An End and A Beginning

It has been nearly three years since I left the safety of a comfortable job and jumped into the civil service exam fold. It has brought mostly heartbreak and not more than a few glimmers of hope. But what I do have to cherish are the friends I made in this time, some old friends I preserved and an old friend I got back in touch with. The final results are not out yet but I think it is time for me to move on because I have given it all I had both in terms of effort and sacrifice. I cannot do any better and I cannot carry on without a job- it is time to begin building my life.

But I am glad I took the plunge. It has enabled me to appreciate the importance of friends, it has convinced me of the simple fact that we are all social animals at times of both joy and sorrow- joy is meaningless without anyone to share it with while sorrow is unbearable without anyone to console us. It destroyed who I was and created a new person who is now optimistic and unafraid of uncertainties. Experience has now convinced me, despite heavy resistance from me and after repeated lessons which got harder each time, that fear and tension about the future are better left neglected.

Attempts at civil service exams have therefore been a journey of self-discovery and self-self improvement. But as I said earlier, it is time to move on and get back to reality and life. It is as part of that exercise that I rejoined facebook after a hiatus of over 3 years. The break had nothing to do with civil service exams but was due to the overwhelming sense of frustration and even anger at what used to appear on facebook.

But right now, I have decided to rejoin due to three main reasons. Firstly, I have decided to let people be if they want to promote themselves and present their awesome lives, let them. I have realised that my life and my happiness is decided by me. Secondly, I needed to get back to reality. The world had passed me by while I was stationary with civil service exams. My friends have moved on to their next jobs or completed their Masters (mostly abroad or in top institutes in India) and some of them have got married. A few have also accomplished many of the things they wanted to in life. Facebook thus serves as a wake up call, motivation to rebuild my life and stop my feeling of guilt for having settled for something lower than what I wanted. In the short period since I have rejoined, I have realised that joining SBI was right and I could not have waited any longer as time was literally running out for me to start a career. The third reason is that it is time I fell back into the grid. I had no idea what people have been upto and they have no clue whether I am alive or not.

One factor which has enabled me to accept the transition is the fact that despite having to settle for less that I wanted, what I now have suits exactly who I am fundamentally. I love familiar surroundings- language, food and movies especially. I love to go home and meet my family regularly. I would have been happy with a job that paid decently to meet my needs, family needs and build up sufficient savings for the future- home, children, retirement and emergencies. I do not want a highly competitive career because I am not an ambitious person. This was the original me that existed before I went to university, but had disappeared in my struggle to survive the competition there. I had to become ambitious and competitive and I did become that. I chased down goals and gave more than my best, I worked hard and carried on despite failures and opposition.

But perhaps I have had enough of that. I think it is time to use all the lessons from civil service struggles and university to my present life to make it more easy. The competitiveness and ambition, the ability to withstand hardship and uncertainty will be handy when I face life. I learnt to fight against the best and won a few battles (the war is still undecided as I write now). These will definitely come in handy when I face future battles, much easier and relevant to the fundamental me, for which I have been made ready by my past. That is perhaps why I went through university and civil service exams- to give me all the weapons and more, needed to fight the simple battles of my simple life and emerge victorious in those.

I therefore begin with hope. I am moving on to a new life....

In Need of Detoxification

The first step to solving a problem is to recognise what the problem is. It has been nearly forty days since Civil Service Mains exam concluded and I need to understand what the impact has been in order to begin a repair process. I do not want to do an analysis of the exams. This is not just because I do not know how to analyse it but I think it is also a pointless exercise. I have done what I could have, and nearly everything I had to. But the results will be the same and my analysis will have no impact on that. Next year is going to be a completely different ballgame and so there is no point in learning from my mistakes.

The most visible impact has been the sight of me- I have gained weight and expanded while repairing the damage is proving frustratingly and imperceptibly slow. I hope things pick up speed or at least results are visible in a few weeks, just like my exam result. Another impact has been in the way I am writing now and I do mean write! Until a few months ago, it was easier and first nature for me to type out what I thought and wanted to publish. But several mock tests, practice and deliberate measures to gain writing speed later, I find it slightly awkward to type it out like before. I had to exert myself to write and so I had decided not to type but write whatever I felt like. Thus, most of what would have been blog posts where put down on paper and that is why there haven't been any posts for the last few months.

Before writing became a habit, I just used to type without thinking and make corrections later. But this cannot be done on paper for an examination and so I had to prepare a rough draft either in my mind or on paper for very long essays. This was new for me but I was able to make the shift without much difficulty. Trouble began when I tried to get back to the old style of impulsive, instinctive and emotional writing where I could just turn on the computer and type what I felt like. This is not possible anymore since I had to actually write on paper an outline of what I wanted to post here.

Another problem is that posts appear like answers to a specific question and even worst of all, the title is actually the question! This post initially had the title Exam Impact Assessment (EIA) as a tribute to Environment Impact Assessment and various ongoing issues on the matter. I hope this title is better but the previous post, highly unlikely that you have read it, has been the victim of a highly exam oriented answer and then a pathetic attempt at retro-fitting to make it more human friendly. Although these two recent posts are not anywhere my previous attempts, I had to somehow begin the process of getting out of the exam mindset in writing and expressing myself.

There are several other issues relating to my personality that the exam and post exam emptiness have thrown up. I am trying to tackle them but it is becoming too much of a task. I have the time but this is one occasion when having time on my side is not really a blessing since it gives me too much time to think what if and all those negativities come out as real possibilities. I hope these can all be dealt with effectively and there is light at the end of the process.