I still remember my very first face off with the cat. I came back completely shattered and devastated .. Why??.!! I already had an experience of failure and the trauma aftermath during my JEE preparation. When all the hopes of your family members lies on you but at the end of the day you came to know that you are nothing than a big Zero. Yeah you heard me correct! I had the same feeling 7 years ago. I couldn't clear IIT JEE and didn't had the grit and determination to ask my father, for an year drop. Result I ended up doing my graduation from 2nd tier college.
But life has so many surprises that you never know what lies ahead of us. And days passes on like butterflies infront of your eyes. My life also kept on rolling like this and next came the final year at my graduation. Got placed at TCS, unable to figure out what I have to do in my life, keeping in mind the financial situation at my home. Just like any other engineer I kept on working without any goal in my mind.
MY FIRST ATTEMPT ON CAT
My very first attempt on cat was in the year of 2017. Bored and irritated with my 9-6 job and seeing the prospect of what MBA brings on to the table. I decided to write CAT 2017. I was a working person, so for me cat preparation was mostly limited to weekends. So I use to give mocks on every Saturday and on Sunday I use to sit down and analyze what went wrong. This process continued and that feeling of redemption started appearing infront of my eyes. The idea of getting your respect back in the eyes of your family members and friends started haunting me. So, I went completely isolated till my cat exam. My day to day routine was office - home - cat preparation. And finally comes the D-day, I tried to be calm and patient but again life has very different way of making you realize your shortcoming. The anxiety and fear of failure got better of me and what next was the same feeling I had during my JEE. I started asking myself "Am I a complete zero"?.Totally depressed of everything around me, I took a break and went back to my home town for few days.
Feeling completely down, the best person who can help you out was no one other than your family members. My father gave me the strength and determination to have one more shot at cat.
MY 2ND ATTEMPT AT CAT
This time around I was completely relaxed and started my preparation in the mid of July. The best part of being repeater is you have a fair amount of idea of what not to do in exam. For me it was the anxiety and D-day pressure which was something I had to work upon. So I started to keep myself calm and composed each and every day starting from my workplace till my home. I use to hang out with my friends on weekends and started to enjoy my life a little bit instead of complaining about it. In the mean time I enrolled for test series and started appearing for mocks. What I changed this time around was I didn't had any expectations from cat. I just wanted to give my best shot. I took around 56 mocks before cat exam. On the night before the cat exam I talked to my father. The one good piece of advice he gave to me was "Defeat the tendency of getting defeated".
And comes the D-day with very calm and composed attitude I went to gave my cat exam. Everything fell as per strategy. I came out of the exam hall very satisfied with my performance. For the next 2 months I enjoyed like anything, had parties , went for trip. At last the result day came. As I didn't had any expectation from cat I saw my results without any feelings. And guess what I got 99.xx percentile. The tears of joy was falling from my eyes. I informed my dad and family they were very pleased with my performance. Finally I ended up at IIM Lucknow..