"Practice makes a man perfect" and "Experience is the best teacher": Mahesh (Canara Bank PO)- 176 |

Hello Everyone,

Let me introduce myself as Mahesh with a Graduation in Engineering which I have acquired it in 2013. “Practice makes a man perfect” and “Experience is the best teacher” everyone knows this, but I go further and say “Experience and Practice teaches a man how to be perfect”. Why I combined both because, unless and until you experience something, you can’t be perfect in anything. If I haven’t encountered those two quotes in my life, probably I may not be writing this.

My father is obsessed with government jobs, as he himself is a public servant and asked me to get through “GATE”(as the entry to Maharantnas’ is through GATE).The day he said this to me, I knew that I can’t get through it and he also asked me to get an aggregate of 80% in Engineering, “first class (60%) is the asking “%” for government jobs, right?” this was the thought in my head. 67%, this was my aggregate in engineering, my father was not satisfied.

I and my dad were like parallel lines, never met on one point. He said “GATE”, I said “NO” to cut the long story short, almost two years passed for GATE before I realized.Vexed of me sitting at home, I convinced him and found part time job after a great battle fought with him. I applied almost every post that appeared in employment news and given exams for years. So, with me, I have tons of experience on how to give exams. So, why am I not succeeding? Because I had no “grip” on how to clear the exam, what all I have is the experience of how the exam will be. How to get that? It’s simple to use the word “Practice”.

Lately, I understood that focusing on one type of exams will get me through instead of giving each and every exam. So, started focusing on Bank, Insurance, Railways, and SSC exams and got Canara Bank in IBPS PO 6 and Vijaya Bank inClerk 5(RL). The failure list is quite big, but the close ones are SBI Clerk (2.25) and PO (1.34), “IBPS 5” Clerk (0.5 kept in RL) and PO (3.63), “IBPS 6” Clerk (1.75) and RRB NTPC (0.86).

Finally, I would like to say don’t lose hope and confidence if your success is lost by a few marks because those marks will test your ability to handle a failure and how consistent you are in your preparation. Most important control your emotions while failure because at times you may fall apart and have an argument with parents which is not intended by you or them (this happened to me). A suggestion from me to those who are of my kind is “Show your strengths to your Parents not weakness, they will understand”. If I would have shown him my strength at the beginning itself then I wouldn’t be wasting those years. If you are atheist have faith in him and if you are atheist have faith in what you believe.

Few tips for future aspirants:

1. Get a good hold on “Percentages and Ratios”, as this helps you to solve half of the Quant Syllabus.

2. Be perfect in basic concepts of all chapters.

3. If you learn the short cut of a concept then practice it until you know it at the back of your hand.

4. Tables up to 25, Squares up to 50 and Cubes up to 15 is a must. Trust me these will help you in gaining few seconds in solving. Write Squares of “40 to 60” in a paper vertically and observe the magic done by numbers. (A trick to remember)

5. Do a Hard and an Easy DI daily.

6. Most important practice solving Quant in the shortcut you learned.

7. Do a Short and Long Passage daily. This will help you in reading and understand the passage quickly.

8. Stick to basics of Grammar and practice, this will sail you through English.

9. For reasoning, my tip is only Practice. Do a hard and an easy Puzzle daily.

10. For Computers and GA, the capsule given by BA is good enough.

11. Be on time to Exam, because a calm mind can recollect a lot from your preparation. Trust me, this will help you in gaining a few extra marks.

12. Mock Test is a way where you can experience the Exam in beforehand. So, practice as many mock tests as you can.This helps you in understanding your strengths and weakness in the exam. Like, some may be good at Quadratic Equations, Number Series, Syllogism, Passage etc.

13. Have a glimpse of the whole Exam paper, it may take a couple of minutes. These minutes will give you a head start in the Exam. Let’s take my example to understand why glimpse is necessary. My strong areas are Inequalities, Quadratic Equations, Number Series, Syllogism, Direction Test, Floor and Circle Puzzle, Close Test and Jumbled Paragraph. If any of these appear in the exam I can solve them “in no time” and use the remaining time for solving others. This helps you in building confidence for solving the remaining paper.

14. Lastly, don’t bother about speed, if you practice enough then automatically speed will be with you.

All the best for future aspirants and thanks for your patience reading.