Chapter 2: Importance of friends to crack IITJEE
After leaving home for studies in Kota, I was just getting better and better at performing in my studies, rank was shooting up and I couldn’t be any more happy.
Then came the Diwali break, I went home and had a lot of fun, but didn’t study at home, its just hard for me to study at home. Now what happened was that when I returned from home to Kota to resume studies I was shifted to first batch(top batch). I didn’t know anyone in my class now and it seemed that I was not up to the level of these kids, back in second batch I was like answering questions faster than anyone else but here I couldn’t people were faster than me.
I had no friends here, it was so difficult to make friends in this batch, students seemed to be egoistic, clever and not interested in having me as their friend. Now I just could not concentrate. Homesickness got onto me, I started procrastinating, homework started building up and up, and soon enough my rank was going down. That was the down phase of me in Kota, Looking back at it now I feel that it was all part of the process.
Time went by and my performance degraded, I had to do something. I decided to stop attending classes in my batch and rather attend classes of second batch where my friends were. Teachers were same, content was same, but here is where my friends were. I couldn’t have take any better decision. I was alive again, rejuvenated with energy. Again I was on the rise hitting the ranks and just enjoying my life. I started getting better ranks, my mental health was quite normal, not much stressed. That is when I realised how important it is for me to have good friends around me.

Now many of you may disagree with me, but I think IIT-JEE is not just hard work. Cracking JEE is as much about intelligence as hard work. Everyone has a CALIBER. I define caliber as the maximum high a person can go with a combination of one’s intelligence combined with hard work. From what I found out my caliber was rank 250. i.e. if I worked sufficiently hard I could achieve rank 250 in JEE. This is what I found out my top limit to be. Consistently though I scored equivalent to 500–600 AIR JEE. And I was happy with that, I expected that in average case I should get above 1000 AIR(all India rank).
I saw students working day and night, much harder than me but they couldn’t score well. I know many of their parents would scold them saying that they were not studying enough. But I can say for sure that this was not the case with many of them. Intelligence is in part a gift of God, and to crack JEE it’s no less important of constituent for success. I felt sorry for these students that how despite working much harder than me just couldn’t make it. I would advise parents to not push their children too hard, you may not know but maybe they are not even eating sleeping well, and JEE is not everything. Life doesn’t stop there. Kids please understand this, if you are not able to do enough don’t quit on life.
I hear stories of students committing suicide because of JEE, it hurts me to the core of my heart, you students have every right to live a beautiful life whether you clear JEE or not. You must give your 100% to your preparation but rest leave it to God. Most probably you would have known whether you are going to make it or not(unless borderline), talk to your parents, convince them that this is not the end. Life is much bigger than this tag of IIT and that physics chemistry maths. We all have a unique journey to follow on this path of life don’t end it here. Your only responsibility is to be honest with yourself and to put in genuine efforts from your side. I wish you all the best for your journey in life. I know many of you will get through this hurdle of JEE and many won’t but let me tell you life on the other side is beautiful, college life is going to be the best time of your life. So never call quits on life. If today is not good tomorrow is definitely going to be and I give you my word for it.
