And exactly 13 days until the preliminary exam; it’s common courtesy to feel a bit nervous before an exam, and that takes about 3 days, so effectively there are 10 days left for the prelims.
What can be done in these 10 days?
One. Tone down the emotion, reduce general knowledge study. BCS general knowledge isn’t a game of scholarship.
Two. Forget what you’ve studied before, or haven’t studied. Just as studying more doesn’t guarantee passing the prelims, studying less doesn’t guarantee failure either.
Three. Be mentally prepared to study properly for at least 160 hours in the next 10 days, counting carefully. If you can do this, you’ll pass the prelims even if you haven’t studied anything before.
Four. Take 50 model tests at home in 10 days.
Five. Solve one good preliminary digest and various preliminary special issues. Revise the preliminary question bank and two job solution books.
Six. Don’t leave home unless absolutely necessary. Stay as far away as possible from mobile phones, TV, Facebook, Imo, Viber, WhatsApp for these 10 days, or your youth won’t be wasted in vain.
Seven. Move away from certain foolishness. There are some troublesome topics like constitution, capitals and currencies, tributaries and sub-rivers, nature and suffixes that require a lot of effort to remember, yet only give 1-2 marks. What’s the point? Spend that time elsewhere and get more marks.
Eight. Stay 100 hands away from all kinds of reference books. There isn’t that much time.
Nine. Read more questions, read less of the discussion sections.
Ten. There’s no need to read newspapers or listen to news in these 10 days.
Eleven. Don’t answer confusing questions in mental ability, ethics, values and good governance. You’ll get many answers from common sense.
Twelve. Whatever doesn’t stick in memory even after reading repeatedly, there’s no need to study that.
Thirteen. Don’t worry about what others are studying. Don’t talk about prelims with those who are very well prepared during these 10 days.
Fourteen. Study science only from preliminary question banks and job solutions.
Fifteen. Practice mathematical reasoning except arithmetic.
Sixteen. For Bengali and English literature, read only government job questions.
Seventeen. For Bengali and English grammar, just read once more what you’ve studied before.
Eighteen. Glance through general knowledge information from the past 5 months (excluding December) from some guide/book.
Nineteen. For geography, environment and disaster management, you can look at the secondary social science book.
Twenty. Stop thinking about questions you haven’t been able to answer for a long time.
Now, what you can do from the evening of the 7th until you leave the exam hall on the 8th, I’ll tell you.
One. Watch a movie like Three Idiots. You can listen to some soft instrumental music or Rabindra Sangeet.
Two. Spend time completely free from mobile phones and Facebook.
Three. Pack the necessary items for the exam hall for the next day.
Four. Eat light dinner and sleep by 10 PM. If you can’t sleep, you can take nerve-relaxing medicine. If you don’t sleep well the night before the prelims, no matter how prepared you are, the exam is likely to go badly. Sleep for at least 8 hours.
Five. Wake up on exam day and pray for 15 minutes. Then freshen up, have light breakfast and leave for the hall ‘with time to spare’ (definitely not ‘with books’). Before leaving, check once more if you’ve taken everything necessary.
Six. The thought that works most magically in the exam hall is the ‘I am the best’ mindset. Believe that no one is taking the exam better than you.
Seven. Fill in the answer sheet correctly with set code and other information. If this goes wrong, everything is finished.
Eight. Start answering the section you’re best at first. But carefully match which question number you’re answering and which circle you’re filling.
Nine. Not all questions are meant to be answered. Greed leads to sin, sin leads to negative marks.
Ten. Some questions need to be answered intelligently rather than left blank. It’s better to get 1.5 marks by getting half right than to get zero by leaving 6 questions unanswered.
Eleven. Usually our ability improves when we think about any subject a second time. Mark the questions you don’t seem to know at first glance and move to the next. There’s no time to waste.
Twelve. Don’t go crazy wondering if a question is wrong or right.
Thirteen. Tired of filling circles? Take a little break. Imagine how your life will change once you get this job, visualize the happy faces of your loved ones; the fatigue will disappear.
Fourteen. There’s no rule about how many marks you need to pass. Answer what you know. Then, excluding what you absolutely don’t know, answer 60 percent of the rest.
Fifteen. Don’t give extra importance to any question. Easy or hard, all questions carry 1 mark.
Sixteen. Don’t look at how many or which ones people around you are marking. This might make you mark several known questions incorrectly.
May everyone get a job worth introducing themselves with. Welcome to the civil service.
This article was first published in Prothom Alo’s job section on 25/12/2015. The link: