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Yesterday, I received an email from a student currently in the second year at IIT Delhi. It was a long mail but the crux was he seemed quite worried about how he is unable to prepare well for IAS!
I don't balme him. The College students are often the most enthusiastic of all UPSC aspirants, and the same can be inferred from the number of queries I receive via email and DM.
So, how do you prepare for IAS while in college?
Short answer: You don’t.
Do what should be done in college. College life is a time to live your, well, college life. Create memories, make lifelong friends, and develop professional skills. IAS preparation can be done after college.
Instead, focus on building skills that will help you excel not only in IAS preparation but also in life:
[1] Writing skills: Learn to express yourself. Master the art of conveying the most difficult ideas in the simplest language.
[2] Ability to do boring things: Almost every success requires you to do boring things, and that too repeatedly.
[3] Curiosity: Make learning a reward in itself. Don’t just chase grades and marks. Try to read as many diverse books as possible. Read Philosophy. Read Cognitive Science. Study Probability.
[4] Art of Happiness: Satisficing vs. optimizing. Learn when to stop. Focus on satisficing instead of trying to optimize every aspect of life.
[5] Learn to “fail”. Failures are inevitable if you aim for anything worth aiming. Failures help you better prepared the next fight.
You will win some, you will lose some. But learn to survive and fight another day.
Most importantly, build a professional skill that can help you pay your bills in case things don’t work out the way you planned. Remember, out of 12 lakh aspirants, only top 70-80 get into IAS. The litmus test is, enter IAS preparation only if you can afford to fail :)
Pic: One such audience of enthusiastic college students :)
