Thirty-five for the Thirty-fifth! (Prothom Alo)
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Preparation, preparation—this mindset of preparation, whether due to lack of preparation or otherwise, whether understood or not, you might pass the written exam just by writing something, but you might not get the job. How to write well, and what you can do in these few days:
1) Getting tense about exams is common courtesy and an excuse for not studying. At that moment, study your favorite subject.
2) Stop going to coaching centers and unnecessary outings. Spend time studying at home; at least 14-16 hours daily.
3) Give Facebook narcissism a break.
4) Never mind what others are studying. Forgive those who are better prepared than you.
5) Control the natural greed to read all questions.
6) Those who are employed, for this month either give up your job or sleep.
7) Keep your phone off frequently. Stay away from laptops too.
8) Reading something and getting tired? Read something you enjoy, and the fatigue will lift. To stay up at night, practice math, grammar, translation, and mental ability.
9) Don’t sleep before 2 AM, don’t wake up after 6 AM. Four hours of sleep, that’s it!
10) Read less on Bangladesh and International Affairs. Focus more on the other four subjects.
11) If you haven’t studied any topic at all, it won’t be easy to make things up in the exam either. At least ‘touch’ everything once.
12) There’s no time to read reference books. Buy a few digests.
13) Prepare your own suggestions, not someone else’s.
14) Prepare not to get common questions, but at least to have ideas for making things up.
15) Decide time allocation beforehand based on question importance and marks.
16) Read books by marking and writing freely. It will help during revision.
17) Can’t leave even 0.5 marks. Must complete ‘full answers’ somehow. Try to write very fast—about one page every 3-5 minutes on average.
18) On every page, definitely include at least one relevant marked diagram, map, quotation, data, table, chart, or reference.
19) Study short questions, notes, short notes, summaries, précis, idea development, translation, grammar, etc., thoroughly. The question of studying by taking notes doesn’t arise!
20) However difficult it may be, regularly translate editorials from various daily newspapers.
21) Quoting in blue ink from various authors’ writings, newspaper columns and editorials, internet, various organizations’ official websites, relevant constitutional articles and explanations, Wikipedia, Banglapedia, National Web Portal, some international magazines, and various references will increase marks.
22) In question selection, it’s better to answer four questions worth 4+3+3+5=15 marks rather than one 15-mark question.
23) Write down the names of 25-30 people who write on various issues and their ‘areas of interest’ in your diary. It will help when giving (fabricated) quotations.
24) Focus well on things that others can’t do or do poorly, but need to be done.
25) Writing with various analyses from papers, your own analysis, its relevance in contemporary context, etc., will make your answer sheet stand out to the examiner.
26) Write with many points in paragraphs. The first and last paragraphs should be most attractive.
27) Explain an issue from various columnists’ perspectives and conclude towards the end with your own analysis in your own way. Write any comments or personal opinions (even if you don’t have any).
28) For book criticism, learn about at least 30 well-known Bengali books.
29) You’ll get more marks in English by writing in very simple language without spelling and grammatical mistakes.
30) Don’t take shortcuts in math; show every step in detail.
31) For General Science and Technology, thoroughly study questions from previous years and digest suggestions.
32) Along with digests, solve 3-4 IQ test books and mental ability questions on the internet.
33) Instead of memorizing the entire constitution, understand very well the explanations of articles from which more questions come. You don’t need to quote articles verbatim.
34) You can study International Affairs topics by searching on Google. Analyze the issues or problems you write about, consider various aspects of possible solutions, and write points on international analysts’ and your own opinions.
35) It’s impossible for anyone to take the written exam with hundred percent preparation. The art is to forget sixty percent of what you thought you learned completely and properly utilize the remaining forty percent.
Work hard; there’s no benefit in making excuses for not being able to prepare. If you succeed, you won’t need to make excuses; and if you fail, no one will listen to your excuses anyway. Good luck!!
This article was printed as the main feature of Prothom Alo’s ‘Chakri-Bakri’ page on Friday, August 7. The link to the article is given below: