I graduated from IIT Kharagpur in 2014. The seeds of preparation were sown in final year of my college itself. However lack of confidence and awareness of exam led me to opt for private job first. It becomes important for me to mention this trivial information since this lack of confidence was something which was to haunt me further.
I kept reading The Hindu and few NCERTs for some time during my job. However could not start full flash preparation since I felt I was not at the apt level. This led me to get frustrated with prep and leave it till I left my job after 2 years of joining.
The fallacy of under-confidence leads to vicious cycle, where fear of lack of capability leads you to study less which leads to actual lack of capability.
It was only after I failed my first attempt, that I came to realize the above fallacy.
Thus my first advise will be to have faith in yourself and have confidence in your endeavors. UPSC is known as the great equalizer. Know for sure that if you are giving your best efforts and working on your mistakes day by day, no force can stop you to clear this exam.
My preparation was filled with self-doubts. I doubted that my GK is very poor and thus I need to first update myself with wide ocean of information, only then I can dive into the actual curriculum of the exam and start reading books. I spent months going through random websites and dispersed information to discover that what I was looking for was given in concentrated form in curriculum books itself. Imagine the time I could save, if I could have just started with books
Again, this bad habit of being in a standstill continued. I procrastinated writing answers since I thought I did not have the required knowledge, writing essay, since I thought my writing skills were bad. Little did I know the significance of answer writing.
Thus my second advise will be to push yourself. Here is an exam where you will constantly need to start something. Start your preparation, start reading a book, start writing answers, essays, making notes, even start studying at the beginning of a day or after a study break. Start badly, study for very few hours in the beginning, write a very bad answer, open your book with very distracted mind, however start somewhere. It is only when you walk, you can reach somewhere. Pampering yourself and procrastinating will never lead you to your destination.
Coming to another common mistake which aspirant do: maximum resources, minimum retention, full confusion. Thankfully, I never committed this mistake, but this is something which has kept many deserving candidates in abyss. UPSC preparation market is full of resources, tons of books, endless coaching notes and plethora of websites. Keeping the magnitude of syllabus in mind, people tend to get lost. They start material scavenging, buying latest notes from the market and collecting them. This creates confusion, increases your preparation material and creates stress since you won’t be able to finish let alone revise this material.
Thus my third advise will be to follow the dictum of minimum resources, maximum revisions. Keep your resources limited and catering to the specific syllabus of UPSC. Thus reading one Spectrum book for modern history will be sufficient and more efficient rather than going towards Bipin Chandra, Shekhar Bandopadhyay and Sumit Sarkar. This does not mean that you do not read books or other materials but use them to broaden your understanding rather than making them base materials.
Finally, you should keep the final frontier of civil services exam in mind, the exam itself. Many people start considering gaining knowledge as the end of this exam rather then means to an end. What will get you through the exam will be the final marks achieved by performing on the exam day itself, not reading some XYZ book or n-number of coaching materials.
Thus, my final advise will be to prepare yourself for performing best on the exam day. This includes, practice for prelims MCQs, answer writing, mock interviews and test-series, as well as, keeping yourself healthy and safe and alert. Your knowledge will not matter, until you are able to convey yourself best to the examiner. Thus practicing for the final exam should be your top priority. Don’t compromise on giving tests because you had to complete that extra material. It is true that without knowledge, you cannot perform, but it is also true that without performing, your knowledge will be a complete waste. Practice to perform well in final exam.
Also, an unhealthy mind or body cannot achieve its full potential. Don’t cut back on your health because of your studies. Eat healthy, exercise regularly and practice meditation to remain in top form physically as well as mentally. Many people have ruined their exams since they were either sick or stressed or even did not sleep well last night. Respect your body and mind, and they will work best for you.
It was only after that I started following the above dictums to some extent in my second attempt that I could clear this exam. With these advises in mind, you may not need to waste that extra year that I did 🙂
A peace of my mind 