Editor’s Note: As exam season approaches, one book you should definitely peruse—aside from your textbooks—is: How I surpassed the boards and so did you! written by Gaurav Sood. Sood, who passed his own ISC board exam in 2008 with a near-perfect 99 percent, and is currently studying at Oxford. He shares some professional tips on how to strategize and study for your exams in this fun and easy-to-read book that is sure to be of great help to all students who will soon be taking their plates.
Here’s an excerpt from How I Topped the Boards and You Can Too! urging you to fulfill all your Game of Thrones binge-watch cravings and assuage your fear of missing out before you sit down to imagine Prepare for one of the most important exams of your school life.
The fun stuff
So before we get to the boring bits, let’s talk about the fun stuff. Don’t pass a few classes… Whole class 11, if necessary. Okay, don’t fail… but you get the point, what this really is: go have fun. Go do something stupid while you have time and get it out of the system. I cannot emphasize this enough. Your boards may be the most important research of your life.
That one month will set your path for most of you in years to come, if not more. They are important.
The sooner you understand that, the better. We can whine and whine about it as much as we want, but the Indian education system is structured in such a way that some exams are more important than others. In fact, when we look at it, most of life is. It sounds great on paper to say that we should study for the sake of knowledge and not just for an exam.
And in most cases, I’d be the first to agree with you – something that isn’t done for the right reasons isn’t worth doing in the end. Do not study for an exam, but for the knowledge. Study not because you have to, but because you want to. Don’t study for grades, study for learning. But as poetic as that sounds, the fact is that for most of us, that strategy doesn’t work. That perspective is great for our long-term personal development, but for our purposes, we have to put it aside for a while. A moment. You see, few will be able to maintain that optimum level over the course of their lives, where they will have enough in the tank to complete every exam they take or every hurdle that comes their way. to jump. Most of us will have our ebbs and flows, and our highs and lows. See yourself at the start of a race, knees bent, waiting for the sound of that gun. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. What is your strategy? Are you going to run out of the blocks at full speed and try to keep it up for the next few hours? Or will you hold back for a while and then give everything you’ve got in the final hurdle?
Option 1 sounds great if you can manage it. Let’s imagine we have Usain Bolt, the legendary sprinter trying his luck in the marathon this year. He sprints at 100 percent his whole life, and that’s his strategy for the marathon too. And his thought process would be justified: there is no person on this planet who can sprint faster than him. But this isn’t a 100m sprint. And his opponent in today’s marathon is Mo Farah, the most successful British long-distance runner in Olympic history. Farah knows the limits of his body. He knows he is never faster than Bolt. He never beats him in a sprint. But what he has over Bolt is stamina.
He likes to let him take the lead at the start, because all that matters is the finish. So who do you think will win this race? The person who plans to sprint his way through the marathon or the person who has the right strategy for a marathon? In fact, if Bolt can sprint 100 percent for the entire marathon, Farah can do nothing but say “too good” and admit defeat to someone as close to Superman as we’ll ever get. That defeat would be no shame.
But chances are, for all his incredible talent, Bolt isn’t Superman. And life is all about the opportunities.
Chances are Bolt will run out of steam — and Farah knows it. And so he likes to let Bolt take charge and
tires itself in the beginning. And slowly but surely Farah will catch up and eventually win that race. And
like I said, it’s only the finish line that counts. It’s exactly the same in life – and for our purposes, the board exams. If you try to pass every exam, big or small, that comes before you, you will eventually burn out. I’ve seen it happen to some of the most talented and brilliant individuals I know. I wasn’t a patch on them academically, but when it mattered, I walked past them way too fast, and then some.
To give you another analogy, I’m going to get into the world of tennis – my favorite sport and way to kill time and destroy television remotes (tennis can be an expensive calling if you play at 3 a.m. on a workday. wakes up at night to watch a four o’clock game, only for your favorite player to lose at the end of it). You may have heard of Roger Federer, the legendary Swiss tennis player? Do you know why Federer is considered the greatest tennis player, and arguably athlete, of all time? Not because of the total number of titles or competitions he has won. He is second on that list. Most average enthusiasts won’t even recognize the name of the person who holds that record. But in tennis, the biggest titles are the Grand Slams – four held every year. Those are the titles that count – that define a tennis player’s legacy and his or her place in the record books. Federer has won more of these titles than any other male player in the game.
That’s what makes him such a legend. It is generally agreed in tennis circles that there is no one better than him to pace himself to get into optimal form for the Grand Slams. He uses the rest of the tournaments to hone his tools for these four that matter. It’s nearly impossible for us to bring our A-game every day. It is unrealistic to expect that of ourselves. The solution? We need to adjust our pace to do our best when it matters most. In our case, it’s the board exams. If you’ve exhausted most of your reserves preparing for your 11th grade exams, chances are by the time you get to much more important senior year, you won’t be able to make it 100 percent. to give . Burnout may be too strong a word, but you get the point. Anything below your 100 percent will not give you the results you want.
Mentally you want to be as fresh as possible in your 12th grade. So our preparation starts a year earlier, that’s the bad news. The good news? The preparation is to have as much fun as possible. yep. Go to the clubs you want. Learn the guitar. The night before a test, watch as many Game of Thrones replays as you like.
Waste as much time as possible with your friends. That’s it. We play the long game and we play to win. And if we want to win, we need to recharge our batteries and get the most out of our system before 12th grade comes. Like Mo Farah and Roger Federer, even if we take it slow, we’re unconsciously gearing up for the final piece. It’ll be here sooner than you know, and when it does, you’ll be ready.
The following excerpt from How I Topped My Boards and You Can Too! by Gaurav Sood is published with permission from Rupa Publications. The hardcover of the book costs Rs 295.