I am really gonna miss that place , I am gonna miss my coaching days...

I just cant stop writing about my IIT JEE coaching days, write now in my college my comprehensive (final) semester exam are going on still I find myself recalling things and penning them down .

I loved the atmosphere in my coaching classes ( Bakliwal Tutorials,Pune) . It was fun going to the classes .If I am not wrong I hadnt missed even a single class at BT. Often our Physics teacher Mr.Vaibhav Bakliwal used to say "Yaar mood banao yaar , koi puzzle hai kya kisike pass ? ". Then we used to spend loads of time solving tricky puzzles and thus improving our logical thinking. The class timing was supposedly 5 30pm to 8 30pm but trust me the class never got over at 8 30pm J. Most importantly we students never minded that because we were having a wonderful time. He was crystal clear in his concepts of physics and followed the bible of physics “Concepts of physics by H C Verma”. I still have the book with me in my hostel room and sometimes in my free time do look at the pages all scribbled with pencil , small comments on topics, doubts and questions written by me, some of them even funny .

I remember the beginning wasn’t very good for me. In 11^th when I started attended the classes a new physics teacher, “Rahul sir” started teaching us and he was very polite so the class was getting indisciplined. At that time the class was very crowded everyone from my school had joined these coaching classes. As a result I could only get a place to sit at some last bench, so I couldn’t ask any doubt and sometimes even couldn’t hear the teacher. Even the company around me was not at all interested in studying and came to the classes only because their parents had forced them to. Due to all this I was under-performing, but gradually as the classes went on for a few months the population of the class decreased and I could find a better seat and communicate with the teacher. We at our institute also used to celebrate birthdays of all students by bringing a cake to the class. Oh, and we never even spared the teachers to give us a treat on their birthday. I remember sometimes on some occasion when we were having fun in the class, Rahul sir used to say “let’s hear a song from Karan” . Then I became the singer of my batch and gradually even the topper of my batch. We used to have these “Grand Tests” every month and even the name seemed so scary to me that one day my mom said, “Stop calling these tests Grand Tests just call them GT so that you don’t get tensed psychologically”. That was a bit funny on her part. Then there was one more very interesting character in the BT faculty, Mr. Chandra Mohan M. usually referred to as CM sir. He used to teach us organic chemistry and in a very interesting way . There could never be any student in his class who could feel sleepy during the lecture. Let me give you an example of his teaching method, how does a homolytic bond cleavage happen ? By the TTMM rule i.e. Tu tera main mera. Sharing 1 e- by both the atoms after bond breaking. There were many more things but now I have forgotten but he sure made everything very interesting. Then his most favourite line “‘Baarish ki raat’ suppose an electrophile attacks this double bond, then what will happen?”. This is how fun my coaching classes were. Much better than my whole school life of 12 years.

Then as I came in my 12^th the class which consisted of 60 people was now accommodating just about 25-30. That’s how people give up on their JEE coaching but even after getting pathetic marks in my coaching classes in 11^th and scoring just about 70% in my 11^th in school I still didn’t give up on my coaching. I never really bothered to study for school or for that matter even the board exams. After being thorough with JEE Physics, chemistry and maths school PCM is damn easy but the only place where I used to lose my marks was how to present the solution. Still I managed to get 84 % in boards and 88% in PCM. Thanks to these marks I am now in BITS , cause BITS had a cut-off of 80% in PCM in 12^th. At some point in life I even feared whether I would be able to get 80% in my boards as in my pre-boards I was scoring 60 -65%.

In my class 12^th apart from the classes in my BT batch I started attending classes for physics(my love) in the toppers batch and the repeaters batch. Once Vaibhav sir had asked me to take a test of physics which was made for the repeaters with the repeaters batch and there too I had scored marks in the top 5-10 students in the class of 40-50 repeaters. Before JEE our maths teacher, Mr.Pradeep Nagar was taking the toppers batch to a movie so even I accompanied him and watched the movie “3 Idiots” with the IIT JEE toppers of 2010.

Once Karthik , a fellow IIT JEE aspirant asked me when we were in 12th " Yaar , tujhe kya lagta hai hum JEE clear kar paayenge ?" . I had replied “Yaar clear to kar he lenge , its just that if it is our day we will get a rank in top 1000 or else if we screw up then we will get a rank in 7000-8000."

Karthik did not clear JEE that year and took a drop. He re-attempted JEE in 2011 and is expecting a score of 354 which can easily get him a rank in top 200.

After JEE was over Mr.Vaibhav Bakliwal, founder of the Bakliwal Tutorials took all the 45 students who had cleared IIT JEE to a dinner at a high class restaurant. And students were given cash reward as per their ranks. I got Rs.1000 for a rank of 6871 but this wasn’t the only reward I got for clearing IIT JEE, apart from FIITJEE test series I had subscribed to T.I.M.E test series so even T.I.M.E gave me a price of Rs.4000 for clearing IIT JEE and the funny thing is I had subscribed for the T.I.M.E test series at a price of Rs.2000. So I actually made a profit of Rs.2000 out of it. Coming back to the dinner Vaibhav sir had taken us to, he suggested me there to take a drop and give JEE in 2011. I told him I would consider it sir. To this he replied, “Karan, you should consider it strongly cause I believe that people who deserve to be in IITs should not compromise on anything less than that”. But I never compromised, as now I am studying at BITS-Pilani Goa campus which is in no way a compromise infront of the IITs. In the end I would like to say “Enjoy the work you do, there is divine pleasure in hard work”.As commented by my dad in my last post “The journey is more beautiful than the destination” and thats all matters even if I dint reach my  expected destination atleast I enjoyed the journey.

Thanks for reading J

Signing off

Karan Singh Mann

B.E(Hons)

Electrical & Electronics Engg.

BITS-Pilani Goa Campus.

Story of an IIT JEE aspirant..

When I was in class 5th my elder brother was in class 12th . So since my childhood I had heard about IIT JEE . My brother could not make it through because he did not have the right coaching but he always wanted his younger brother to clear IIT JEE . So after completing his 12th he packed a box with this written on top of it :
" Karan's IIT JEE material " . I did use few of his books for my preparation . I even remember going to his college when I was in class 6th , his friends asked me " So Karan planning to join AIT( my bro's college) " and I replied " No, I am planning to join IIT " . I had done average in class 10th . I had got 88% overall . Then my dad got to know about this coaching institute Bakliwal Tutorials (BT ) , Pune . I also had heard a lot about it . So went to the orientation classes , after those 4-5 classes they took a test and I got selected to get my coaching from BT for IIT-JEE 2010 . Soon my father had bought the stack of all the books that BT had suggested . One the same day , as my parents went for an evening walk I remember sitting in front of that stack of books and  fear ran through my spine . My eyes were almost watery and I was wondering how much would I have to study . But I never knew preparing for IIT would be so much fun and not at all a burden for me .

In 11th class my dad used to drop me to the class and then wait outside the coaching centre as the classes would sometimes exceed the time limit by half or even one hour and at max 2 hours :D . I took some time to settle to this routine . I remember in 11th class I used to get a score of 50-60 / 240 . But I never gave up I kept on enjoying solving problems and enjoyed the classes too .

Then I shifted to another place in Pune( as you know my father's in the army ) where my home was near a friend of mine , Pranjal . Then in class 12th I started studying with him . In school we used to sit on the second last bench and study for JEE together . I remember in the English class we used to write a question on a piece of paper and it used to travel to 3-4 guys who were also in BT and in my class and we used to solve the question on the backside of the English textbook . It was the same even in other classes . There was this craze among us to solve questions , solving questions was like solving puzzles to us we enjoyed it thoroughly . Even our class teacher was very supportive ,  we used to go to the Computer lab carrying our JEE books along with us and after our programming got over we used to solve JEE problems in the lab itself .

Pranjal and I , we used to study at night when there was no school the next morning . Sometimes he used to come to my home and sometimes I used to go to his home . We used to start studying at night 10pm and go on till 5-6 am in the morning . When we used to study at his house his mom used to give us something delicious to eat and coffee to drink in the night if we felt sleepy , the same thing happened at my home . Our moms were very supportive . Even Pranjal sometimes used to make noodles or sandwiches late in the night at his home . He really motivated me to study , having a friend who is also serious in studying helps a lot to stay motivated . Although he also said the same thing that it was because of our group study that he used to study well , but I think he would have managed without me also .
We used to solve FIITJEE home tests together . Sometimes even 4-5 of us did group study at my home or at our coaching centre when there were no classes going on .
After this my performance really improved I started scoring 240 / 480  in the tests at BT as well as in the FIITJEE mock tests . At one point in 11th I really wondered whether I would be even able to clear IITJEE but now I was very confident that I would surely crack JEE and would get a rank of around 2000-3000 .
This was my story , pre IIT JEE 2010 . I still miss the joy of preparing for IIT-JEE , wish I could go back in time and relive my 11th and 12th class . Its fun making a goal and striving hard to achieve it rather than living life purposelessly .

Finally I got an AIR : 6871 ( as you can see it on my first post on this blog  ) and Pranjal got an AIR:3059 in IIT-JEE . He is now doing Electronics Engg. from IIT-BHU( name got changed from IT-BHU) .

Thanks for reading :)

Karan Singh Mann
B.E(Hons)
Electrical & Electronics Engg.
BITS Pilani - Goa Campus .

10th April 2010 : IIT JEE 2010

Date : 10th April 2011 Place : My hostel room at BITS Goa
Time : 9:15 am

Exactly 1 year from now was the most important day of my life . The day I had been waiting for since 2 years.
I remember the torturous night on the eve of IIT-JEE-2010 . I had my centre in Mumbai so had stayed in an army mess in Mumbai . The bed bugs bothered me a lot as if they wanted to spoil a perfect uneventful eve . I remember eating cautiously so that I dint upset my stomach . My sweet brother kept himslef awake all night so that I could get a good sleep without the bedbugs troubling me . So far so good , the night had passed letting me have a couple of hours of sleep . I travelled on a local train with my brother feeling my nerves .
I kept telling to myself "Today is the big day and I am going to make it" . I saw the fear in other peoples eyes in the local train  who were also going to take IIT-JEE . Some people were even revising in the local train for the exam . On this my brother remarked jokinly whether I also required a bit of revision . I laughed on his comment but a part of me  inside was still hoping I dint forget anything . I reached at the centre, Jamanabai Narsee . My dad was flying in all the way from Kashmir ( as he is in the army ) to Pune then travelling overnight to Mumbai with mom in our car . My parents had planned to meet me there at the centre and wish me luck and so it happened . My parents said remain calm and just do it . I stepped  inside the school finding my way to the designated classroom . I sat down on the second seat near the window in the classroom . Trying to remain calm , I looked out of the window and did the streching excercises I had thought I
would do during the exam . I started taking deep breaths and tried to slower the beating of my heart . And so it began IIT-JEE 2010 Paper - 1 . As usual I started with Physics ( My only love of life ) , then did chemistry
and finally maths . Paper 1 went good , I think it even got reflected on my face . I remember I was so relaxed now that I ate a bit too much at a restaurant . But before reaching the centre again my heartbeat quickened because to do well in JEE you have to do good in both papers . This time I was in a hurry to bid bye to my parents and  my brother and reach the classroom . Again I tried calming myslef down by the slow and deep breathing . The answer sheets were distributed and I noticed Phy , Chem , Maths were not in the same order but I kept quiet . After the  question paper was distributed I immidiately called for the invigilator and told her the question numbers on the question paper and the answer sheet dint match . This showed that my presence of mind was still good . This time the paper was a bit tough . Even the love of my life ( Phy ) was a bit tough but not tough enough to stop me from getting 40-50 out of 80 . Chemistry was as usual ok . Then I arrived on the subject which ruined the chances of me going to any IIT , Maths . Maths paper 2 was so tough according to me that numerous times I went through the maths section trying to find a question I could solve . Now I was getting tensed . In the last 40 min out of the 3 hours for paper 2  I scored just 2 marks . I came out of the examination hall not as happy as I was after paper 1 . But my parents said I was one of the few people at the centre who was saying that the paper was not bad . Then you know how the people who care about you try to make you happy by giving you false hope and you who doesnt want to face the truth also start hoping for the good .
The next day after IIT-JEE solutions were out I went to a friends house and checked my paper as I had marked all my answers on the question paper itself . I was expecting a score of 206 . I was getting the feeling that the battle was lost . But again a person tries to give himself hope by wishing that the other students hadnt done well in IIT-JEE and the exam was tough for everyone .
After that I tried my score on several IIT-JEE rank predictors which mostly gave a rank of around 3000 , which  dint seem bad to me so I started getting this feeling of a rank in the 3 thousands . Hope was all I had .
During this interval I never focussed on any other entrance exam . But did a bit of preparation
for BITSAT . Then the day came 26th May 2010 . The " Judgement Day " . The IIT JEE site traffic was high so it  took time to load . As we entered my reg. no and password there it was Congratulations Karan Singh Mann AIR:6871 . This is how my dream of going into the IIT was shattered . My parents tried to console me saying I had atleast  cleared IIT-JEE which was a big thing in itself . Rahul sir ( my phy teacher at my coachin centre ) often stated
"Aim for the stars , you will atleast reach the moon" . I always aimed for a rank of around 1000-2000 . But I
guess I did reach the moon only not the stars .

Thanks for reading :)
Singning off

Karan Singh Mann
B.E(Hons)
Electrical & Electronics Engg.

BITS - Pilani Goa Campus .