MY JEE JOURNEY: PART ONE

 MY JEE JOURNEY: PART ONE

Dear Reader, this topic is quite sensitive and may include some instances of despondency and pessimism. Please do not lose hope after completing reading. There are a lot of things that matter apart from entrance exams. Live for that. Although I have urged all competitive exam aspirants to read this post, in case you do not belong to that category, it may be difficult for you to relate to this post at some places. Nevertheless, I am sure you’d understand the emotions that I am trying to portray here. Do read it with an open mind and skip the parts where it gets too complicated.

Before I begin, I want everyone to know that even after all the struggle and pain, I got my happy ending. You will too.

This story is not only about hard work and perseverance, but also about failure and sorrow. In this 2 year journey, I learnt a lot and became a better version of myself. More than anything, I learnt how to push myself. Even right now as I write this post, my mind flashes back to all those struggles that I faced, and I look back and realise how far I have come.

In case you are aloof to the competitive exam circus, let me give you a brief idea. Up until 10^th grade, a student is supposed to learn every subject under the sun. But 11^th standard onwards, one must choose. And the 3 most famous choices are Arts, Commerce and Science. It a very well known fact that usually almost every person who chose Science has either aspired to be a doctor or an engineer.

To all the Indians reading this post, you know the concept of board exams. For all the non Indians, every student in the 12^th grade must appear for a state-wise organized exam called as board exam. If you can clear that, you get a certificate saying that you are eligible to appear for further courses in the field of sciences.

Had this been the 80s or 90s, life would have been simple. Appear for the board exam, get a good score and get admission in the college of your choice.

But quite recently, with the growing population the concept of competitive exams has become really popular. Basically, apart from clearing the board exams, you have to compete in a rat race with hundreds of thousands of other students who want to go to the same college as you. Imagine that college X is the most revered and famous college in the entire country. Getting a degree from that college would boost your career to a high extent. But the catch is that 1,600,00 other people want the same college as you.

And that, ladies and gentlemen is when JEE, NEET, BITSAT, CET and many other examinations come into the picture. The most famous one being JEE for engineering students.

One of the ironies of life is that when you start off in 11^th grade, just fresh off of clearing the 10^th standard examinations, you set your goal to IIT Bombay computer science degree. And when you reach Rotational Motion, you realise that any local college would suffice. And that is what happened with me too. Like the thousands of other students, I joined an integrated course in one of the most famous coaching classes of India. All the people who know me would know what I am talking about.

And so, I began the preparation with high hopes and dreams. I made fake scenarios in my mind of how I’d ride my bike into the IIT Bombay campus, introduce myself to people as a computer engineer and how I’d make my parents proud. And I think every other aspirant had the same feelings at the start.

In fact, everything actually went fine the first couple of weeks. We had just finished Units & Dimensions, Mole concept was ongoing and Logarithms seemed simple.

It started going downhill when I started giving the tests. For some reason I could not score very well on the first test and that disappointed me. I had never actually failed in an exam before so this was new. Nevertheless, I reassured myself and my parents that we’d figure it out. Soon enough, the tests kept going worse and worse. By this time I thought that I had gotten myself out of the 10^th standard haze. I was doing everything correctly! Where did I go wrong?! I completed solving the module exercises, I regularly went to my teachers and asked them doubts, I never referred to any online videos, I re-solved all my test papers but still?!

And around me I had a couple of people who had been acing their tests regularly. It pained me to see that for the first time in my life, I was not at the top of my class. Throughout my entire life I had been the most promising student who always sat on the first bench and listened to the teacher intently. What happened this time? Why could I not do it? Why was I not the ‘topper’ this time?

These thoughts regularly bothered me. No matter how hard I worked, I could not seem to improve my marks. My parents were equally concerned for me. I even remember a time when I had gotten 0 marks in physics and 0 marks in math. Quite frankly by then I had begun acting like a robot. Not changing anything, doing the same stuff repeatedly over and over again. I was the first person to enter the institute and the last person to leave. On some occasions I sat for 12 hours trying to study.

I will not go into very personal details but you need to understand something from the student’s perspective. All a student sees around himself is comparison. His friends are doing well but he is not. His family is paying tons of money and hoping that he does well but he is not. Every single time we take a short break and try to watch some television or go out, the guilt overtakes us. You try hard and you try hard and you burn yourself out but you can’t figure out what is wrong.

And sometimes we go to some extreme extents too. I will tell you some of my habits.

I stopped going to the movies entirely. I took an oath upon myself that I would not step foot into the theatre until I am done with my entire journey. I missed some very memorable movies because of that. And it may seem silly to you but for the student it is a way to prove to the world that “Look at me! I am doing everything I can. I am serious about my goals! Acknowledge me!”

I deleted my social media apps. I started to time myself on how much television I’d watch. I wouldn’t even let my parents watch television. I stopped going out with family and friends. I isolated myself in my room for hours on end. It went to such an extent that anytime I just looked out the window to see the sky, I’d tell myself after 30 seconds, “That’s enough. I have work to do.”

It was a very depressing time indeed. There was no joy, no hope, no happiness, only work. One thing that I want the reader to learn is that those friends that I considered my competition, those people who scored better than me, they were going through the exact same thing! In their eyes they compared themselves with others who scored better. And in this crucial time it is important to realise that you need to work together. All of you are in this together. We may not be in the same boat but we are in the same storm. Help each other, talk to each other, share your study patterns, go out for some chai, have some fun.

Another very important thing that I want you to understand is that All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Please, for the love of God, take some breaks. Do not burn yourself out. I have had instances with myself when I just could not touch the book a day before the exam. There were times when I have an exam the next day and I am feeling really guilty because I can’t study anymore. I’d try and open the book but quickly realise that all attempts would be futile.

And among this entire melodrama the one person you’d probably trust to help you would be your teachers. And you may think, “They have been teaching for so and so years, surely they will be able to help me!” At the start, it may seem as if they are giving you some really good advice. They tell you to focus on the class module, attend all classes, make notes properly, study for 14 hours a day, do some yoga in between, don’t refer to any online sources to study, ask your friends any doubts in any questions, solve together, etc. For a while, you get hopeful. You start telling yourself, “I can do this again! Nothing is impossible!” It is all a pattern. None of that actually works out. You give another test, but score low marks and the cycle repeats. This is what happened with me. This is what happened with my friends. It is a ‘canon’ event. And the worst part of a private coaching tutorials is the inconsistency of a teacher. You probably get comfortable with a certain professor and you seem to think that you are actually making progress. And poof! A few months later that professor has been replaced by someone who’s teaching style does not suit you. And now you are entirely on your own. And besides that, you now have to again establish a good relationship with this new professor so that you can go and ask them advice.

At some point in time, I did start realizing that none of my teachers’ advice was actually helping me. It was all just a standard method that they reiterate to every student. There is nothing special about that. And then at that point in time, you start thinking, “who in this world can help me?”

This is when online courses entered my life. From the beginning every coaching class tells you to stay away from online resources and organisations. They tell you to stay away from YouTube and strictly advise you to not refer to any extra notes from any resources. But trust me when I say, one must do the exact opposite. Online classes are exactly what helped me get through these tough times. Had I realized this sooner, I would have entirely stopped going to my coaching classes and studied from these free resources. It may be a hard pill to swallow, but one can actually clear an entrance exam just be watching educational videos on YouTube. If you are a JEE or NEET student, you know who and what company I am talking about. Trust me dear reader, there are only two things that finally helped me at the end. And one of those was these online tutorials.

By the start of 2023, I had started balancing my physical coaching classes along with the online classes. And it was working out well for me. But… I still could not score marks in my tests. And that is what challenged my faith. I had started understanding the concepts better but I was still unable to solve questions. And that pained me. That pained me a lot. I went back to my teachers, went back to taking advice from them, and the cycle repeated itself. It felt never ending. On one side, I was depressed with myself that no matter how hard I tried, I could not solve questions. On the other side, my parents were really worried for me as I had gone without taking a break for far too long.

I remember an incident that happened somewhere around January or February. In the January of 2023, the JEE exam was conducted for our seniors and somewhere around February the results were declared. And as soon as the results were declared, we got to know that a few people from our branch were in the top scorers of this year. And so, to celebrate their success, our teachers brought those students over to our class and made them cut a cake and give us some advice on how to better oneself. They narrated stories of how all of those people were doing really bad in their 11^th standard but soon enough picked up pace next year and fought their way through the competition. And while they were distributing the cake to all of us, I refused to eat it. I made a promise to myself that I’d eat this cake only if it came from my celebrations. One day I too would narrate my own story to my juniors and inspire them. But today I realise, it was stories like these that made our burden heavier. We were narrated similar accounts of different people, all of whom failed to create sparks in 11^th standard and suddenly picked up pace in 12^th. It was due to stories like these that gave us a false hope. It created a pseudo-optimistic attitude that blinded us to see the real truth. The truth was that this job could not be completed by everyone. At some point in time I had to realise that I am not cut out for this. I could not do this. And that was the truth that I was made blind to because of the success stories of a handful of toppers. I worked hard, I sat in my room, door closed, for hours on end, solving my entire class module, not going out for a break, not giving my mind a breathing space, not appreciating the little things in life, etc.  

Finally, at the end of 11^th grade, I took my parents’ advice and went with them for a short 3 day vacation to a beach destination. Half of my journey was over and the other half was about to begin soon enough. This is where part 1 ends.