Even after completing my schooling and college education, I still continue to be a student and always eager to learn more in anything I do. There are few characteristics of being a student; viz., you will have to have an open mind otherwise nothing new will go inside your head, you will have to take exams and tests, and you will fail on some and you will pass of some. The trick is to keep passing on more occasions and minimize your failed questions. However, there are differences in being student in school and being student in life. Among many of these differences, I am talking about two specific ones.

The first difference between schooling days and life is; there is no one fixed teacher to whom you can turn and ask questions. As a student I was always scared of test and exams. It scared the hell out of me. The fact that one never fails in any exams, in reality, puts more pressure during the next exam. In life, experiences in daily life and the daily grind one goes through; is your teacher. There are no ATKTs where you get another chance in six months. You fail once, it will hurt you and in many cases it takes more than six months time to repair or correct it.

The second difference is you never know when is your test date or schedule for your exam. Since there are no fixed test dates or schedule exams, we never look back and reflect on what was right and what was wrong. While we cannot avoid tests and exams in school, but in life we do not miss an opportunity to shy away from such exams. It’s only down the road when something goes wrong, we realize we made a mistake and we failed. And on many occasions by the time we realize this, it is too late.

Because there are no formal tests, it is upon each individual to figure out how you are going to test yourself and evaluate yourself. Every year, I use the month of December as evaluation period. I compare what I planned in beginning of the year and how much I have made progress. When we talk about evaluating ourselves or making a goal, many folks relate this to work and/or professional career. To me, that’s just one element, and not the whole world.  For example, one of my goals for this year was to spend more time with family and friends.

• I took two vacation times (of two weeks each) and had good time with family. It is always soothing, there are no two thoughts about it, and it’s never enough.
• I also played quite a bit of weekend Cricket with my friends. It was fun to go back to old days trying to bowl/hit the heck out of each other. Who cares about fielding on the boundary, right? It was fun to talk about every damn thing under the sun and have an opinion about everything. I have never played competitive Cricket so I don’t know how it is like to be surrounded by thousands of spectators and facing 130kmph ball hurling at you. And ironically, I still have a so called insightful suggestion for our national players on how to win games. Am I not a fool to even think they are not aware of it?  Lekin kabhi kabhi dosto ke saath befijool ki gappe marne mai bhi aik maaza hai. Isn’t it?

Another element of my overall goal was to start a blog. My expectation was I will have very limited readership. This is because of a very niche subject. I was sure that in one year time, I will be probably be lost in an environment, which is influenced by daily tips, importance to market gyrations, technical analysis, quest for multi-baggers, etc. I was under the impression that a niche subject like dividend investing, value investing, buy and hold, and/or long term of 10+ years was going to be tough sell. I still believe it is because many of us cannot visualize or imagine that long.

To my surprise, when I look at my blog traffic, there are quite a large number of folks who are interested to engage in this type of discussion. There are quite a large number of folks who do subscribe to long term. I will discuss the traffic data for this blog, so stay tuned. In the meantime, you may read one of my earlier review of traffic on TIPblog.

It is not necessary to reflect back only on your professional goals. You can also look at your personal life or your hobbies or your side projects or extra curricular activities. Do you reflect back like this? Can you share any interesting stock buys or sells or any anecdotes?

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