“The civil services examinations are very tough. In school and college examinations, you know your competitors and their level of preparedness and you can interact with them and take their help. But, in the civil services examination, you don’t know your competitors and their preparedness. A person who is studying silently at home somewhere in a remote part of the country might be your competitor. You, therefore, need to make maximum preparations for beating the unknown competitors with their unknown preparedness,” D. Roopa Moudgil, a 2000-batch Indian Police Service officer, told civil services aspirants on Tuesday, advising them to keep one full year exclusively for preparing for the examinations.
She was addressing a webinar titled ‘Train the Brain to be a Civil Servant’ jointly organised by The Hindu and Gnyana Sudha Civil Services Academy – an initiative of Gnyana Sudha Vidyalaya, Bidar.
‘Major distraction’
Terming the social media a major distraction in the current days, Ms. Roopa advised the aspirants to be away from it so that they could focus on their studies.
“In those days when we cleared civil services examinations, we didn’t have this. Now, it is a major distraction. You may go to Facebook thinking that you will spend only five minutes. But, you won’t come back after five minutes. You will scroll down curiously seeing who posted what and spend your valuable time going through the posts and reacting to them. I advise you to avoid social media and television at least for one year and focus on your studies,” she said.
Elucidating the process of UPSC examination and the long time it would take, Ms. Roopa stressed on the importance of patiently working hard and waiting for the uncertain result.
“The whole process would take around one-and-a-half years to complete. You don’t know whether you will succeed or not. You must continue to work hard staring at the uncertain end. Seeing upon your friends and colleagues settling in some good jobs, you may sometimes feel that you are wasting your time. Some other time, you may get frustrated. You need to continue to work hard with a lot of patience. If you don’t succeed in one attempt, try as many attempts as you are permitted to. The patience you learn and adapt during your preparations would be very helpful when you join the civil services.”
Dismissing the belief that a particular subject would fetch better scoring, Ms. Roopa said that the belief was purely subjective, having no objectivity.
“There is no guarantee that a particular subject would always be scoring. In one year, many candidates from one subject might be successful. In the next year, it might be true with another subject. It is, therefore, better to choose the subject that you are good in,” she said advising the aspirants to get engaged in knowledge-enhancing activities such as debate and quiz competitions to improve their general knowledge.
Later, Ms. Roopa, from her own experiences, answered the questions raised by the participants.
Swamy Jyotirmayananda, head of Sri Ramakrishna Vivekananda Ashram, Bidar; Poornima George, President of GSV Group of Institutions; and Muneshwara Lakha, Director of Gnyana Sudha Vidyalaya, Bidar spoke on the occasion.
S.D.T. Rao, Regional Head of The Hindu Group for Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, welcomed the participants and introduced the speakers.
Balaji Manikraj, Programme Director, Gnyana Sudha Civil Services Academy, Bidar, anchored the deliberations.
