My Journey To Joka
After class XII boards I was selected for SRCC but, I decided not to join it because at that time my father’s business was recently collapsed and our financial condition were unstable. So, I opted for a college in Bhopal and luckily got a scholarship to cover my curriculum expenses. But still, I wanted to support my father financially so I decided to open a coaching class and teach students. Through this I was able to support my family financially and was also able to bear my college expenses.
My college was on the other side of Bhopal. So, in order to reach there at 9:20 am I use to woke up at 6:00 am and then rush to the bus stop to catch the bus of 7:30 am to reach another stop. After reaching the other stop at 8:20 am I waited for the bus which will drop me 2km away from the college. So, usually it took me 1.5 hours to reach to my college from my home. After that, I remained in college till 2 pm and then repeated the whole bus process to reach my home at 3:30 pm. After having lunch and little rest I started teaching students from 4 pm. The classes, from 9th to 12th, although was supposed to end at 9:30 pm but still many a times it was extended till 10:30 pm due to the doubts. After having dinner till 11 pm I use to study for my college and prepare for government exams. I slept at 2:30 am to again woke up at 6:00 am.
Till 4th semester I didn’t had any idea about CAT. I came to know about it from one of my classmate preparing for it. After learning about the exam, I decided to appear for it. I joined a crash course in the coaching and prepared for around 3 months. I consistently use to score good in mocks as a result I was very confident about acing the exam. But, on 24th November, 2019, one of the worst day in my life, I messed up my CAT. I scored only 68%ile and all of my friends who use to score less than me in mocks ended up with much better score than me. I was shattered.
After that I was busy with my previous schedule and left the CAT preparation all together. Moving fast forward to 24th march, 2019, nationwide lockdown was announced and as a result of this I was left with much more time in hand, as now I don’t have to travel in those buses and go to college. After thinking for a day or two I started preparing for CAT again but this time I didn’t joined any coaching and prepared on my own.
On 28th November, 2020 one day before CAT, I tried different things, even listened to sleeping music on YouTube, but still wasn’t able to take a proper sleep; the memories of last CAT haunted me. On 29th November, 2020, D-Day, I woke up at 11 am with dizzy feeling, I puked 3 times that day. Luckily, I had to appear for 3rd slot so after taking medicine at 12 I decided to take a good sleep till 2pm. I woke up with a much better feeling and CAT went well after experiencing such a bad morning.
I got calls from all the IIMs. I converted 15 IIMs (including IIM-A, IIM-B, and IIM-C) out of 18 IIMs I applied for. I chose IIM Calcutta because I wanted to make my career in “Finance”.
So this was my story of reaching IIM-C and at last I want to just reiterate the few lines of the song which I was listening while going to the Centre for writing CAT “Bande ki mehanat ko kismat ka sadar parinam h pyare dangal dangal”.