The insecurities and social conditioning of 16 year old

Last week I came across this wonderful memory from 25 years ago while cleaning up my stuff. I secured 19th position in UP Board high school (class 10) examinations and was interviewed by almost all the daily newspapers in Kanpur, with photograph and interview published in them the next day. In my interview, I spoke about aspiring to be a computer engineer in future. I am grateful that life gave me a chance to fulfil my childhood dream and be a software engineer. However, this post is not about that, it's about some other immature and insecure comments I made in the interview back then.

I said that I took tuitions only towards the end of class 10. This was a plain lie as I had taken tuitions for 1.5 years during class 9 and 10, but denied admitting it as I was too insecure to share the credit of my achievement with my tuition teacher. It's hard to imagine how bad my teacher: Kamalkant Sharma sir would have felt about it. However, he expressed no disappointment and met me gracefully the next day, showering blessings and good wishes. 

Yet another thing which me and other students had said that day was that "we do not want to become teachers as the teachers do not enjoy a good social status". But life literally made me swallow my words as 15 years later I resigned from a well-paid software engineering job to become a teacher: The good old tuition teacher who every now and then is forgotten by his students and does not enjoy a healthy social status in the eyes of 15-16 year old high school toppers from Kanpur.

So much for the social conditioning we undergo as we grow up and the kind of stereotypes we build around people and professions.