Before and after the Civil Services Examination result, don’t you all get bombarded with the range of emotions? A paralyzing lump in your throat, those shaking limbs, a pressure-cooked mind and a pacing heartbeat - you must accept that like often don’t quite work the way we plan. One should essentially accept that we all get bad grades, and more often than usual, we don’t see it coming – the worse side of examinations.
According to UPSC’s official site, the numbers of applications per year are increasing, and at the same time, the selections are declining every year.
Despite the wavering nature of UPSC results, we tend to expect the best out of them. Every candidate has a specific imagination about the quality of subjective answers he/she has written in the Civil Services Examination and the staggering long essays that the candidate end up jotting down about the bewildering subjects. And all the candidates feel that they put all their hard work in making the examination a success story for them and keenly wait for the results of their churning battle in Civil Services Exam.
The Problem
The way we cannot change the bizarre list of things we’ve done in our lives, similarly, the candidates cannot change the kind of answers, whether right or wrong, they have written in UPSC– but they surely can control the way they react to it or to the results for that matter. One can always learn from the mistakes and make the best use of those learning in future; and not to forget UPSC gives the liberty to appear in the examination multiple times, 4 times to be precise, as UPSC understands the importance of learnings we get from the past mistakes.
You should understand – no exam’s result is as important as the contribution you’re making to the self-learning and growing as a person. One must acknowledge that humans have always had a messed-up life, but in the recent times how we perceive failures has a long and fascinating truth.
Let’s see how failure attacks us in an individual level. You set a realistic goal and you expect it to be elegant and perfect by the time you finish it. You wake up every day with full of hope and energy, ready to crack the code to reach the top of your goal. In your mind, you have such a vivid and clear idea of how you want to acquire the goal, with steps already built in your mind and road shoes already laced up; you work harder than you’ve ever worked – you toil with the struggle, but you somehow make it till the end, with a finished product right on your grip.
More than often, you fail and that’s how things are in a realistic world. You get disgusted by the lack of achievements, and the only thing you can think after that is a huge gap that exists between what you wanted and what you’ve got done. It might feel like your goals are way ahead than your abilities – that’s when mediocrity hits you. That’s when you become sad and the disparity between your ambitions and achievements become tangible.
The solution
Getting sad is easy – and the enormous despair is inevitable. We need to know the first rule of creativity is to ignore the horrors of the first round. We all should affirm the importance of not hurrying and building a bit at a time. One should keep a timetable and abide by it with full honesty and be always hopeful for his/her work. You should work in a similar fashion for days, months and years and one day, eventually, your abilities will be aligned to your goal.
Stop the game of Comparison
You shouldn’t blame yourself for not outperforming your peers in the civil services examinations. Since the entire process comprises of multiple steps – the direct comparison doesn’t essentially make sense. You should greet the thought that your friends have a different path to follow, and as an aspirant, you should have yours.
Accept the reality
You didn’t expect what has come out – in fact, your name is absent from the list. It’s not a good news – but you should also accept that it’s not the end of the world. Failure means different for different human beings and just the fact that human life is full of failures – this shouldn’t surprise you – better accept it.
Discover your options
A good way to start is by looking out for the advisory from the people who have successfully made the journey. Analyze where you’re lacking, get a list of resources accessible to you and do the best you can do with your tools. Whatever you have, wherever you are – just start for your next step. Understand – you’ve a lot of options but giving up is not one of them. Learning from your past mistakes is the best you can do.
