IFS Office

It differs from place to place.

In Bucharest, my office looks like this:

-Rahul Shrivastava, IFS, MCA, BSc-Chemistry

 Most civil service aspirants in India are from middle-class or lower middle class. This is true of IFS, too. Therefore, when you join the IFS, you’ll be like everyone else rather than being an exception. If you are from a lower middle class family, you should always remember the hardships that you have gone through when you join IFS or any civil service and use your position to make life better for those who are in difficulty.

  -Rahul Shrivastava

 I come from a small town in Uttar Pradesh. I was born and brought up in a lower-middle-class family. But I studied hard and made my way to the two prestigious leagues of colleges in our country – IIT & IIM.

How has my life changed? A lot. During my school, I was in the company of friends who had no aspirations in their life. But IIT & IIM gave me access to one of the smartest & the most hard-working people who served as an inspiration for my life. I experienced severe knowledge transfer in their company, which imparted me skills I would have never thought.

I am not only financially better off now but also have learned how to look at life differently. With the adoption of newer habits, embracing health and fitness as a journey, and putting extra effort in whatever I do, my perspective on life has completely changed.

For me, studying is not just a gateway to knowledge but also a source of access to intelligent minds. I can appreciate the principles given in the best seller books because I have elevated my mind to synchronize with their thoughts.

Think again when you lose motivation to study. Do you want a normal life or you want to be among the leaders? By saying so, I am, in no way, telling, you can’t do anything without studying. But studying puts you on a better footing. And I am not restricting the concept of learning to academic books; you can learn about your passion and make your career in that direction.

Visualize the future you want to see, and if studying can help you reach there, don’t ever lose your motivation for studying.

-Krishna Khadelwal,IIM,IIT

I have several rules in my life, few of them specifically for studying. I am sharing them below, hoping you will benefit from the same:

 

# 1 Study while you study, play while you play

• Don’t mix your studies with chatting with your friend, or listening to a song, or watching a viral video.
• A study has confirmed that it takes an average of about 25 minutes (23 minutes and 15 seconds, to be exact) to return to the original task after an interruption.
• Don’t let your focus break by the notification on your phone.

# 2 Take notes wherever possible

• Your brain is not like a hard disk where data remains intact once you have stored it. Within an hour, you forget an average of 50% of the information you received, which increases to 90% by the end of the week.
• During the exams, the notes you have taken during class are going to be your savior. And it is not just for the exams; it will remain with you forever.

# 3 Revise the concepts often

• If you are studying for an exam, revision is the most important thing.
• If you have revised the concepts in 5 repetitions (first repetition – Within a day, Second repetition – After a few days, Third repetition – After a week, Fourth Repetition – After a month, and Fifth Repetition – After a few months), you will permanently remember 95% of the information

# 4 Practice different types of questions

• Your learning actually completes when you can apply a concept to a real-life problem.
• Don’t just learn the formula; try to understand the logic behind it.
• Practicing a variety of questions not only reinforces the learned concepts, but also you remember the concepts for a long-time.

# 5 Don’t just depend on coaching

• Coaching institutes will help and guide you, but you will never learn until you study and practice on your own.
• Don’t spend your entire day making trips to the school and coaching.
• Keep a good chunk of time for your self-study, and you will realize you might be going ahead than coaching students.

I am not boasting when I am saying that I qualified IIT-JEE (AIR 2752), GATE (AIR 21), and CAT (99.19 percentile) based on self-study. I bought coaching materials and joined their All-India Test Series but never enrolled in their classroom programme.

It is not true that you can’t crack competitive exams without coaching. With a proper mindset and strategy, and self-study, it is definitely possible.

Be confident and apply these golden study rules, and you will succeed in every exam of your life.

  -Krishna Khandelwal,IIM,IIT

Are computer scientists happy?

Some of us are happy; some of us are not. For some of us, computer science is the core of our identity, a source of ineffable beauty and awesome purpose, a solace against the sadness and terror of the rest of the world. For some of us, computer science is a day job that we barely tolerate only because it keeps enough money in our pockets to support our real lives. Some of us live happy, healthy, balanced lives in supportive environments and with loving families. Some of us suffer from desperate isolation, mental illness, physical and emotional abuse, crippling financial burdens, hunger, and homelessness.

In short, computer scientists are people.

-Jeff Erickson CS Professor-University of Illinois

Clerk After 12 & Thinking about Entering IIM ?

I was a student at IIM Calcutta 2004–06. One of my classmates used to work as a clerk in Vijaya Bank. So, the simple answer to your question is YES.

There is more to his story.

He joined the Bank as a clerk with Class 12 as the qualification. His dad and the primary bread winner passed away and he had to take charge of the family. He finished his B.Com and ICWAI through private study while working in the bank. He even got promoted as an officer about 5 years after joining the bank.

He didn't consider MBA as a career option for quite some time. Then he saved enough money for his family to sustain for two years when he is away.

Finally, at the age of 26, he left the bank to join IIMC. He had spent 7.5 years in service by then. He had struggled with every single section in CAT and more than half the courses in IIMC. Every single time he had the perseverance to fight through.

Today he is an amazingly successful and highly respected corporate finance professional.

Leaving out his name to protect his privacy. A very dear friend of mine and someone who I regard highly.

 

-Adithya Lanka

You’re complaining about a slow laptop?

Laptops didn’t exist when I learned to code. Or personal computers at all for that matter.

When I went to grad school for my MSCS degree, all of our assignments ran on a UNIVAC 1108 mainframe computer — which had a 1.33 MHz processor, and about 1 MB of main memory. Or about 1000 times slower and 8000 times smaller memory than a cheap laptop. And cost over two millions dollars (almost $14 million today).

But the speed and memory size weren’t directly relevant to me, because there weren’t any dial up terminals yet (those were added the year I graduated). When they did come along, the normal speed was 300 baud. That’s about two seconds per line displayed on a screen.

All of our programs were submitted on punch cards in boxes like this:

and we would get the results back in a few hours, or more often, the next day.

Compile error? Too bad. Wait another day.

Yet I learned FORTRAN IV, UNIVAC 1108 assembler, LISP, COBOL and ALGOL 68 this way. I got my Master’s degree in Computer Science and am still working full-time 50 years later as a programmer at the age of 74.

Over the years I’ve picked up another dozen or so high-level languages, and 15 additional variations of assembler.

Please don’t expect me to shed any tears over your slow laptop.

   -Tom Crosley,M.S. in Computer Science, Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago 

More Hardwork = More Money

The greatest secret of earning wealth is the ability of a person to suffer failure and learn the lessons from failures instead of quitting.

If you are not willing to fail, you don’t have chances to become rich by your own effort.

There are many jobs that are so easy to be done that no one fails. For example, if you choose to be a labourer, worker in a factory, maidservant, driver, there is hardly any chances of failure as everyone can master these jobs quite easily.

Yet you can never become rich doing these jobs even if you are working 18 hours a day.

However, there are other professions, where the chances of failures are very high. For example, when we attempt to learn any subject in our schools and colleges and try to solve a problem, we fail multiple times before we start finding the right answers to the questions.

We keep learning from every mistake, and soon we stop making mistakes in solving the problems which looked so difficult to us once.

When you pass your college and choose a profession, there are some jobs where the chances of failures are very high and there are somewhere the chances of failure are very low.

( It does not mean you don't have to work hard but you have to work  Hard Then Super Hard but in the Right Direction and on the Right Path ) 

Ignorance is Bliss ?

When I was a young child, I once asked my mother the reasons for the solar and lunar eclipse.

She narrated me the story of Puranas and explained that solar and lunar eclipse happens when Rahu-Ketu eats Sun and Moon by taking revenge for exposing them to Lord Vishnu who was in the form of a beautiful woman ‘Mohini’ .

Almost everyone in my village still believes in this story and considers eclipse as inauspecious and avoids doing many activities including eating food cooked before eclipse.

However, when I later studied science, I came to know the scientific reason for the solar and lunar eclipse due to planatory motions in which God has no role to play.

However, I could never explain my mother and most of my relatives that myths are false and that God has no role to play in eclipse as they deeply believe in the stories of Puranas and reject all the scientific principles that runs contrary to these stories.

Unfortunately, billions of people around the world still believe in the myths and fallacies of mythologies and religion rather than posing faith on scientific explanations of the realities.

If you are living in a society where almost everyone believes in myths, you are declared as outcaste and ridiculed rather than respected for your knowledge and wisdom.

I have been voracious reader for last couple of decades and I read almost fifty books every year.

Most of my friends and colleagues in civil services and relatives have stopped learning and only recycle their old knowledge. They rarely read books except those which deals with their job.

I am gradually realising that I now have little in common with my old friends, colleagues and relatives, as most of them are still stuck up in the mental state at which they were decades ago while I am getting transformed everyday due to learning new things in life.

I sometime marvel the power of book, which help us interact with the best of the best minds of the world that ever existed in any part of the world since the beginning of human civilisation.

And once you have enjoyed their company and understood the thoughts of such great minds, how can you think like ignorant men once again and enjoy the company of foolish and ignorance masses?

Ignorance is indeed a bliss for most people in the world because ignorant people are like blind men guiding each other and enjoying happiness since they can’t see the bad things in the world, while forgetting that they also can’t see the beauty of the world as well.

Even if I want, I can’t enjoy the bliss of ignorance just like a man with eyes can never enjoy the bliss of a blind man by closing his eyes forever.

I can never stop the search of knowledge because only the right knowledge can open our eyes to the reality and guide us to the right path of sustainable happiness and bliss.

Once you have enjoyed the bliss of knowledge, there is no way you can ever live with ignorance and enjoy its blessings.

 -Awdhesh Singh  Former IRS, IITian

Inflation & Standard of Living

 In 2010 - 1 Kg of White Polished Rice cost Rs. 190/- per 5 Kilogram Bag, today the same Brand White Rice costs Rs. 356/- per 5 Kilogram Bag

Thats an inflation of 8.74% Per Yr

In 2010 - Health Insurance Policy of Rs. 10 Lakhs cost Rs. 35,800/- for a 60 year old Man , today the same policy costs Rs. 68,500/-

Thats an inflation of 9.2% Per Yr

In 2010 - a Rs. 10 Lakh Term Deposit would yield Rs. 7,270/- per month in income after TDS. Today the same 10 Lakh Term Deposit yields only Rs. 4,702/- per month in income.

Thats a decrease of 4.33% per Yr

In 2010 - a 1500 Sq Ft (Gross Carpet Area) Flat in a Suburban Area cost Rs. 53.88 Lakhs on an Average (Electronics City Bangalore, Tambaram Chennai and Peelmed in Coimbatore - three of the most affordable housing in South India as per India Today in 2010) with an EMI of Rs. 56,900/- per month for Full Loan

In 2020 - the same 1350 Sq Ft (GCA) Flat in a Suburban Area cost Rs. 74.25 Lakhs on an Average with an EMI of Rs. 83,700/- per month for Full Loan in the three most afforable housing in South India (Different Locations from the above ones)

Thats 6.25% a Year inflation in Per SFT House Price and 6.07% a year inflation in Relative EMI Payable.

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Inflation should be lower and Standard of Living Higher but in India the opposite is true.

Inflation is rampant while Standard of Living is becoming lower and lower.

So assumption of 6% Inflation makes full sense for India. I always assume 8% inflation to be on the safe side.

  

- Kanthaswamy Balasubramaniam

I was able to crack JEE with school in my first attempt due to two reasons.....

 I was able to crack JEE with school in my first attempt due to two reasons: dedicated focus and extensive prioritization.

I was extremely focused on clearing JEE during the last two years of my school life - so much so that I could not even imagine a life without clearing JEE. I used to attend my coaching classes sincerely, and go through my preparation material multiple times. In fact, I read each module at least seven times for the JEE preparation. I took each mock JEE exam as seriously as I would take the actual JEE exam, and closely analyzed my performance after each mock exam. I remember I had severe fever on the day of one of my mocks, but I still traveled to the exam center to take the exam, even though it would not have mattered a bit had I skipped that mock.

While others in my class were busy partying, I was immersed in the preparation. While my friends went on trips to celebrate the end of school days, I was busy revising my material for the hundredth time. During those two years, I did not attend a single family function, hardly saw any movies, and did not go out with my friends. Those two years of my life were completely dedicated to JEE preparation.

I also ensured extensive prioritization during those two years to manage my time. I attended school only once a week, and that too so that I could appear for the weekly tests that happened every Monday. I ensured I appeared for the school tests and exams, so that I would not lose out on any marks, while focusing the rest of the time on JEE preparation. I knew that if I prepared well for JEE, the school exams and the CBSE Board exams would be a cakewalk, but it would not be true the other way round. As a result, I ended up scoring 94.2% in my Board exams in class 12th, even though I had attended school only once a week!

The two years of dedication resulted in the coveted All India Rank 279 in IIT-JEE (now called JEE Advanced), and All India Rank 94 in AIEEE (now called JEE Mains).

JEE had become such an integral part of my life for those two years that I never considered JEE just as an exam. It was a part and parcel of my life.

In fact, to be frank - for those two years, JEE had actually become my whole life.

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If you wish to reach out to me, feel free to contact me on Instagram (@jainrohanrj)

 -Rohan Jain,IIM,IIT