JEE, Joint Entrance Examination. It is one of the most prestigious entrance exam of engineering in India, held in two parts. Mains and advance, and you can get into colleges through both of them, advance as the name suggests comes after clearing mains and is even more hard when compared.
JEE acts as a first milestone or goal or “that mountain” to climb in the life of students especially the middle class one’s. So, it’s the first time getting serious, dedicated, consistent. As, it’s the first time so it begins with “learning” how to dedicate yourself, trying to stay consistent. Basically, the journey begins with “zeroth” level.
But unfortunately, at that innocent age of 17 to 18. It’s pretty easy to miss out upon these fundamentals unless and until you have family pressure. which can act towards or against your growth, in this journey.
So, it all began after mine tenth grade. Where mostly everyone scores well, and the confident me was presented with an opportunity to become an engineer by my parents and also was curious about it, due to some external reasons. Which led to choosing of a mentor or I’d say class, that would lead me to my dreams, as they say.
These classes begin themselves by selling dreams to the needy parents and innocent kids, although their pitch has got no flaws but the way they sell it, well there lies the problem.
Out of all this, parents finally chose one. In Most of the cases it is the one who has taught or rather sponsored the AIR-1 student.
Unaware of all this, innocent me beganed mine journey with full motivation to crack IIT
I tried but was lagging behind with the pace with which lectures are being taught, this actually quite worried me, but I eventually got aware of many other students sharing the same problem with me, which relaxed me a bit and form there the downfall began, cause at that age it’s hard to identify and analyze the situation, as it’s the first time. Then slowly the benchmarks get set and they quite get low compared from the beginning. As you may see where the things slowly start taking turn.
With these things continuing, 12th grade starts and now, the real game begins. Cause 12th grade is the most important phase of the JEE preperation, as now you have to manage your boards along with JEE, so many students realise that advanced is quite hard or not possible at this point. Just like them I started focusing on JEE mains, well now the classes shuffle and create two different batches of students just on the basis of pure marks.
Well as you have guessed by now, I was put into the batch where students studied less at least in their 11th grade. With this, the term began
I tried putting little effort, as I was quite interested back then in learning how things really worked, how the concept was put forward by the scientists, basically on the curiosity side of things. This again led to my downfall in the JEE preparation cause I was unable to understand at that point, JEE needs candidate “Who could solve given questions in 3 hours”. Well too dumb to understand that back in the day.
And with this, I along with many other students from my as well as the batch who really used to study started lagging behind and backlog started to pile up. Well, there were two reasons for this first one I was lacking enthusiasm and second being the teachers, now I may sound narcissistic. but the teachers used to go with their pace which was basically completing the target within the targeted timeframe, and there was very less scope of them teaching the topic again, as they mostly used to be busy and used to have class to attend to somewhere in the district. And the biggest problem was anxiety, it used to be on the peak back in the day, as it’s the first time stepping out, along with that the teachers used to be focused. so mostly, it was quite to see the warm/friendly side of the teacher, although this might vary from student to student according to their experience.
And with this situation, January attempt arrived and I wasn’t ready. So convinced myself for the April attempt, and from that point the result of entire JEE preparation starts to arrive, and as you may have assumed by now just like the downfall in preparation phase, there was also a downfall in result. With this my January attempt went down. So, just after the Jan attempt I reached to a realization that April attempt is also going to be a failure, as board exam knocked the doors, cause most of the JEE aspirants don’t study much for boards until the exam approaches, cause JEE itself is hard to handle alone. And just according to the flow, i started studying for 12th boards.
I tried this time, although was quite directionless, but put most of my efforts. And just like this I got finished with my boards, in which I wasn’t able to score 75% total and PCM aggregate as well. So JEE and BITS were no longer for me. The immediate options with me back then were, VIT/ Manipal/ SRM. And every engineering aspirant knows the reality behind these options very well. So, the final and only option left with me was MHTCET.
Now, as it was the only final option for me and for which I had only 2 months of preparation time. I got quite serious about it, out of which first week went in figuring out right strategy, as this exam is quite different form JEE, here you have to solve easy to moderate level questions compared to that of JEE’s, but you have to solve them in very less time compared to JEE. So, here it was the speed game. Henceforth had to train myself according to that. First of all, I had to understand and solve many chapters which i didn’t do back then, so had to cover those as well within that time frame. So, dedicated myself to make my parents proud, as so far through the journey I had only given them disappointment.
At this point the class eventually stops helping, as they mostly focus on students who did well in mains and are aiming for JEE advanced. So, I was left with myself.
And with this, I started my grind for the very first time in my life and my only aim at that point was to make my parents proud.
Just like that my journey began, got my study material right and started studying seriously. At this point, it was the most serious and stressful part in my entire preparation. It was quite stressful, because it was my first experience with “Grinding”. So, my grind back then was to study from YouTube and solve MHTCET PYQ’s. Which I tried following religiously as possible.
And with this the day arrived of my MHTCET exam, was quite nervous but was ready.
And with this the exam began and very soon ended, following it’s pattern.
Fast forward after 1 month the result arrived and I scored 97%ile in Chemistry, 93%ile in Physics and 65%ile in Maths sadly. Just as it looks overall score got quite affected by the marks in Mathematics. Parents were quite happy, but I wasn’t satisfied and that gave rising to the age-old blaming game, of having less time for preparation. But some part of me knew, who was wrong in here.
And this leads to the part of lessons and learnings that I had from my mistakes
•It’s the first time of having something at stakes, that makes it quite emotional and very vulnerable at that age. So, acknowledge that and proceed with caution. Here are few tips that may help you through the journey.
- Stay dedicated
If you are “really” from the bottom of your heart interested in engineering or your social/economic situation says so, then only this is possible. And with dedication you’ll have the motivation to fight with small or big setbacks in the entire preparation journey. - Peer influence
Well, there are only peers or I’d say colleagues in JEE preparation. They would stay with you only up to two years and after that there would be no contact or very less if possible. And I can agree that, at the age of experiencing college and growing yourself socially you get exposed to hostile environment of fierce competition. And that leads to many breakouts and that might lead to getting badly influenced by the peers therefore leading to the downfall - Staying motivated
Be it facing setbacks through test scores
Be it peer pressure or influence
Be it PTM
Be it family expectations or situation
Or on a contrary be it easily getting into comfort zone, because of not having enough family pressure or situational pressure
Staying motivated is very very important in this journey as it is not a race, it’s a marathon and here you have to run for long time, so speed does not matter, consistency does and henceforth. Whenever it comes to any goal of longer time period, there will always be small setbacks in the entire journey. And to tackle those, motivation is necessary and this would never come to you, if you don’t have dedication.
Being honest, not many people reading this will understand or follow it, cause at the end of the day there will be very few who would get into the desired college.
So, remember during every setback every time you fall, there is someone more dedicated than you at that point, willing to take your position or seat.