Memories — 6
July 11, 2026, 3:00 PM (GMT+6)
The Burden of Grades
My mother, Nasrin Jahan (Shilpi), has always been a housewife. From what I’ve heard, she was a talented student during her school years. She consistently scored high marks in her board exams. She was even awarded talent scholarships in the PSC and JSC examinations, as far as I know.
The only kind of success she had known, or believed in, was getting high grades in exams. And that mindset is still seriously affecting her son’s life—even though she doesn’t realize it, or perhaps doesn’t want to understand it.
She still talks about that one ability she had and takes pride in when it comes to her academic “success”—which is memorization. Yes, she was very good at memorizing answers, even if she didn’t truly understand the concepts behind them. Her academic “success” was largely based on her ability to remember things, rather than her actual understanding.
Although, I still get surprised knowing that she studied science but didn’t truly understand much of it. This really shows how broken the education system is, where someone can achieve top grades and still not understand a single line of what they studied.
That mentality of memorization and the constant pressure to achieve top marks in exams is still haunting her to this day—but the consequences are affecting her children, especially me… the only son in this strict middle-class family.