How To Prepare For JEE Mains: JEE Motivation Story 2017

JEE Motivation Story 2017

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I did the last five years of my schooling in a small local school in the town of Tirunelveli (near Kanyakumari) in the state of Tamil Nadu. I was the first batch of the school (with sixteen students) and so there was quite a bit of uncertainty from the school on what to do. Quite the contrary to most of the Schools that IITians come from, my school had a girl : boy ratio of 3 : 1, that's right, three girls per one guy.

Cutting across to the last 3 years, in Class X although I truly liked reading math and science, I showed little aptitude in school conducted tests, and showed no interest in serious study and in the Class X "board exams" of CBSE, I scored a CGPA of 8.4, my school was quite unsure on what to make of this and it all passed with relatively little attention (two years later my sister showed the school how little it meant by scoring a 10 with little effort on her part). During my summer holidays I was watching Professor Walter Lewin's lectures on MIT OCW (interestingly I watched Electromagnetism without watching Mechanics). Initially I was watching these lectures in the late afternoon, as days passed this timing slowly pushed into the night. One of these nights, I opened Facebook on another tab, I noticed that one of my class' girls was online, I gave it no further thought and continued watching my lecture. This practice of opening Facebook continued for a few days, and one day she casually said "Hi". I still remember the moment I said "Hello". We talked for a bit about how school was and such and eventually went to sleep. This continued night after night for the rest of the holidays (by then the lectures were totally forgotten), by the time we both went back to school, we were both on very good terms. We chatted on an almost daily basis.

One day in August while talking we talked about a certain incident involving her, she had slapped a boy in my class about a year back, resulting in each of the them pretending as if the other did not exist. He changed a lot after that, from a apathetic guy who didn't give a damn, to guy who tried to understand what people were feeling, a few months after she had slapped him was her birthday, I saw the pain on his face and the words he spoke to me that day in the back of a small room where we were to sing her "Happy Birthday",

"If it was any other girl... fine, but... this is the girl who slapped me", with a look of utmost regret of what he had done (nothing too serious) to bring about such action.

Coming back, I realized that she had also felt sorry about what she had done, but didn't know how to apologize on her part, I being a mutual friend of theirs was able to patch it up between them by showing my entire chat log on Facebook with her (showing her apologetic thoughts) to him resulting in their first conversation in one year. (On exactly one year after she had slapped him.)

After this incident, we went on to becoming very good friends who could trust each other with our secrets, someone to confide in, someone you could always depend on ... best friends really.

By September, we were talking on and on for hours and hours on almost topic imaginable. I used to be a guy who slept at 9:00 PM sharp, well, that didn't stick any longer. My family had planned a vacation in September which in combination with the fact that my phone's balance was quite low resulted in what would have been our last conversation for quite some time, I remember sleeping astonishingly late on almost everyday for a week before the departure, it was at this time that we talked a little about how much we cared about each other and such (nothing romantic), finally ending on a very tearful goodbye on the eve of my departure. I gave the whole incident with her very little after thought.

On coming back home, when I logged into Facebook after the vacation, I found a cascade of tearful messages from her on how much she missed me and how she couldn't handle me not being with her (this was the first time we had not talked on a daily basis). After I replied, her response was almost instantaneous, I was deeply touched that someone cared so much about me, we resumed our daily conversations just the was it had always been. Maybe I was too shortsighted to see the signs, but on November 11th, 2012, she texted, "I love you Cheran", and I typed back, without a thought in the world, "I love you too".

And so it began, such passion and craziness. I took little notice of school, my substandard classroom marks, like a 30/70 in Science and a fail in Biology, these meant nothing to me, I was so madly attached to her that I was willing to give up anything. Her birthday was on a Sunday and it (and the previous night) passed quite eventfully with me. Moving on, conversations became a little scarce due to my budget on my phone, she decided to call me regularly, cutting my charges. School opened after the winter holidays and she said she wanted to kiss me (at class) before she gave me my birthday gift (On Jan. 15th), I was scared to hell, finally the day came, I got her gift but ran out before anything else happened (call me a coward but I was just too shy). Her gift consisted of beautiful watch, a Parker Pen and a very touching love letter and birthday card. Eventually on another day, when we were alone, we did kiss, I suppose words cant describe the emotions that were running through me that day... A few days later we kissed a lot more passionately because we came to the school a few hours before the time we were supposed to (we both gave the same lame excuses at home). I was so convinced that she would be my wife some day by this point. One day, when she called, my dad picked up the phone and it was total chaos, I didn't give a damn, she was the one who I cared about at that point, my parents were understanding, but it being near the end of my Class XI, forbid any contact with her, claiming my academics were much more important. So I started sneaking onto my computer at night to talk to her after that.

After that, when we were kissing in an empty classroom, a sweeper walked in, we both knew it was going to be serious trouble, at first we lied, but in the end, on March 19th, both our families knew and were furious with us, the pained look on my parents' face that I had betrayed their trust (especially the look on my father's face like I wasn't his son anymore... that was too much to handle), eventually she broke off all contact with me... I still do not know what her family had told her. I asked my father whether he would send me for JEE coaching to Chennai or Andhra, and I could start my 11th over again, I got a very simple rejection. Everyday, when I went to school, I would chance a glance at her, no words passed between us, there was no occasional glance in my direction from her part. It was slow torture, and it was killing me inside... this passed on for a month. Holidays started... this was in a way even worse in that I could not even see her. I read a little of J.D. Lee's Inorganic Chemistry during this terrible depressing time. (Looking back I realize that when I was depressed the little decisions I made that I thought couldn't possibly matter have changed my life completely, I scored massively in JEE Advanced's Chemistry Section)

School started again, I couldn't bear to see her right next to me, acting as if I did not exist at all. After about 100 days of this torture, I messaged her on Facebook telling her that I was so very sorry about my actions and begged for her forgiveness (no response on Facebook). I took about a 10 day leave after this. (My school had mandatory 75% attendance however I was close to 100% and there was a five day holiday spanning two weeks, I made the most of it.) When I came back, I sat alone in a corner of the room and opened up J.D. Lee, she came right up to me, and said the words that are permanently etched in my mind, "Just what do you think? What do you think by sending me spam?!" Till that point I had been feeling anxiety, distress, loneliness, fear, depression and regret... but at this... My mind went blank, I did not know what to say... I felt nothing. I replied,"because I feel sad, don't you?"; "Never send me anything ever again or there will be trouble." I was absolutely devastated by what she had said, I could not believe that this was the same person who was my best friend, to whom I had told my favorite movies, my beliefs and shared my ideals, the girl who I thought I would marry someday. This happened in early December. Her birthday followed up soon, needless to say, I wasn't given any of the food she shared with the class, this did not hurt me as much as her ignoring me though as in my mind "its okay, she doesn't see you as her friend anymore". I did give her my birthday gift to her almost wordlessly a few days later. My birthday was a holiday resulting in me avoiding any unneeded attention.

Meanwhile, while this was happening, In May 2013, I took a printed copy of JEE 2012 and wrote it as a six hour test, I scored about 10 percent. A month later I wrote the JEE 2011 paper and scored about 15%, I begun solving questions from Irodov (I had little to no books for the theory), most of my theory was built by problem solving experience. By October I had just managed to secure a rank (mark vs rank tables of previous JEE papers are freely available) of what would be around 10,000 in the General Category (my score came predominantly from physics and mathematics). By December I was writing a practice tests downloaded from across the internet on an almost alternate day basis (I saved actual JEE papers for once a month), as I had to attend school, and I preferred 10 hours of sleep, my day was very tightly mapped. Just as everything seemed to be going smoothly, I flopped one of my tests big time, I scored 3/140 in the Mathematics section and scores below 20 in Physics and Chemistry, my dad gave me a proper conversation with him after what felt like eternity in my mind. I came out stronger than who I was, a boy who was ready to accept failure.

My chemistry teacher took a special interest in me, and really motivated me to work hard, he often called me to his house to discuss various things we found fascinating in certain parts of chemistry, as a result, I took a bit of extra effort to impress him, before long (March), chemistry was contributing close to half of my total score. I then put almost equal effort in all subjects (Math was considerably difficult, I had only NCERT to guide me for the theory), I knew the book H.C. Verma's Concepts of Physics almost word for word.

Meanwhile, I saw no serious effort on her side, she talked as if she could get into AIIMS (sort of like Bombay CSE for an IITian). Frankly I still cared, I wanted her to study well, to get a good job and be happy. But her parents were pretty well off, she could get a private college seat if she had wanted to (which she was well aware of).

Eventually the Board Exams came, I ended up with 88% as my average. Not much to say here.

Finally I was free to study without attending school... such liberation... looking back I feel like I have studied with a focus I have never know before or after. During this time, my father told me that he would not avail the OBC quota (We are NCL, as my father has no income) for me, this did not bother me and I agreed with his decision wholeheartedly, as I only considered the process of educating myself and not what I would get as a "product" from the system of the JEE.

Over the next two months I wrote only two entrance exams, one was JEE-Main in which I scored 235/360, I realized the number of students scoring above 300 was enormous relative to previous years, meaning that my score was very abysmal indeed (my Rank was around 14,000. I worked even harder to make sure such an event did not occur on JEE day. The other entrance exam I wrote was not BITSAT, I wrote the AIPMT, and got a rank of about 18,000 (my biology was 140/360; chemistry was 145/180).

Eventually JEE day came around... the night before I read through the old letter she had given me... was i going to fail in life again?

I wrote the exam.

I had no idea on how I'd done. Getting back home, we (my dad and myself) calculated my score with various coaching class answer keys. I had scored 231/360 a score that would land me in IIT - Guwahati CSE. Although I had always wanted an "Old IIT", I accepted this over a second attempt. A few days later official score is announced. 228/360. With the rising cutoffs, I quickly realized I would probably miss it very marginally. This was confirmed when my rank came around as 987, I had to choose between the next four options,

1. IIT - K    M&ScC
2. IIT - H   CSE
3. IIT - G   M&C
4. IIT-BHU CSE

(My OBC status could have theoretically landed me in IIT - K CSE by the official mark vs. rank)

I chose IIT - Guwahati's M&C, I realized it was CSE with the Computer Engineering part substituted by finance, this suited me perfectly as I personally wanted software, and I had a reasonable amount of financial knowledge (from KA and MIT OCW).

On a side note, my dad studied ECE, which has more hardware than CSE, not one soul from his department (of about 80 students) went into hardware, everyone was a programmer in the end.

Well that concludes my story... or does it?

Well where did she end up?

Well as i said... she was pretty well-off, she ended up the US, doing her bachelors in Biology at North Carolina State University (NCSU). And that's pretty much all I know about her after.

I realize that all I want for her is to live a happy life... and if I'm not in it... so be it. :)

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shivank

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How To Prepare For JEE Mains

JEE Motivation Story 2017

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