My life (part 2)

1984, I just finished my middle school and it was time to choose my high school. Those days in Iran most of families were very particular for their children to become either a doctor or an engineer. To continue education in your desired course in university, it was very important that which high school you were choosing. There were basically 5 types of high schools:

• Mathematics and Physics: to join an engineering course in university, this one was the best
• Practical Sciences: the subjects were mostly focused on chemistry, biology, geology and some mathematics. To joing a medicine course in university this was the right high school
• Industrial High School: included multiple branches such as Electric, Electronic, Mechanics, Carpentry, Constructions, etc.
• Human Science: including philosophy, religion, logic, psychology, etc.
• Arts: painting, music, architecture, photography, cinema, theatre, etc.

Also, I should mention that each type of high school had a different discipline in the society. For instance, it was much more difficult to study in a Mathematics and Physics. They needed a much better mark sheet from your middle school. Therefore, a family could be proud of their son or doughter if s/he were studying in Mathematics and Physics. Anyway, I was probably one of the most wierd students that although I had a chance to register in the best high schools but I decided to go to an Inustrial high school to study electronics. I still remember how disappointed my parents were when I persisted to drop mathematics and physics and selected the electronics high school.

Anyway, time passed and I became a well known student in my high school for my creativity and my excellent knowledge about electronics. I remember I used to find my teachers mistakes when they were teaching. My high school was really a big one with more than 1,000 students. Therefore, the managers and principals could hardly know students and we rarely had a chance to even see them.

In 1988 when I was in my third year of high school, I made some very interesting electronic devices and slowly I became a famous student in the school that the management learned my name and later they selected me for an Inventions Exhibition of Students. I went there with two of my works. The first device was an electronic synthisizer circuit that could mix different harmonics of the 12 essential frequencies of basic notes of a piano. My second invention was a funny study lamp light which didn’t have a switch for turning it off on and off. Instead you could switch it on with lighting a match closed to its lamp and you could switch it off by blowing the lamp; exactly like an oil lamp.  No need to mention that in those days, we didn’t have the sensors and sophisticated electronic devices that are available today. Although my first work was much more valuable but the study light became so famous and I remember that in other sections there were few people but there were so many people arround me to see how the light was working.

Those days were exactly the same time that my father got retired. Even when my father was working, probably we were even lower than a middle class family. So, his retirement was a bad news for every one because everyone knew that we were going to have a difficult time. We started making our life more and more economic but still it was difficult. Then in summer of 1988, a teacher of electronic subjects who knew my abilities about electronics, asked me to join him in his friend’s electronic repair shop. The shop was a small room in a very old location in Rasht. Owner of the shop was a person Multiple Sclerosis (M.S.) problem. He could not move his arms and body properly. This was in fact begining of my professional life. Living with this clever but disabled man taught me so many things that I will never forget them.

In this repair shop I had an implicit contract with my owner. If I repaired a TV, a Radio, a Cassette player, or anything else, I would get half of the money that the costumer was paying. By this, I used to get a few dollars for each repair. Having said that this money was really a very small amount, but I never forget my happiness of getting some notes after repairing something. It was so pleasant that when most of my friends were getting money from their parents, I was a high school student who was making money by a technical profession   I was also able to invite my friends to an ice cream, sandwich, or a hot milk-chocolate…

Time was passing slowly and after a few months, I started my final year of high school in Sep 1988. It was time to study hard for going to the university. In Iran we have two types of universities; governmental universities and semi-private universities. In those days, the best universities were always the governmental ones and they were and are absolutely free. Since they can only accept a limitted number of students, the ministry of science and higher educations will arrange for a mega exam in a special day of year where more than 10 million candidates will attend the same exam but of these many people, only less one our of two hundred will get a chance to enter the university. If you consider good courses, this number will even become extremely less, probably less than one out of 10,000. After so many candidates write the exam, the ministry will publish a list of accepted candidates along with their order numbers which shows their score’s place among all the other candidates. For instance, having an order number of 1 means that you have the highest score in the country and that you have the chance to absolutely choose any course from any university. This mega exam is called as “Konkour”, the exam of university entrance!

A few weeks after your order number is published, you will receive a letter from the science and higher education ministry which not only shows your order in your group (same 5 groups that I described before), but also lists all the details about your marks in different subjects. Based on the given marks you could select 14 different courses that you wanted to go for them or you those that you thought you would have a chance to be accepted for them.

However, it was not so serious for me as it was with other classmates of mine. They were really trying for it and spending so much money for special Konkour classes. In fact even if I wanted to go to such classes, I didn’t have money to do it. Finally in 1989 I wrote the Konkour exam but the result was not as good as I expected. It was almost impossible for a student like me, who did not study in a Mathematics and Physics high school and didn’t attend any Konkour class and was in a small city like Rasht with limited educational facilities to compete with other students. For example, a student in Tehran would have much better teachers than mine, besides there were few people in Industrial high schools who could ever enter a university, suppose how could a person like me enter an electrinics or computer engineering course in a governmental university!

So, I finished the high school in 1989 without having a chance for continuing my education. In Iran we have mandatory military service that every healthy male of age 18 or above should definitely do it. This is a 2 year painful service which can simply destroy entire your mind and life. It is indeed like you are sentenced to be in a jail for two years. Therefore, young men try to escape from this evil two years by any way that you may not even imagine. One of the conditions that the government might give you an excemption for is that you could proof that you are not healthy enough to be able to serve for a military action. For example, if for any reason, a person’s index finger is very short, he will simply get an excemption. I know a person who cut his index finger’s first knuckle to get an excemption. I told this to describe for you that how terrible and horrifying this military service is that makes some young people do such things.

If you are able to continue your education in a university after you finish the high school, you will also have a valuable chance to postpone your military service for as many years as your course is taking. Otherwise, you should register yourself for serving in military after maximum one year when you complete age of 18 years. Now, if you join the military with only high school diploma, you will be given a very low rank which is equal to a plain soldier. Therefore, most of the times you should serve as a servent for a permanent personnel of the military. This is not only a very difficult job but it is also very humiliating for a young boy and in most of the cases, your the person whom you are serving will abuse and misuse you for each and every thing. Just like a free servant who doesn’t have any right to complain!

Compare this situation with a much better situation where you could serve as an officer if you joined the military service with a Bachelors or higher degree. You can now understand that how important it is to get into a higher education.  So almost everything about your future depends on only getting into the university.

So, yes! I, the same well known student with so many inventions could not even pass the exam for a low level course in any university. Of course, one of the options that was still open for me was choosing to become a teacher. There are some special colleges for this purpose but they will take a legal commitment from the person for life time. Therefore you will always remain a teacher without any chance to change your life. The good things about this option however was that, firstly you could accept the opportunity after several months and secondly, you would never be required to join the military service again. So, now I had two options on the table: 1- becoming a teacher, and 2- waiting for one more year to write the exam again. And I chose the first option but as I said, I still had several months to sign the commitments.

The public library of Rasht is one of the first public libraries in Iran. This is because of very educated people of this city. Some of my friends and I finally decided to take the Konkour serious and start our study in the public library. This was mainly because that our families could not really afford to pay for our Konkour classes. I started my study with reading mathematics, physics, intelligence, and Persian literature which were the most important subjects in the Konkour exam for an engineering course.

One day a friend of mine walked into the library with an application form that was for the newly stablished university called Azad University which was not a governmental university but a semi-private one. Therefore, the student should pay for the tuitions. in addition, this university was something that most of organizations didn’t even accept its graduations as a valid degree. However, since the application form was very cheap we all decided to fill it and give it a try although all of us knew that even if we could pass the exam, we would never be able to pay its tuition fees.

You want to know what happened next? please read the next part…