About a month before my preliminary exam, I availed leave and went to Thiruvananthapuram to join a coaching class. The time available was very limited, but, I decided to join the class, as I hoped that the entire syllabus would be covered in less time and also I would get the opportunity to appear in many mock exams. The class was excellent. I enjoyed the class a lot. I had a strong desire to achieve my dream goal, so every piece of information was important for me and thus I kept on noting important points.
But I would like to narrate an incident that happened on the first day at the coaching center.
After completion of the chapters, there was a question-answer session at the end of the class. This was the first day and lot many state-related General Knowledge questions were asked. There was one lady who went on answering the questions, many of them correctly. I was surprised at her performance. Similarly, there were a few more who competed with her and gave their best. To be frank, my confidence fell to a new low that day. It was as if I was not all prepared, in comparison to them. What made me anxious was that only 02 seats were available in the general category for which I was competing and the level of preparation of those in the coaching class was much higher than mine. I went back to my hostel dejected that day. But I was not a person who would concede defeat that easily. The incident helped me push myself more to study. I had very strong reasons to achieve my dream goal so I jumped into studies till late at night. I shooed away all my doubts and decided to study more, learn more, recollect more, and give my best. I solved more and more Multiple-choice Questions and revised more. I reduced my sleeping hours. I also never missed my daily meditation, as I believed it would compensate for my lack of sleep. Thus I took my prelims exam in April.
The results came next month and here is the interesting part. None of those who gave their best performance on the first day of coaching class during the question-answer session passed the preliminary exams. I was surprised. Then I came to know that all the questions that were asked in the initial days of coaching were clerical exam-level questions and most of them were fact-based. For example, who was the 6 th speaker of the Legislative Assembly or who was the 3rd Chief Minister of Kerala etc. As the Deputy Collector exam was to be conducted after a gap of 10 or more years in Kerala, many aspirants who had prepared thoroughly for clerical level exams were also giving a try for the Deputy Collector prelims exam and they were not serious about the mains exam ( This made the prelims tougher for the genuine candidates as the cut off marks for prelims exam would go up). The aspirants who gave the right answers on the first day were preparing for the clerical level exams for years together and so they were experts in solving Multiple Choice Questions.
If only I had become afraid believing that ‘others know more about me’ and so decided not to appear in the prelims exam, what would have happened to my fate?
I am grateful to the almighty for giving me hope and guiding me through those tough times.
From the experience above, the advice that I would like to give you all is that don’t get afraid of competition and the performance of others. You should compete only with yourselves and improve daily. You should keep in mind the syllabus and cover the subjects systematically. Have a proper revision plan and revise thoroughly. Also, solve a lot of MCQs to test yourself.
It is your performance that matters and nobody else’s.
