Today, I wanted to share with you, the journey that has led me to be where I am today. It lasted two years and changed everything about me and the world around me. Whether it was for the better or worse is still an open question. I am talking obviously about my journey towards clearing the IIT-JEE and getting into IIT.
I don’t want to bore you with the details of my schedule, or the books I used, or whether I drank tea or coffee (I think there are a lot of tips available online for all this), I want to share with you insights that I have gained from those two gruelling years preparing for the exam and the four years that I spent in IIT-Bombay. I feel that sharing these personal insights may help people who are about to take the journey or are somewhere in the middle.
IITs are first and foremost, an Engineering school
Its is funny now, when someone tells me that they’re preparing for IIT-JEE and when I ask them why they want to pursue engineering, don’t have an answer. IIT is a school, and Engineering a profession. Unless you are interested in the latter, think carefully about choosing the former. For instance, I am almost done with my time here at IIT and the only thing I am sure about engineering is that I don’t want to do it. So your decision on whether or not to prepare for IIT should come after you have decided to be an engineer.
Objectivity is key
Fear is the enemy of rationality. Too often, I lost all objectivity about myself in the fear of the possibility that I might not be good enough. I never looked at my practice papers once I’d given them and was scared in general of anytime someone gave me a score on how I’d done, just because I was scared to death of my confidence crumbling if it was below par. I was lucky that I cleared the exam. But if I weren’t made for it, I would never have known, and would’ve wasted two years and a lot of willpower on something that I would never be able to do. So I hope people can put the fear aside and be objective about themselves. I have friends who did that and decided that IIT-JEE wasn’t for them and did greater things somewhere else. Also, the key to improving yourself also lies in being objective about yourself and your performance. You cannot improve if you refuse to address your shortcomings and learn from your failures
Sacrifice
This is perhaps the hardest one. When I meet with high school friends who’ve had ‘normal’ lives, I’m reminded of how much I missed because I was crammed in my room behind a stack of books. It is hard to give up on the sweet school life, the friends and the experiences that we are meant to have in our teenage years, to prepare for a 6 hour multiple choice question paper. But in my opinion, that is also one of the most distinguishing factor in the candidates. Although this competition is about intellect and hard-work, you can find thousands who have around the same intellectual ability and work as hard as you do. But in the end, it comes down to who wants it more. Remember that you are competing with people whose families have moved cities to make sure that they get everything that will marginally improve their chance of making it through. So have a good reason why you want to clear the JEE. Parental and peer pressure can only take one so far without intrinsic motivation. As the journey gets harder, you will start asking yourself, “Why am I doing this?”. And you better have a good answer.
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