I have worked as a bureaucrat for a couple of years. Job satisfaction is tremendous overall. Obviously, there are some tough postings but they too are not without their interesting moments. Your real work as an officer begins when you take charge for the first time and there are no precedents to fall back on. But then, that is where the test of real leadership starts.
At the same time, one must be careful with the service choices one enters. In my first attempt back in 2010, when I was not expecting to get the interview call and ended up getting one, I was a bit apprehensive that notwithstanding the fact that though IPS is/was considered to be a great choice, I did not feel suited for it. So finally, when I did clear CSE in 2013 I was comfortable with the considered manner in which I had filled the service choices. So, Introspection is needed in order to match personality type with the kind of service you would join.
I would also suggest everyone to do a lot of broad-based readings to up your scores in CSE PT. This despite the fact if you may or may not enter Reading as your hobby.
Amartya Sen's and J Dreze's An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions + Banerjee and Duflo's Poor Economics are highly recommended readings as they are not purely economic texts but heterodoxical and multidisciplinary in their orientation.
@vision2020I would like to debunk that myth by giving you a relevant example. Here you go!
Myself: Edu Background-Arts
2010 Attempt No 1, Age 22 y 5 mo. Score: 174/300 (Interviews were for 300 marks then)
My friend who got into IAS that year: Background: Science
2010 Attempt No 5. Age 33, Score: 195/300.
@vision2020Yes. Almost, Perfect Parity is followed. I was in the same situation as you mention in your post. I was 25. I was an Arts Grad. I was deliberately unemployed as UPSC was my ultimate dream. One should be prepared in advance to answer those kind of questions. One could say that Adolescence is a defining feature of modern societies in that one is positioned to find their life purpose and give it everything till one completes age or attempt limits CSE. Be genuine, impersonal and lawyer-like in what you speak before the panel.
One may or may not agree with me. But the most sensible thing to do at this point in time which would be beneficial in both time present and time future is: 1) The morning slots could be dedicated to doing all the conventional slots like Hist/Geog/Pol/Econ/Scitech/Cul/Environ spending not more than 30 min/subject. 2) Noon One hr: Optional Revision, Noon one hr: Extra Readings. 3) Post Noon hrs: Work on Bio Data and 4) Evening Hrs: Current Affairs can be given about 2 hrs.
Obviously, the order of targets can be altered to suit one's temperament and circumstances. But this is what is called for.
I am putting more emphasis on conventional slots because from my two experiences at the CSE PT 2010 and 2013 (174/300 and 190/275; Not Recommended and Recommended respectively at the end of it), UPSC has been known to be notorious to ask factual Prelims Type questions to me and many others who appeared for the same.
While one is in the UPSC journey, one may begin to think it is a larger-than-life kind of a thing. As long as this state of hypnosis drives one to study efficaciously so much the better. Yet, one must remember that it is only slightly more than an examination and importantly by any means how you fare in it is not a measure of your self-worth no matter what pressures the Indian society generates on you. As, Jean Paul Sartre said,'Others are Hell'.
Also, Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, it would please you to know couldn't crack the IIT yet he went on to bag the Nobel for having developed X-Ray crytallography methods to probe the structure of the ribosome.
Similarly, Linus Pauling the double Nobel Laureate was critical of Dan Shechtman reprimanding him that there are no quasi-crystals, only quasi-scientists. The entire Israeli scientific establishment sidelined Shechtman owing to his tangential approaches for many decades but he kept at his research ultimately getting the Nobel prize in Chemistry 2011. So, one must always listen to one'e inner voice and be at work to fructify one's passions.
