Just finished with my civil services mains exam for the year 2008. And wanted to write about the experience and also try to suggest why and who should take this FOAE (Father of All Exams). A word of caution though; I am no officer or no expert on the issue. I am just an aspirant who decided this as an option last year around October, wrote the preliminary this year in May and the mains in October this year. The motivation behind this blog article is to help out people who might be considering this as an option or just have a strong zeal for making a difference to the lives of the people around them.
My motivation
Lets start off with what led me to even try this when most of my classmates had either secured admissions to top notch universities in the US or had cracked the CAT which I call the MOAE( Mother of all Exams). After my twelfth, I was sure that I had to do engineering from a good college in Electronics & Communication because it always mesmerized me. I sincerely felt that electronics has led humans to the next stage of development - from hunting to agriculture to industry and to electronics which has started the stage of mass consumerist culture. I did not know much about the subject though and hence worked pretty hard in college to learn it beyond what was required for examination sake. I think I did reasonably well at that. By the third year, the thoughts of what I would be doing next in life started haunting me. I was never a great fan of studying in the US somehow for doing masters, because of the fact that I wanted to stay back in India itself and do something, did not know what though, for the people around me (almost all of us think of this, I am sure). But still I wanted to prove myself in academics and hence took up GATE as the target. Gave GATE in the year 2007 . But my preparation was very shoddy. I just read up some fundae and believed that those would sail me through. The preparation was not short of commitment I thought, but it was in a wrong direction. I never understood till that point of time that an objective examination required a different type of preparation. (no wonder I failed miserably in JEE and gave a below par performance at AIEEE). Anyways, I gave the examination and expected a reasonably good result. The result came. Many of my classmates smashed the exam inside out. I went and checked my result only to see a rank > 1500 (I don't even remember the exact figure). That was one of the saddest days of my life. Suddenly feelings of self doubt overwhelmed me and I cried my heart out (alone of course) like a small child. When I was wetting my handkerchief with bucketful of tears, my friend Ambicaprasad came to my room. He had smashed the AIEEE and he explained to me that objective examinations required a lot of paper solving and stuff.. something I had never concentrated on. Thanks Ambica for that advice.. will always be grateful for that.
Thereafter, I kept working in my academics and lo!! I got a placement call from a company of repute in my field. It seemed to bring my self-confidence back and I was on top of the world once again. Shifted to Bangalore for work in July 2007. Work was going well, but as I still felt that I need to do something more, something that is consistent with my larger goal of trying to change the things around me. At that point of time, I felt there is still a void in my life that needs to be filled up. After exploring the internet data for various examinations-ISRO/IES/IAS etc etc, I finally converged on IAS examination. It seemed to be the most coherent with my goal and hence decided to give a shot at it.
This brings me to answering the question which is the title of this blog.
1. If you also feel that you want to do something for the people around you and try to make a difference to their lives, however local or global the effect of your actions may be, this is a good option. If you place this craving above the crave for something like a house with a swimming pool inside or sitting behing the Porsche wheel, give it a shot.
2. If you do not fear hard work, give it a shot. This exam, I believe requires immense hard work, probably more than any other exam I know of. It does not test your intelligence as much as it tests your ability to study intelligently. If someone has cracked this exam you can be pretty sure of the fact that they have displayed the following qualities in huge measures-hard work, smart work and committed work.
3. Even if you just want to expand your knowledge about India in general, give it a shot. I have experienced how, through the process of this examination, your views on social matters tends to become more balanced and practical. Your vision adds new dimensions. So the next time you think about removing reservations of all kinds and live in a perfectly meritocratic society, you would also consider the situation of the 21% below poverty line people and the millions who have no access to education before taking your stand.
4. If you feel alienated from the society- you might be having lots of money but you still feel disconnected with the people around you, when you want to do something for them but you feel powerless, when you are working well but you still find it to be meaningless, give this a shot. I do not know to what extent one can make a change to the society once he/she enters the civil services but it surely grants you the authority to take decisions that can affect many more people apart from your family members alone. You might be holding any academic degree but if you still have this feeling of alienation, give a try for this examination. We criticize the government with elan. We seem to have all the answers for the government's misdoings. Then, why not take it onto ourselves to change things instead of blabbing about our intellectual superiority while criticizing the government. The government can be only as good as its people after all!
Considering all these things, I gave the prelims in May 2008 and got through, thanks to a change in approach to objective examinations. Wrote the mains in October. Don't know what will happen next but would certainly want to keep challenging myself to crack the FOAE!
