She is the deputy foreign editor and prime time anchor at India’s leading 24-hr English news channel CNN-IBN. She regularly anchors its flagship show India at 9, and a weekly round-up of international events- World 360. Suhasini Haider, a popular media personality, speaks about her school days. Frequently punished in school, Haider’s fondest memory of those days are of school debates, elocutions and creative writings, she participated in. Haider has been working in the media field since 1994 when she first started with CNN in America. She started working before she finished her studies. That involved a lot of research based work and internship. Then she moved to CNN India in Delhi and worked for about 10 years. Now, she is associated with CNN-IBN. Haider speaks to Educare.

Your fondest school memory.
I think I have several but particularly in our school what used to be the busiest creative time was springs. So most of my happy memories of the school are associated with all the activities we used to do during ‘Basant’. Then a lot of extra-curricular activities like elocution contests are part of my happy memories of school.

One thing you miss the most about school.
I think what one misses is when you are in school, everything is possible. As you grow older, you realise you need to try and make a few things possible. And your options do narrow down quite a bit. So, if I do miss anything about school it is the idea of being able to do everything; lots of different subjects and lots of different activities.

Most forgettable experience.
I would say giving the exams as I was not very good at competing. Though I did ok in the exams but it was like when you got the results, it was a very awful feeling, the constant comparisons with other people. The competitive streak that is brought out among the classmates, I think that is the least favourite of the memories.

Your favourite subject.
In school my favourite subject was mathematics. And English, too, I guess, because of all the creative writing. I think I liked mathematics because I was good at it in school.

The subject you dreaded the most.
The subject that I dreaded the most was probably physics. I used to have trouble with a lot of concepts.

Your favourite co-curricular activity.
That would be creative writing and elocution. That’s what I used to do a lot and enjoyed the most. Activities like debating, elocution contests and writing I enjoyed a lot. We had a school magazine that I was contributing to. I also did a lot of organising events during school time.

Were you ever punished in school? Any one incident you would like to talk about?
Frequently. Though I went to a school that did not believe in very harsh punishments. I went to Sardar Patel Vidyalaya. So, the maximum that could happen to you was that you were made to stand in front of the principal’s office. And I was frequently found there for making too much noise in the corridor and once for bunking the class. And that was the limit of how bad it would be. It wasn’t so bad. We continued to do terrible things.

What was your concept of free time and summer holidays?
Summer holidays were basically spent with the family. And unlike now, when your holiday would be for just about a week, our summer holidays were for entire two months when you stayed with your grandparents. And basically you did not do much during vacations apart from reading a lot of books and catching up as many movies as you could. It’s nothing like what my children have now-a-days. Their holidays are lot more structured. They get a maximum of may be two weeks off. And because my parents and my in-laws live in Delhi, it’s not like they can go out of town to spend time with grandparents.

How did you crack the boards?
I would say that the first strategy was that you have to study through the year. There’s no getting around that. You had to start preparation in April, the year before. For maths I had a tutor, not because I didn’t understand the subject but because there are very specific ways of tackling an exam paper and there are people who analyse the paper and tell you what to expect. So, I was lucky to have a tutor like that.

It’s a good mantra for the board to get a good tutor because it’s something that needs one on one, particularly mathematics and you have to keep practising. Another thing that I used to do, since everyone around me was on phone, was to sleep till late in the morning and study a solid six hours from about 8 or 9 in the night to about 3 in the morning during the preparatory leave. That was to cut out the distraction. And as far as I can see, the distractions are only getting more and more now-a-days.

Were you happy with your board results?
In those days we were happy with a lot less. We got a certain 80 per cent and we were happy with ourselves. It’s not like now-a-days, when nothing below 90 per cent works. And I was lucky that after my boards, I got into a good college. I went to LSR and studied statistics there. I also went for my masters in journalism to Boston University.