Saw your video on YouTube- briefing about SFG & roadmap ahead. I don’t think there’s a better video that exist while we are blindly watching “Toppers Talk” to align our preparations. It goes on to say what the toppers don’t, so I can say for myself I focused too much trying to copy what they would do.
Sir says that UPSC CSE is one such exam where people fail for the first time, well I can fit myself there.
I have learnt :
- The best test series remain the PYQs of UPSC. Simulators (or Stimulators as I earlier called them:p) by Forum came rushing to me while I solved prelims. The award question & president by birth - I recalled then & there. No, I’m not advertising it, I casually solved only a couple of them. So good full length tests in the last month is a must do.
- Cutoff is just a number. Focusing too much on less than 50% to get in mains race is suicidal. Remembering our marks in school to college, prelims seems easier than it is. The focus shouldn’t be 200/200 or 92 sharp but rather to maximise our potential so that cutoff remains a number.
- All UPSC experts, who solve the prelims paper at a later stage will continue to overemphasise on hacks & tricks. They’ll link the eco-san question to sanitation & hence arrive at toilets as answer. And oh, the cloud around ONLY is now acknowledged by UPSC itself. These fundas do work, not denying, only to supplement our knowledge. They work more while we’re solving them outside.
- Ignoring any part will hurt and haunt you. Be it ancient, medieval or CSAT. I comfortably solved the CSAT paper and scored around 110-140 in PYQs. However, I managed to solve only 43 this time & knew this was the end as I walked out that day. The reason is lack of sleep & loosing the calm state.
-Lastly, to gear up again & reading the same things again is daunting but it’s the only way out. The questions I’d have marked right keep coming back to me. But as sir says, revision is hard work & hard work is revision.
Wrote this on second Sunday of 2022, so that 2/6 seems like another day & I get reminded every time I loose track. “Now that I know better, I try to do better.”
