Benjamin Franklin once said – Never leave that until tomorrow, which you can do today. The man discovered electricity. We ought to pay more attention to what he said a few hundred years ago.
The third week of September has begun and if you haven’t risen yet, this is well, a wake up call for you.
So this week when @Aks and @Gator asked me – about joining a Test Series for Mains 2015, I said – Take it as priority No. 1 ( @Gator has secured a position in the IPS this year and I have seen him grow from pathetically low score with no Interview call, to a position in IFoS and IPS, and hopefully IAS this year.)
There are two things I want to tell you :-
1) If you don’t have a plan for completing syllabus yet – join a Test Series, any Test Series and follow their plan, and you will sail along. At least you will complete syllabus on time.
2) If you stay in the Study Hubs in Delhi (Old Rajinder Nagar, Mukherji Nagar) and are not clocking eight hours a day, by all means join a Library.
The Test Series Conundrum: To do or Not To
Should I join a Test Series? Well, The Union Public Service Commission is not going to test how good you are at studying. They will test you on how good you write answers. And if you have been studying very hard, UPSC isnt gonna know that unless they read what you have read. So do join a Test Series for GS & Optionals, by all means. Write at least 1-2 tests on every Paper and you will know the difference.
But I haven’t done my syllabus yet ? Is joining a Test Series too premature? The Syllabus is designed in a manner where you could do it in 20 days or a whole year. So the truth is, you will only compete the syllabus one day after the exam.
Let that one-day-after-exam feeling happen after you have written your first mock test, and not after writing real UPSC Mains Paper 1 Test on 19th December ( and trust me, if you don’t start writing tests, you will be feeling like that on the exam day )
So my advice is – you do not have to wait for the syllabus to complete. You complete some part of the syllabus every time you spend three days and three nights preparing for the next test ( and yes do it, that trying to cover whole-syllabus-in-last-three-days – before the Test, because those three days are like sprints in this long 100 day Marathon, one fourth which is almost over. ) After every test that you write with half preparation, you evolve into a wiser, more productive person, who knows himself very well. And that is, I dont know much 🙁
Which Test Series is good?
Join any. As long as you have some standardised paper checking. You could join Vision or if you are looking for an alternative you could join GS Score, they are both good for Test Series, and have produced good results. @Aks and @Gator joined the later.
All that matters is – tests are conducted on time, discussions take place on time and copies evaluated on time. If you do not want to pay for the Test, you could take a look at Insights or this thread. @Rattlesnake writes brilliant answers there and I have not seen any place elsewhere where people write such brilliant answers. This also has to do with the fact that more serious and experienced aspirants participate there. Plus, They are Free and offer only peer-to-peer evaluation, ( which on ForumIAS is damn good ) but you could just practise.
The Whys – over why a test series for Mains will help you
First, when you enter a class full of people jostling for space to write tests, you will realise how real the competition is. You will be proud if you score well, and that will be a good motivation. You will be ashamed, if you have missed the last test, whereas hundreds of people wrote it , and you were too lazy or too confused. That too, when you quit your job to pursue preparation full time, and you have been too lazy to accomplish two basic things – Reading the Newspaper Everyday, and showing up for the classes/tests you have already paid for.
Second, you actually learn to answer questions that you do not know. Its very likely that you will be half prepared if you are writing the first test within 15 days of the Prelims Exam. Half prepared on the mock test is good. Half prepared on the Mains Day in December is not good. So with your half preparedness , you are going to write a creative answer, and learn how to handle questions which are either open ended , or which you do not know. This helps, because Mains Exam is going to have 10 -12/25 such questions.
Third, you will miss a few topics when you write your first test tomorrow. But you will at least know what you have not prepared , and you are more likely to revise what you already know + read on what you have already missed when you write a test on the same paper once again , and most test series do have 2 tests on every paper. This, I call, iterative preparation.
Fourth, and this one is a blanket rule – you always have a few exceptions who won’t study much, make notes, nor write tests and get under 50 too! You cant beat them, TBH. And you may or may not be that lucky, but if you aren’t, you better plan. Exceptions aren’t the rule. Exceptions merely prove the rule. The rule is working hard + smart.
Almost every person I have known has written a few tests, if not in their clearing attempt, then in the attempt before.
Coming to the library part
Here is a checklist for you :-
- I am NOT clocking eight hours a day yet.
- I start from Wikipedia and find myself on certain youtube/variant everyday after sometime
- I haven’t touched done one third of my optional first paper yet – thats less than 1/6th of the syllabus*
- I have noisy flatmates who aren’t writing Mains this year.
- I talk on the phone for more than two hours a day – during the day
- My flatmate doesn’t study, and this hampers my prep too.
If you three or more apply to you, by all means join a library. A library is a great place to gauge the competition, focus on what is really important, an excuse for not talking on the phone, because you don’t carry your phone there, and doing distraction free studies, and even finding a life partner.
But I can’t live without the Internet, or worse, I can’t study so much
Good news is, you don’t have to. If you like to study less, this means you are less efficient in terms of daily productivity in number of hours. So what you need is effective study – You study only five hours a day, but make the most of it – no phone calls, whatsapp, ForumIAS or talking to chicks or dudes.
I know people who would study from 7AM in the library to 2 PM , eat chhole bahuture from Students Corner and sleep for the rest of the day intoxicated by the tons of saturated fat in it. But Then , the evening would be for doing Current Affairs and newspaper only – or the Internet. But 7Am – 2 PM would be seven hours – or six effective hours. Its a good number, to begin with.
And yes, as the exam nears, increase this to eight to ten hours a day, and maybe more if you can.
The moment immediately after @valkyrie724 got Rank 81, I asked him the secret to his success. I knew it was the perfect moment, because he had become an IAS barely 3 minutes back and his answer would be an honest and true one. And he said the secret is – hold on – I studied for three hours at one single stretch, even if my arse was on fire.
So wake up the sleeping genius in you, join that test series, or that library and stop procrastinating, start working. @Gator already is.
If you don’t believe me, go to your nearest library someday at 8AM and you will know what I am talking about.
Hope this helps some of you, and do leave comments if it does.
Until Next time,
@Neyawn
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