You have an aim and you give your best to achieve it. However, even after lots of hard work and dedication, you lose. You lose not once or twice but for five times in a row. This is enough to break most peoples’ confidence. Naturally, you will feel demotivated and might want to give up. It is indeed very hard to face the defeat for five time consecutively. Then, they are few people like Mr. Saurav Pandey who don’t know how to give up. And they are the one who reap ricj rewards.
Mr. Pandey is today an IAS officer and it was only possible due to his remarkable perseverance, and not losing the sight of his aim- which was to clear UPSC. He did it in his sixth, and the last attempt.
Shunning the Corporate Job
Hailing from Varanasi, Mr. Pandey is a graduate in Electrical & Electronics Engineering from BITS (Pilani). Since his college offered elective system, so he got the chance to study International relation, Modern political concepts and Public administration apart from his main syllabus.
In an interview he said, “While studying these subjects I discovered my interest for civil services. Somewhere I had planned to go for it but then I got a job. I like engineering which made me happy for a while, and then maybe I lost in the charm of my job. Slowly I realized that I am not enjoying my work anymore and I decided to go for UPSC.”
Mr Pandey only had three months of preparation for the first attempt and he couldn’t crack it in 2015. However, this gave a lot of clarity to him and he moved to Delhi from Bangalore for preparation. He did his best but the result remained same in his 2016 attempt too.
Lost due to a margin of less than one mark
In 2016, he came very close to crack the prelims. The gap between his score and cut off was not even of one mark. This shattered him but he kept himself motivated. He decided to at least get a chance for writing Mains and then decide if UPSC is his cup of tea or not. Fortunately, he cracked his pre and mains both in 2017. However, even after the interview he couldn’t make it. He wanted to give another try and changed his preparation strategy a bit. Even then 2018 didn’t give him what he wanted.
Wanted to give up, But Didn’t
For the last two attempts, Mr. Pandey reached till the interview round but the final success eluded him. He had already completed his fifth attempt and was demotivated completely. But he decided to give one last shot. “That was the time when my parents and friend acted like angels. There was not more time left for the 2019 prelims. All of them advised me to give prelims and not to worry about anything. I believed in them and gave the exam”, said Mr. Pandey.
This was it. Finally, Mr. Pandey’s years of dedication worked and he secured 66th rank in his last attempt.
He says that if everyone starts working on their weakness, nothing is impossible. “No matter what, never be over-confident about your strong points. Even if you believe you are excellent in one subject, you should not ignore it. Keep practicing and revising”, he said in an interview.
Now, Mr Pandey is in the last phase of training and has been allotted the West Bengal cadre.
