The first day I had stepped foot in ORN, me and my friend were looking for places to eat. We found this place called Kathuria's which was located in one of those markets inside ORN, in the middle of main street. After we were done with the most expensive Paratha we had ever eaten till then, the old man sitting on the counter asked us if we had come for Civil Service preparation? We replied in the affirmative. Yes. The old man chuckled and said, "By the time you make sense of this examination, 4 attempts will have passed by". We laughed it off feeling invincible fresh out of a Tier 1 college. The world seemed ours to conquer. However his words were prophetic, at least for me (my friend got into IPS a couple of years ago), and as wisdom has finally dawned over me and mains exam got over leaving me with some time on hands, I can shell out a few bits with respect to Preliminary examination.
This was my 4th attempt and 2nd Mains. The one thing I observed about prelims was that in a lot of questions I could eliminate 2 options and got confused between the remaining two and eventually I ended up coloring the wrong box. And the only way to not get confused was to be sure and to be sure I had to revise the material I had thoroughly. And this was the major lesson I got and it's something every topper who has ever cleared the exam told. It's common knowledge. An open secret. Why do we don't do it?
1. We don't have a final source from which to revise from.
2. Revision is hard. It's difficult. It's one of the most excruciating things we have to go through.
After 2 failed attempts and going through a myriad of books - D D Basu, Shekhar Bandyopadhyaya, Sriram's Economy, Shankar IAS and what not, thought I had understood the concepts it were those factual questions that took me down. And I didn't have the temerity left to start over again and make notes for continuous revision. So I did the next best thing, I took someone else's notes (in this case it was Mandar Patki's) and started mugging up every thing in there. And for current affairs picked up PT365. I know people say that PT365 is useless these days and don't help at all, but I don't agree. The thing is whatever you pick you have to read it thoroughly. Whether it is your own notes, someone else's notes, some current affairs compilation. Don't start reading anything if you can't revise it gazillion times. And this is the key to prelims people.
Revise. Revise. Revise and revise once more. Keep revising like your life depends upon it. Keep revising till you throw up. Keep revising till you fall down. And then revise once again. And no power can stop you from clearing prelims.
