I am Priyanka Goel, AIR 369 in CSE 2022. I was born in Delhi. I got my bachelor’s degree in business from Keshav Mahavidyalaya, Delhi University. Since then, I’ve been studying for the UPSC CSE. This is the sixth and last time I try.
I would say in the beginning that it was a hard, painful, and very uncertain path. But I won’t ignore the good things about it. It was just as great as the first time, and it helped me grow as a person. During my long six-year journey, I had many failures, times when I doubted myself, and emotional and mental breakdowns.
But my heart never let me give up on my hopes and dreams. I used to tell myself, “Priyanka, you can do it,” every time I fell. Girl, just one more time!
The first time I took the test, I didn’t know much about it, so I didn’t pass Prelims. Second try: I studied really hard, but I missed the cutoff again by just 0.7 points, which was very disappointing.
On my third try, I fixed the mistakes I made on my second try. So I passed the Prelims, but I couldn’t pass the Mains because I focused on the Prelims because I failed the first two tests. This time, I did really well on the GS part of the prelims, but I couldn’t pass the CSAT. This is when I began to have questions about myself. But again I didn’t give up.
5th try: When covid happened, my mother got very sick, and 80% of her lungs were hurt. But because God was kind to us, she started getting better. But despite all of this, I wasn’t able to study well. I forgot many important things on the test, and I couldn’t pass the prelims again. (I should have given up on this try, but I don’t know why I showed up. Anyways.)
6th try: This was my “do or die” moment. Society also put a lot of pressure on them to get married and do other things.
The Day of the Results (May 23, 2023)
When I saw the result, all of the battle and pain of the past 6-7 years came flooding back to me, and I cried. It was a happy time. “Zindagi yu gale aa lagi hai, koi khoya hua barso ke baad aagya” are the words to a song that say something about how I feel. I’m lucky to have the best parents, teachers, leaders, and friends who have always been there for me and will always be there for me. This success is just the start of a great journey in service to our country.
I learned more and more with each try, and I would figure out where I was going wrong and then fix it. Everyone has different weak spots, so try to figure out what yours are and how to fix them. Since my optional subject is public administration and I’ve gone from getting 216 marks to 292 marks (144+148), I’ll give you a few tips on how to do better in this optional.
Read and learn the course outline. This will help you understand the paper better and connect it to what’s going on in the world right now.
Make sure your ideas are clear. Most of the time, we think that theories don’t have ideas, but this is not true. To write good replies and answer the question, you really need to understand the topic and what it’s about.
Don’t use too much study material or other tools. This will help you take good notes and make many changes. My list: Prasad and Prasad for Thinkers in Paper 1: New Public Administration by Mohit Bhattacharya Lukmaan ias notes (paper1 &2) Questions and answers from last year.
Taking notes: I made short notes. Based on the syllabus, I made pointer notes for almost all of the parts. This makes it easier to quickly review and remember information. This gives us a list of terms as well. The last notes were only 50 pages long. 5.Adding Value: This section has Thinkers, Current Examples, Case Studies, Diagrams, Quotes, and other interesting things. Try to connect the ideas of both papers as well. Try to write things like “thinker” in paper 2 as well.
Write answers every day, and on the test, try to write full-length papers in the time allowed. Also prepare model replies for pyqs. This trip is hard and takes a lot of work. Good times will come. Some days will be bad. There will be days that are hard. But you must keep going. You must remember your aim. And that’s how you’ll make it happen. I hope the best for everyone. Just keep in mind that winners are not made. They get back up after having failed. Keep going and you will win.
