed him! Thanks to his salty coffee! Then the story was just like every beautiful love story, the princess married to the prince, and then they were living the happy life... And, every time she made coffee for him, she put some salt in the coffee, as she knew that's the way he liked it.

After 40 years, he passed away, left her a letter which said, "My dearest, please forgive me, forgive my whole life's lie. This was the only lie I said to you---the salty coffee. Remember the first time we dated? I was so nervous at that time, actually I wanted some sugar, but I said salt. It was hard for me to change so I just went ahead. I never thought that could be the start of our communication! I tried to tell you the truth many times in my life, but I was too afraid to do that, as I have promised not to lie to you for anything... Now I'm dying, I afraid of nothing so I tell you the truth, I don't like the salty coffee, what a strange bad taste... But I have had the salty coffee for my whole life! Since I knew you, I never feel sorry for anything I do for you. Having you with me is my biggest happiness for my whole life. If I can live for the second time, still want to know you and have you for my whole life, even though I have to drink the salty coffee again."

Her tears made the letter totally wet. Someday,someone asked her,"What's the taste of salty coffee?" She replied, "It's sweet."

Its a little bit unrealistic story but the moral and the message of the story is wonderful :)

Critical Thinking! A useful way to success.

Critical thinking is a type of clear, reasoned thinking. Critical thinking means making clear, reasoned judgement. While in the process of critical thinking, ideas should be reasoned and well thought out/judged. The National Council for Excellence in Critical Thinking defines critical thinking as the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.

Major critical thinking skills includes observation, interpretation, analysis, inference, evaluation, explanation, and meta-cognition. It includes:

• Evidence through reality
• Context skills to isolate the problem from context
• Relevant criteria for making the judgment well
• Applicable methods or techniques for forming the judgment
• Applicable theoretical constructs for understanding the problem and the question at hand

Having the ability to think critically is an important skill that many people lack. Critical Thinking is the best way to solve problems since it requires looking at an issue from several standpoints before reaching a final decision. In history, both Socrates and Buddha preached about the important role that critical thinking plays in an individual’s ability to reasonably reflect on an issue and subsequently decide what to do or believe.

Critical thinkers must take the contexts of every situation into account and think on a multi-level platform in order to come to just conclusions. Home-schoolers have an advantage for learning critical thinking skills because they can largely make their own curriculum and incorporate critical thinking lessons into it—as every educational system should do. Learning how to recite information from textbooks is not going to help a person achieve long-term success. Only when an individual is able to make educated choices on complex matters can they truly be considered intelligent and competent.

The Critical Thinking Community is dedicated to enhancing critical thinking. The Center for Critical Thinking and Moral Critique and the Foundation for Critical Thinking are two sister educational non-profit organizations associated with the critical thinking community. These organizations work closely together to promote educational reform and essential change in education and society through the cultivation of fair-minded critical thinking. Mostly, the organizations promote asking discussion-inducing questions in learning environments.