A or Nothing - Chapter 1: D-Day
Exam Day
A Night Before D-day
26 November 2022 10:00 pm
Just before going to sleep, I had a talk with one of my friends (F1). We discussed the final day strategies and to conclude the meet we watched a David Goggins video on YouTube to get pumped with a motivational boost of adrenaline that everyone needs. Every aspirant needs that. Because they have to wait another year to be at the same stage after studying the same things all over if they fail. A year is a very long period.
David Goggins. David is a crazy guy, the only person to successfully complete US Navy SEAL training. No joke. I had already watched his videos throughout the year. So, yeah, it was my idea to hear him again. Few of his words touched me. “I’m broken and I’m still here. Fighting. ” “I wanted to be someone that I’m proud of.”
We finished watching the video and decided not to look at the phone, or any social media from 11:00 pm onwards and to go to sleep instantly after the call ended. And we did so. Before sleeping I had set the alarms equally spaced with 5 minutes starting at 4:30 am. But there was another thing ringing in my head. The FIFA World Cup match. Group stage. Argentina vs Mexico. A must-win for Argentina, otherwise, they’ll be out of the competition. Kickoff was set for 27 November at 12:30 am, so I was certainly not going to watch it.
In 2014, I started watching football and am a huge fan of Leo Messi. He’s my idol. And definitely, I knew through what pain he had gone through all those dark years playing for Albiceleste. All those shambolic finals. All those tragic defeats. He was doing everything he could but needed some sort of luck.
I wanted so badly to see him lift the trophy, that I couldn’t sleep the first half an hour just thinking about it. Those “what ifs” were all surrounding my head. I was more worried about the match result than my exam the next day. I know it is crazy, but I wanted him to succeed more than myself scoring well. The one thought I had in my head was, “If he can wait 8 years to live his dream, why can’t I wait a few years to reach my Destiny if I didn’t succeed this time?”. This gave me hope and helped me stay relaxed.
Anxiety
27 November 2023 Early Morning:
I had a quality sleep, good enough to stay fresh until the exam ends. It was 4:25 am in the morning and my father woke me up before any of the alarms rang. Guess what I was thinking at that time? Yes, you guessed it right. Messi. Argentina. Match result. I was so deeply lost in those thoughts that I brushed for 10 minutes. I stopped when blood started coming out of my gums. (No. I don’t have bleeding gums. It was just, I was a bit harsh that day.) I was jumbled between watching the match result or not.
“What if they lost it all after that heartbreaking first-match defeat against Saudi Arabia? No! No! Then all day my mood will be bad. It’ll affect my exam. I can’t do it! No. At least not before the exam.”
“What if Messi had scored the winning goal? Ahh! I need to see that goal. It’ll set my mood for the day. Hell Yes! I’m watching it.”
“Nah! No! What if I open Twitter and see Messi crying pictures all over? No, I can’t. It would be a horrendous start to the day. I don’t want to cry.”
“Wait! But if I go on like this, not seeing the results, this anxiety will kill me sooner or later. It won’t let me concentrate on the exam. I need to check it. Right now! I need that!”
So, finally, I decided to check it. I opened the phone just after brushing my teeth. Tapped on Google. Typed “FIFA WC”. And Bangggggg!!!! Argentina won it 2 nil. What a start to the day! I can’t explain what I was feeling at that time. I was so happy. I was dancing. I told this to my father, and his expressions were like, “Man has an exam in a few hours, one of the biggest days of his life and he is here going crazy for a football match. Who does this?”.
Monster Mentality
The scorecard read:
ARG 2–0 Mexico.
Lionel Messi ’64
Enzo Fernandez ’87.
A Messi goal in one of the most important matches of his life. Can you believe it? I wanted it and it had happened. That’s what a big game player does. Steps up at difficult times and does it all by himself. I needed to watch that goal. I wanted to inject it into my veins. Then I opened Twitter. After scrolling down for a few seconds, I saw a post by Troll Football (No, trolling is not in my veins. I just follow it for fun.) It was a picture showing Messi hitting the ball, which eventually resulted in a goal. The post was captioned: “F*ck it, I’m the GOAT.” [Link to the post]
Then I saw another post. It was a video of course of Leo Messi’s goal. I tapped on the play button and “Di Maria… Lionel Messi, Messi’s hit Oooooohhhhh! That’s what they came for!… The Magic Mannnnn!… One more Messi moment and Argentina are Alive!”. Those Peter Drury words left me in shock. I had goosebumps. I still get chills watching it despite I’ve watched it 100 times. [Video Link]
And that’s what set my mood for the day. F*ck It. I’m the GOAT. I will step up for my dream. I will perform like a big game player today. It was all over my body at that moment. I was ready to take on anyone. Anything.
Thank you, Messi. Thank you, Peter. You both are GOATed.
Karaoke
We needed to travel 60 kilometers to reach the exam center and the reporting time was 7:00 am. My father was driving our car and, I and a friend of mine (not the other one I talked about earlier) were sitting in the back seat. My father played some old Hindi classical songs and we all enjoyed it. Songs tranquilize your mind and we need that.
We talked about what we had done all year and what we should do after the exam. I told them both, I would offer them a treat after finishing the exam, of course, irrespective of how the exam went. Because it didn’t matter to me if it was good, bad, or average. I wanted to celebrate that day. I had kept myself away from all the indulgences and I needed to do it one day. It couldn’t have been a better day than that. So, after 1 hour of travel, we reached our destination. Took up the necessary things needed to get to the exam hall and started walking. Let the game begin!
First Half Drama
We greeted each other before going in and then sat at the assigned places. Just before logging in to the exam portal, I urgently needed to go to the washroom. I often drink more water and on top of that, Winter you know. I asked the Invigilator for the same and she didn’t allow me to go. She said, “You can after logging in.” I said, “Okay.” A few more minutes and I’ll be free. After some time, the instructor told us to fill in the login details and complete the login process. And the exam had started. The war had begun without the sound of a Conch Shell (Generally used for announcing the war). After five minutes, I asked the invigilator again to let me go outside. She said, “No. Now it is not possible. You can’t leave the exam hall.” The pressure was building up minute by minute. Not in my head. I was relaxed, but not my bladder. For the next half hour, only I know how I passed that time. I wasn’t able to concentrate. But the time had come to raise the voice (Just Imagine). After 35 minutes into the VA section, I finally asked her again. This time I had to use some intimidating words. (I was not going to do that in the exam hall, but I needed to say it.) She went on to ask the chief invigilator and came back finally saying Yes. (This “yes” felt so much better than what people hear after proposing to someone.) It was a sigh of release when I went to the washroom. ( Without wasting time, I came back running to my seat. 4 minutes remaining. Having already covered 15 questions, I decided to use this time to calm myself down. I closed my eyes and started preparing myself for the monster striding in front. LRDI. It took me 4 minutes to choose the set I needed to start with. After 10 minutes, I still was not able to get an answer to a single question. The only thing I was able to conclude from the first set was the number of boys and it was a multiple of 50. The number of girls was given 15, so it was obvious that there is a very high probability of boys being 50 in number. I went for 50. (It was a TITA question. So, No Negative Marking. No risk. Thankfully, I got it right.) It took me the next 20 minutes to solve the next set.
Just like Argentina’s first half went bad, I was too in the same position. 30 minutes into the LRDI section, I chose another set to solve. 6 more minutes gone and no clue. I knew I had two choices to make. Leave the set or take the risk. Looking at the VA performance, I thought I would get 20 marks there. In QA, I could fetch a maximum of 40 marks (based on my mock score). And add 15 from the first set of LRDI. 75 marks won’t get you into top IIMs. I needed 15 more. And I took the risk. I had no other option than to use options. And I went for it. Filled in the entries and answered all 5 questions based on that. It was somewhat ambiguous, but it did not contradict other answers. I was not fully confident. Sometimes in life, you gotta go big. You gotta take risks. You need to do something you never did, to achieve something you have never achieved. Messi took the shot with less than 0.10 of xG (expected goal) against one of the greatest goalkeepers in the history of the competition Guillermo Ochoa. He got it. I did the same. Remember. Fortune always favors the brave and only I knew how brave I was in the last few months.
At that moment there were two outcomes possible. All the way to 99+ percentiles, or below 95, which I would call a failure. All or Nothing. 1 or 0. Now or Never. 80 minutes gone. 2 sections finished. Nothing went as planned. I was very far away from my Destiny. I wasn’t confident enough to get those all right. But, I was calm. Focused.
Second Half Comeback
I have loved math from day one. Quant was my strength area. While attempting mocks, I used to solve the first 2 sections thinking, “When does the QA section start? Why not just Quants?”
Back to Exam. After the first 80 minutes of the Test Match, I started shifting gears. ABD mode. I was able to cover all 22 questions. Had attempted 21, I was sure, I would score well here.
If you relate this to Argentina’s match, the first-half performance was average. And then what happened? Messi happened. It was a huge life lesson for me. No matter how bad it gets, back your strengths. Wait for that moment that tears apart everything. That trigger moment. As Bruce Lee had earlier said, “I fear not the man who has practiced 1000 moves, but I fear the man who has practiced one move 1000 times.” I had that move named Math.
The last thing I did before leaving the exam hall was the words, I wrote on the sheet they provided us for rough calculations. The words read as follows:
They Ain’t Believe in Us, but GOD DID!
A song by DJ Khaled.
I don’t remember why I did it, maybe I needed some luck. Yeah, I surely needed some luck.
Freedom
As the exam got finished, we went to the restaurant, as I had earlier promised. I was a free bird, allowed to fly anywhere after being in the cage for 10 months. It was the time to cherish that moment. We came back home and I had a nap of 2 hours. Did whatever I wanted. I was enjoying every bit of it, not thinking about the results. One of the craziest days of my life. What an Eventful day!
Continue reading here: Chapter 2: Endurance (The Journey)
©Dhananjay Patil, 1 June 2023. All Rights Reserved.
