Among all, a memorable one for me was at a time when I was in grade XI — to understand the botanical names of various plants was a tough task for me. I practiced a lot, but I never succeeded in remembering them. That was a boring moment. “Hundreds of moments of happiness might be overshadowed by a single boring matter in one’s life” — and that was the case with me. I tried to search a lot in different books but the problem still persisted. No technique I opted for was successful, and at last, I mugged up all the botanical names — five botanical names every day. Nowadays, I feel like if there was a documentary based on botanical names, one can easily remember them as one remembers a dialogue.

— Raju Thapa

We all come across tough topics in every subject and in almost every level of our education. But there are always some topics which really give us have a difficult time, so much so that we remember it throughout our life. I had a real tough time understanding organic chemistry in my +2 days though my friends used to find it quite easy. I tried my best to understand it, but in vain. In the end, with the advice of my seniors, I found a solution — mug everything up, from beginning till the end. That’s how I overcame my fear of chemistry examinations. After completion of +2, during my preparation for medical entrance examination, which was last year, my brother helped me and ipso facto had me understand the basics of organic chemistry. Now, at least I’m not scared of it, though I still think its the scum of the earth.

— Sparsh Dutta,

Biratnagar-13

I was unable to understand much of the Maths taught in my BBS classes due to lack of concentration and also because Maths was not a subject I was interested in. But sometimes, even after doing our best, fully focusing on the subject matter and not leaving any stone unturned, we still are confused at what we are studying. For example, I have very carefully studied with a lot of attention and memorised the lyrics of the song Bohemian Rhapsody and listened to it for more than a hundred times, but I still can’t get the core meaning of it. To be clear, I read about the band and the song on many internet sites and song books. Still unsatisfied with all that, I asked many ‘musically aware’ westerners about the song but none of them could completely explain it to me. I am hence searching for a person who can explain the core meaning of that song and I think the only ones who are able to do that are band members of the band Queen itself.

— Cool Cristofer,

Lake Side

n Sometimes no matter how much I try to understand a topic, I just can’t understand it. Recently, it happened to me, while I was preparing for the assessments of Immunology that I couldn’t understand Signal Transduction Pathways. I read it continuously for about four hours yet I couldn’t understand it. Whenever my mind can’t comprehend a particular topic, the first thing I try to do is cool off my mind. I do this by taking a break — listening to music, preferably with a cup of hot coffee or ginger tea. Then I surf the net searching for more information about the topic.

Animations about the topic that are provided on the net really help give a clearer concept. Having a chat with friends regarding the topic helps a lot too. After cooling off, I find that the topic is no more incomprehensible. The animations I saw on the net also made the basic concepts of the signal transduction pathway very clear to me.

— Prakash Sah

It was a tough for me to understand fallacy and kinds of fallacy during third year of BA. Examples provided seemed awkward, but reviewing it thrice, and then going through it again and reading it after a few days it clarified my mind and I was able to write about it. So, I have come to the conclusion that reviewing a text that is tough time and again will ease our

understanding and helps us to retain it in our memory as well.

— Bishal Gurung

Obviously, all the students suffer from this problem. The common reason for this is lack of concentration, unfamiliar subject matters which are not dealt with practically, our hectic schedule from course books which makes us really tired, disturbance created by the surroundings and finally lack of consciousness about the subject matter. I feel that students should try themselves to understand everything as fast as possible. I want to give a suggestion to all — have patience and use your brain properly while studying. Let’s remember how we started with ‘A, B, C... Z’ in nursery. Let’s start from zero level while reading and reach till 100.

— Pooja Thakur, White House College

School life passed by without any such big trouble. But joining college after SLC I had a tough time understanding what I was studying. I joined Balaju School of Engineering and Technology and took up a three year course — Diploma level for Electrical. The toughest time I had was during my first year of college with in almost all subjects — Physics, Chemistry and other new courses I was learning. My friend and I always wondered, “Why did we join this course instead of studying commerce?” But later talking with elders I realised that the subject I had chosen was better than science. With a keen interest in it, consequently I succeeded in completing my course and looking ahead at the future.

— Raju Gurung, Swoyambhu