Given below are the excerpts from Ira Singhal's (AIR 1 CSE 2014) blog on "Coaching or No coaching" and "Answer and Essay writing Strategy":
Coaching or No coaching
COACHING and My recommendation – I took coaching in my first
attempt in 2009-10. I did not have idea about the preparation. I did not
even know what the
topics of the course meant! I had no friends or family who had ever done
this.
That time, in 2009-10 there was no material available online. I didn’t
know even NCERT books are needed. I needed coaching mainly for my
optional. I didn’t attend
most of the G.S. classes but did attend the optional classes. I had to
prepare
most of the stuff on my own though they helped guide me on where to
start.
These days a lot of material is available online and a lot of guidance
on where
to begin is also present online so if I were preparing today, I would
not join
them. I don’t recommend or condemn them. It depends on the sort of
person you
are. Some of us need hand-holding and need someone else to keep them on
track and some of us are self-motivated. So it all depends on how you
think you can succeed best. Though if it is only about material, a lot
of it is available online these days.
Coaching at ALS, South Delhi centre in specific – I took Geography, Public
Administration and G.S. classes from ALS.
Geography as taught by Mr. Shashank
Atom was brilliant. The teacher helped you recognise patterns and build your understanding
yourself. I never opened a single book for Paper 2 of geography as I had
understood everything so clearly in his class. I just had to update myself on
the trends from the Economic Survey and the Census. Even though he didn’t
actually like me and even doubted I would ever get selected, I think he was a
brilliant teacher because he made sure our fundamentals were built.
General Studies and Geography as taught by Mr. Jojo Matthews
was absolutely terrible. In my opinion, he was pretty much the worst
teacher
possible. Firstly, he just comes to class and starts narrating some data
which
you have to take down at the speed of light because he doesn’t feel like
he
should slow down and either try to explain anything or even give you
enough
time to properly put your pen to paper, so that you might be able to
read the
things you have written, sometime in future. After the first few
attempts I gave
up altogether. Another really nice thing he does, is insult the students
when
they ask questions. And not only does he insult you when you ask, right
then
and there, he continues doing it for the rest of the class and carries
it to
the next if he can remember you. He thinks he is being funny, the
student who
dared to ask feels he is being insulting, and I just found it all plain
offensive and rude. A teacher should create a learning environment and
no question is too stupid - something I think he missed when he decided
to become a teacher.
Also he has claimed credit for my success so I think this is
where I should clarify a few things that happened. I had given the exam
in 2010
& 2011 and scored a rank both times. I did not give in 2012 because I
thought I needed
to first solve my matter in court before attempting this again, if ever.
Since
nothing was happening, I decided to try doing it again with the
completely
overhauled pattern in 2013. I went to their South Delhi centre where I
had
taken the coaching and begged them to let me buy the material for the
new
pattern. I told them I’d pay whatever they were charging. I was told
that Mr.
Matthews had given strict instructions and that I should call and ask
him. I
called him 5 times and messaged him 3 times. I told him I was an old
student
and that I had cleared the exam before and I wanted to buy the material
and was
ready to pay full price. He told me to call later but he didn’t deign
pick my
calls later. He did NOT EVEN ONCE RESPOND TO MY MESSAGES AND AFTER THE
FIRST
TIME STOPPED TAKING MY CALLS. He didn’t care if I was a partially
successful
ex-student. Actually he doesn’t really care if you are his student, he
needs
money and as long as you are paying for the full class again, he will
give you the material…not that he is polite and caring as a teacher
should be even then! But
then this time, as soon as the result came, he found time from his super
busy
life to call and congratulate me! I am suddenly important!
Oh and by the way, ALS was the one who taught me to write only in paragraphs. In fact they insisted on it! They said NEVER WRITE IN POINTS. If I had stopped following their advice earlier, I might have not had to wait for my fourth attempt to clear IAS. I only wrote in points this time cause my friend Savita who was a fellow sufferer at their hands told me that all the toppers write in points! I was still scared to follow her advice because ALS had insisted SOOOO HARD to never write in points! But I thought, well it’s not like I ever got brilliant marks ever before so let me just try it! In my B-School and Engineering we wrote the answers in points and it made everything to much simpler. But due to the coaching centre I wrote all my previous attempts in paragraphs. This time I did the opposite and I think I did a lot better in my presentation.
Answer and Essay Writing Strategy
- Wrote in points wherever possible. Even in the optional. And I write full sentences as points, not phrases. In my previous attempts I used to write answers in paragraph form and I never got any marks. I used to know the whole paper but I still did not get any marks because of writing in paragraph form.
- Underlined key words – did not ever do this before so it must have helped.
- Did not give a beginning or an ending paragraph. No time generally. Might have done for a few answers where it was absolutely necessary to start giving the points. I used to write nice starting and ending paras earlier but did not finish the exam paper…so I skipped it this time.
- Did not use coloured pens. Mainly used the pencil or the pen I was already writing with to underline.
- Diagrams if possible or needed. Not always possible or needed. Drew them in pen or pencil as convenient.
- Did not lie to the examiner like in my previous attempts. I wrote only those questions that I knew. Did not attempt questions I did not know. In my previous attempts I used to do that. I saved time and energy by not trying to fool the examiner and writing just any nonsense. Mostly in such cases we keep writing the same thing again and again and I think it might just irritate the examiner. So I did not do that this time.
- Did not worry about the word limit. Wrote whatever and as much as I knew. It might have been more or might have been less.
Essay Writing Strategy
- Choosing the topic – I choose topics which can have something substantial to write and not philosophical. This time I wrote on Standardized Testing and Tourism. Both of them have multiple dimensions to talk about. I made the mistake of choosing a topic in an earlier attempt where I knew one part of the question too much and not enough of the other part …wrote it very enthusiastically and got very little marks.
- Language skill matters in the essay so I wrote a nice grammatically correct one but did not use too complicated words…just to keep it easy to read for the examiner. I focused on not writing colloquial language and did try to keep my spellings in check.
- I used Subheadings – something I learnt from reading the blog of Gaurav Aggarwal Sir, last year’s AIR -1.
- I underlined in a couple of places in the essay as well.
- I made one or two diagrams where I could.
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