After my UPSC results, someone came up to me and asked: “Now that you’ve succeeded after a long journey, you must have learnt a lot of lessons along the way. If you were to meet your younger self who is starting his preparation just now, what advice would you give him?”
I wrote this speech trying to answer that question. I titled it Letter to My Younger Self and delivered the talk recently to a group of bright, enthusiastic aspirants at the Ravindra Bharati Auditorium in Hyderabad.
Sharing it here so that it reaches those who couldn’t attend the event. Hope you find it useful.
Your subscription could not be saved. Please try again.
Your subscription has been successful.
All the very best!
Thanks. You are kind.
Sure, plan to write more.
All the very best!
I’d written about my current affair strategy in one of my comments on this site. Please find it.
Thank you.
Thanks and best wishes.
Sir
I am a upsc aspirant from a small city of port blair.I am going to prepare for upsc 2020 please tell me how much time should I spend in a day to prepare
Sir,
My name is Divyam Verma. I am a junior BITSIAN from 2017 Batch. I saw a bit of coincidence while reading this post so I decided to share.
1. This “Letter to my Younger Self” post was posted on my Birthday which is 11th Aug 1999 (!).
2. I am exactly a decade junior to you.
3. While you were addressing your fellow BITSians on 13th August, I was also present there (!).
4. I also asked you a question from the audience ( Is leadership skills necessary for UPSC ? – yes the second question!) and you gave such an awesome answer ( while looking at me!!) which uprooted all my self doubt.
5. I just hope there was a fifth point too…
I hope that this much of coincidence will be necessary for cracking the UPSC Exams (lol). Another thing I want to mention is reading your blog feels like drinking the milk of a cow ( mother cow does all the hardwork, eating grass, digesting and making milk. But the calf gets it for free!).
I just wrote complete booklist in my diary and will refer it whenever I feel lost. I will also keep reading your blog because I always thought there should be a different study plan for people who cracked JEE , BITSAT etc. but your words still ring in my mind that ‘Arrogance will take you nowhere’. So I pretend to not succumb to arrogance. Hope to see more of your success stories and maybe meet you personally after clearing UPSC CSE (!!). Thank you for the precious support.
Regards
Thank you sir…
Thank you sir
Could you suggest how to read newspapers and prepare for current affairs.