What i did before my JEE mains

            So, for the time I will cut-off from what happened in last two years of my life, and talk about what is happening now.

     I’ll start from the scratch-January 2013.

Having spend the past two years ignoring my BOARDS, I decided to improve this area during my school pre-boards. With or without the pattern changing, it was really important that my boards go well. Firstly because if I didn’t do well in the competitions neither in boards-I would be left with nothing. Secondly, because i had applied to some universities abroad and their admission criteria was a fair board basis. So I had to perform well atleast there and I studied properly for them during pre-boards. My pre-board result was pretty awesome too.

         Right after pre-boards, I began with my JEE preparations. We had about a month and half before Boards begin. During this break I decided to work on my physics-which was the worst of all of my three subjects, and a little bit of chemistry. I worked properly for about a month, then I got a little tired and took a few days break. Then I came back to books. During this time, I did a lot of physics and I was confident that I had improved it.

            Then began boards. We had quite a gap between successive subject exams, sometimes even 9 days. I decided to use the time to study for JEE along with boards. However, this plan failed drastically. Somehow, when I studied for my JEE I could not help but feel that I will not be able to complete my board syllabus and I need time for boards, I couldn’t ignore them. Thoughts like these produced an overall nullifying effect and I could not study for JEE successfully. In the middle, I decided to quit and focus on boards the while.

           After boards were over we had about 2 weeks left for mains. I was scared and miserable. I knew it was almost impossible to study the entire syllabus within that frame of time.

        Now, here I would like to talk about PREPARATION.  Now I realize this fact after giving so many exams but previously I had no idea. I admit that my preparation was not up to the mark at this point. I have come to believe that you need to develop a certain threshold level. What I mean by that is you need to have a certain level of aptitude in all three subjects where you can answer questions without any prior preparation. Then you can strengthen your threshold level and score better. At the beginning of the first week I had no threshold level in physics or chemistry. Thankfully, my math’s had ever since been awesome and I can say that my threshold level in mathematics was above average. But physics? Everything that I had done in January was a blank. There were topics in physics that I had no recollected about-what was what. No, I did not even remember the basics formula’s. But honestly, I don’t blame myself for this because I had worked hard on this subject. I was misguided in this subject-that’s all.

And Chemistry? The situation was alike, only slightly better.

             My coaching conducted a mock exam, and I knew I did very badly on the test. Not only because I was not prepared but also because the test was difficult beyond the level of mains and not on the pattern either.

                     When this realization dawned upon me I fell into depression for two entire days and wasted the already short time that I had. I wished I had chosen a different date for mains-not one right after boards so that I had more time to prepare.  I went into depression, cried, sulked, and also threw a tantrum at home declaring life was vain. Honestly, I had never thrown a tantrum before-ever. This was the first time and I was socked. But like I said, I did not believe in giving up. So not the third day I picked up the books with a heavy heart.

       At this time, I did the intelligent thing-I studied smartly or there was no hope for me. I scrutinized the past 10 year AIEEE papers and studied according to them.I did not give my coaching mock exams any more because they were unreasonably tough. I would do one paper daily and revised certain topics. This continued until I became satisfied with my progress, in fact happy too. My score was increasing.

            However I was also making a fatal mistake, for which I paid profoundly during mains.  Advice- if you are preparing for AIEEE then you can do the questions of paper before 2005 but do not do them as papers because the pattern is very different. The questions in these papers are easier and pattern unlike. When I started doing AIEEE paper I started with 2012, 2011, 2010 and so on. Towards the end I did the pre-2005 papers and scored brilliantly which gave a me pseudo notion that I was well prepared. Not that I was not prepared but not as well as I thought.

              Two days before mains, I was mentally exhausted. I was so crammed that I could not even force myself to study. Thus, I stopped studying during the last two days.

    I was happy with what I had done in the past weeks. The night before mains I slept peacefully, aware that it will go well.

            The next morning when I was giving my mains paper- in fact during the test itself I knew my paper has not gone as awesome as I thought. But I knew that I had done well enough to qualify to advance. Despite working so much on physics, it went pathetic. Chemistry and Maths were fine.

         Regardless, when mains ended despite knowing that it had gone bad I was not sad at all. Why? Not because I felt I had given my 100% and all that crap (because I had not.) But because it was over for good. I had been studying since December 2012 continuously. I need, I wanted a break and respite for all this. I was overjoyed when my mains finished on 7^th April, 2013.
That is, in short, what i did and how i did my mains. I am not proud of it because i could have done better.