100. The 100th Post: an Overview

The hundredth Post of The Certifieds sits in the middle of the series. The blog series of The Certifieds had started on 23rd June, 2018 and will end on 31st December 2018.

The Certifieds tells the story of a fictional institute, called the National Institute of Life Skills (NILS), which offers guidance and training for the real life. The courses offered in the institute transcend the boundary of academics and often sit beyond the so-called concept of applied skills.

NILS, for example, does not teach the theoretical importance of family within a social structure, but it teaches how one can use his family contacts to come out of a tight spot. It does not offer lectures on the boon and bane of social media. Instead it gives a systematic training on building an impressive Facebook profile. NILS does not teach you photography in general, but it offers guidance in clicking good DPs.  NILS teaches you how to be politically correct. It trains you to be a team worker in office, even if you hate all your colleagues. It teaches you how to set your daily goals and what to do when you fail to achieve them. It trains you to chat in English and impress people. It helps you to find, follow and stalk your ex-girlfriend in Facebook. It also teaches you how to convert your parent’s natural affection into hard cash.

Alas, this institute is entirely imaginary.

The only glimpses of NILS that one can have are seen through this blog series. The past 99 posts are littered with class lectures, book excerpts, discussions, explanations, home assignments, handouts, class notes, chats, talks and even WhatsApp messages. And there are more to come, almost as many as there are now.

While the institute and its teaching is the main focus here, the blog series is not entirely devoid of human characters. The major recurring characters can be found under the labels Father and Daugther, Two Colleauges, The Batchmates, The Married ones and Husband and Wife.

There is no fixed way to read this blog series. The structure is entirely flexible and you can read it any way you want. If you are a casual reader and get bored usually in two minutes, click on the post names in the Blog Archives that you like and read as many as you can in those two minutes. Or if you are a holistic reader and you like to vent your disappointment only after the last page of the book, then I take humble liberty to suggest, that you should begin right at the beginning with the first post from 23^rd June, 2018.