Dreaming of the Cosmos, Fighting the System: How I Navigated the "Dummy School" Struggle
How I chose self-directed exam prep over regular school,
faced my family's fear of an unconventional path, and learned that
understanding people is its own kind of science.
Quick context for readers outside India: After 10th
grade, Indian students aiming for top science institutes often face a choice
between attending regular school full-time, or enrolling in what's informally
called a "dummy school" — where you're technically registered, but
don't attend daily classes, freeing up time to prepare intensively for entrance
exams. The exams in question — like JEE Advanced — are brutally
competitive, roughly comparable to trying to get into MIT or Caltech, except
the applicant pool is in the millions, not thousands. This post is about what
happened when I chose that harder, less conventional path — and what it cost me
at home.
1
The Crossroads: Regular School vs. an
Unconventional Science Path
After 10th grade, I stood at a fork I didn't fully
understand yet.
On one side: a regular school schedule — structured, safe,
familiar to everyone around me. On the other: an intense, mostly self-directed
path toward exams like JEE Advanced and KVPY — the kind of
preparation that premier science institutes like IISc and IISER
expect, but that a regular school day simply isn't built to support.
I wanted the stars. My parents wanted security.
That single sentence is the entire conflict of this chapter
of my life.
2
Why Indian Parents Fear Unconventional
Career Paths — And Why That's Fair
Here's something important to understand about my family,
and honestly, about a huge number of families in India: research, as a
career, barely exists as a concept.
If you grow up in India and tell your parents you want a
stable future, they know exactly four answers: Arts, if you want a
government job. Medical, if you want to be a doctor. Commerce, if
you want to become a CA (chartered accountant). Non-medical, if you want
to be an engineer. These are known paths, with visible outcomes. Someone in the
extended family has probably walked each of them already.
"I want to study cosmology" doesn't fit anywhere
on that list. It's not that my parents didn't care — it's that I might as well
have been speaking a language they'd never heard. Imagine trying to explain a
passion using words that simply don't exist in someone's vocabulary. That was
my exact problem.
So when I look back at their fear, I try not to be angry
about it. They weren't afraid of me. They were afraid of the unknown — a
path with no visible landmarks, no one to point to and say, "look, it
worked for them too."
3
Self-Studying for JEE Advanced With No
Coaching or Mentor
I started my JEE preparation with no coaching, no mentor,
and honestly, no idea where to even begin. The Class 11 syllabus is enormous
compared to Class 10 — and I was navigating it completely alone.
This was also during lockdown, which removed the one thing
that might have helped: in-person guidance. My school teachers weren't trained
for competitive-exam-level teaching, and once school reopened, that gap never
closed.
So I turned to YouTube. Video by video, channel by channel,
I pieced together a rough map of how to prepare — unstructured, undisciplined,
with no one checking my progress or correcting my mistakes.
My mother — the one person consistently gentle with my
dream, even when she didn't fully understand it — went to my school principal
and requested that I skip regular attendance for Class 11 to focus on my
preparation. The principal agreed.
That year, I also attempted KVPY (a national science
aptitude exam), though it ended up postponed — unexpectedly giving me more time
to prepare.
My first real attempt at a JEE-level test: 12.5 out of
100. It sounds small. But that year, with nearly 2–3 lakh (200,000–300,000)
students competing, many scored negative marks, and the qualifying
cutoff sat around 33–35. Scoring 12.5 with zero coaching and zero mentorship
felt like proof I wasn't chasing a fantasy — just starting late, not starting
wrong.
4
The Shift: A Small Yes That Changed
Everything
Going into Class 12, my parents moved me from my rural
school to an urban one — a quiet act of support in its own right.
I asked my mother again, this time for online coaching. She
said yes. My father and my chacha (uncle) — both central figures in our joint
family, where my chacha holds significant authority in household decisions —
did not agree.
I started the coaching anyway. For the first time, things
clicked. I finally understood how to study for a competitive exam, not
just that I needed to. Between coaching and continued self-study, that
stretch of early Class 12 was the best academic momentum I'd ever had. I ended
Class 11 with 87% — entirely self-guided, with no mentorship, no
coaching, no roadmap.
5
4 Lessons on Navigating Family
Disagreements Over Unconventional Dreams
Looking back, here's what I wish I'd known — and what I'd
tell any student or parent standing in the same spot:
1. A dream needs a plan, not just passion. Parents
don't fear ambition — they fear chaos. A written schedule of study hours,
subjects, and milestones is a lot less frightening than a plan that only exists
in your head.
2. Ask what they're actually afraid of. Instead of
assuming your parents are simply "against" you, ask directly: "What
exactly worries you about this path?" Often it's not the dream itself
— it's isolation, falling behind, or an unfamiliar risk. You can only address a
fear you actually understand.
3. Compromise is a two-way bridge, not a surrender.
My mother's willingness to approach the principal, to say yes to coaching —
these weren't small things. They were her stretching toward my world, even
without fully understanding it. Meeting halfway, wherever you can, matters.
4. If you're a parent reading this, and you don't
understand what your child is asking for — please don't dismiss it. Ask.
Sit with the discomfort of not knowing. If needed, talk to a counselor or
someone who understands the field. Silence and refusal don't protect a child
from an unfamiliar path — they just make that path lonelier.
6
Where This Left Things — For Now
By early Class 12, I had real momentum for the first time:
better grades, real understanding, a coaching structure finally working in my
favor.
But this is where I have to pause the story.
Because what happened next — when the very school that had
promised to support competitive-level teaching abruptly reversed course, when
my coaching was pulled away again, when the ground shifted right when I thought
I'd finally found stable footing — is its own chapter. A harder one. One that
led me into a period of real depression and a serious health struggle I'll be
honest about in the next post.
To understand the universe, we first have to learn to
understand the people closest to us — and sometimes, understanding takes
longer than we'd like, and costs more than we expect.
Have you ever had to convince your family to support an
unconventional dream? How did you handle it? I'd love to hear your story in the
comments.
Next time: the hardest chapter yet — what happened when
the support I'd finally found was taken away again, and how it affected my
health and my mind. I'll be honest about all of it.
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