Why should you not be Discouraged after Your First Failure in ESE?

No buzz word gets more attention or is more widely desired than the word ‘success.’ However, no successful person you ever heard of accomplished their goal in one go or touched the summit overnight without failure. Now you ask yourself which one is greater for you, your desire to succeed, or your fear of failing. Engineering Service Exam is all about your perseverance, clarity of mind, memory, strategy and time management. If you fail in the first attempt; you get to know the areas you need to work upon. Use that lesson and prepare yourself to try again. Here’s how you can overcome failure in ESE and be optimistic in your subsequent attempts:

How to ensure success in ESE in your next attempts?

Learn from your mistakes

Have you dreamt of becoming an IES officer, only to quit too early?

• Do not be frustrated and angry at yourself but be proud that you learned something new. You are now ahead of thousands of candidates who started from scratch.
• The time may be hard and grievous for you but believe in yourself that it’s far from being over, unless you are willing to settle for less.
• Your failure does not matter- what matters what you do after you fail.

Derive Motivation even in Failure

• Always remember the reason that motivated you to choose this career. Whenever you decide to quit, just try to remember again why you started in the first place.
• Start working for the implementation of your vision. Of course, there will be times when you would feel like quitting, but again you should always try to recall what made you choose this career.

Recognize things that motivate you

• Everyone wants something in their lives. If you want to achieve something, if you want to crack UPSC examination, the reason behind this urge should be a genuine passion and not because you are trying to live someone else’s dream.
• Your reason can be respect, your reason can be money, and your reason can be making your family proud, but it should have a solid foundation. Without a solid base, the reason is nothing. There is no motivation without a reason. No one has ever become successful without motivation.

Avoid negativity at all cost

You need to get surrounded by positive people. There will be a lot of negativity, there will be some people who deliberately bring negativity into your life. You need to create a positive environment around and inside you. Even if you fail, even if your academic engineering records are not good enough even if you are an average student, you can still crack one of the toughest examinations of engineering if you keep your self-belief intact.

Strategy to start preparing again for ESE

You need to have a proper plan and an appropriate strategy to crack ESE. You have started thinking that you have already put all your effort and hard work and there is no scope for improvement. This is the main part that needs serious consideration. Whatever the reasons have been for you, but not qualifying implies lack of something somewhere.

Start with short term goals

Maybe this is the most basic and common advice you will get from all the ESE officers. If you are planning to do something extraordinary, you need to take the small steps to climb up to your destination. There is no shortcut. Planning and strategy originate on a paper but after that comes the difficult and important part, execution. Fix your daily goal or weekly or monthly goals. And if you achieve those small goals you will feel satisfied. On completing a single goal you will get an idea for a bigger goal. You have to conquer these small goals first to reach your summit.

Reward yourself to stay motivated

What distinguishes successful students from other candidates are making a daily routine, setting small goals, and, most importantly, sticking to your routine and strategy until you achieve it. Maintain a journal writing your routine and your daily goals with a timetable. At the end of the day analyze your performance and give marks according to your achievement. After analyzing your previous day's results and marks, set your goal for the next day. This process will help you to stay energized for each and every day and also for a longer run.

Analyze your past performances

Without being disappointed after failing the ESE exam try to analyze which part is your weak point.

• If you lagged in the GS section, check your sources, and books and contemplate whether they were sufficient.
• Thoroughly go through the previous year question paper and focus only on that part, which is essential. Ifyou were not able to apply the knowledge, you had to practice more questions.
• For current affairs, follow daily newspapers and monthly magazines. If you think that your score lowered because of the interview stage, work on your interpersonal skills, appear for more mock interviews and also, practice your answers again and again to questions that have already been asked.
• Also, take and follow test series more seriously than before and do a proper analysis of each test.
• Most importantly work well on your revision schedule, it’s very likely that in spite of studying each topic very thoroughly individually, you could not retain all of it till the ESE exam date due to lack of a good revision strategy.

“Winners are not people who never fail, but the ones who never quit.”

Nothing can ever fail you until and unless you declare to yourself, that you have failed. You only have to work hard. Hardships, failure will come, you will be embarrassed, you will feel broken but you must not quit. Have your priorities set, and goals sorted along with being dedicated to your dreams. Make the most of your time, effort, and energy. Your hard work, efforts, your time all will be worth it once you can achieve your goal. We wish you the best of luck and hope you will ace the ESE exam in the future.