Perseverence

By Sejal Jain

PERSEVERANCE: the literal meaning being - continued effort to do or achieve something despite difficulties, failure, or opposition. No matter where we are in life one thing that we should never do is give up no matter how many difficulties we cross our way. Perseverance is the key to success. 

Hello readers, here I am going to illustrate a real-life experience, I hope you can learn from it & take something to your heart to learn. Okay so, until last year I was preparing for the competitive exam – NEET (National Eligibility cum Entrance Test). In brief I would just mention that in the medical faculty this exam plays a vital role to get into a good government medical college. 

Let me take you to 2015 where all of this started. We are a nuclear family who are my life. This is about the time when we used to live in Bareilly, the Jhumka capital . My sister was in college in Bareilly doing her bachelors, she used to come to home on weekends & visit along with her friends the city & would often visit us. That day she came along with her 4 friends. I was quite a bubbly girl back then & since my childhood so I was just interacting with one of her friends, Akansha di. During those days there were those 3 months of vacation that 10th class CBSE students used to get, & so did I. So, she (Akansha di) talked about her two brothers one of them was preparing for IIT, & the other one medical. They were preparing for those competitive exams back in Kota since long. I didn’t know what just hit me strong, all I remember for now I knew one thing I HAVE TO GO TO KOTA. Anyone would definitely find it a big stupid decision so do I when I look back to myself to what all I did for that place but I guess my competitive spirit just hits up any day anytime, so it did that time as well. My father is very protective towards me, so he was at time also, he can take any decisions in the world but not related to me, that’s when his emotional part sets up. So after when my sister returned to her college, I don’t know what just happened, I went to my room where my father was sitting, told him not even asked,” Papa, I want to go to Kota”. And everyone in my family knows how stubborn I am regarding what I want & I don’t step back easily to that. So, my father couldn’t just understand why & from where I came out of nowhere about this KOTA thing. He was asking me,” Why do you want to go there, what do you want to do just tell me”. I was not able to answer any of his questions, I just started crying like a cranky baby, he couldn’t see me in that state so he called his Fire brigade who was my uncle (Phupaji). I also admire him because I believe he has some level of intellect in life on many things. I had a conversation with him on call, he also asked the same question to me that my father did, all I did was just crying & crying & crying. My father had to agree to my decision then, he figured out things & we all went to visit the city, KOTA. Things started falling in place accordingly I wished, here I can’t illustrate my whole Kota journey but I would put bits & pieces of the same. I got into a Hostel, I wanted to be in a single room but my father didn’t agree that time & when I was in class 11th, I stayed in that double room with a girl who was a native of Rajasthan itself. I used to be very disciplined, would go on time to the coaching I was enrolled to , complete all assignments on time, & would be that perfect ideal student what anyone must be in order to crack a competitive exam. We used to be distributed a chart of the most eminent medical school of India i.e., AIIMS that wrote,” DREAM DESTINATION – HARVARD OF THE EAST, REST NOT TILL YOU REACH” - & a defined picture of the medical school. That chart only 3 amongst all our hostel buddies got, & guess what I was one amongst them. It was definitely a yippee moment for me, & I worked harder & harder with time. Eventually what happened was, my roommate that I mentioned above was a night study person & on the contrary I was a morning study person. So, our time used to lapse, I had to sleep when the light was on, & upon that she had the habit of speaking & studying so that just pissed me off. 2-3 days later I expressed all this to my best buddy with whom I used to share every single thing MY, I cried & again told her to shift me to single room because that time I was gearing up good in my studies & that’s why I preferred that. Eventually my parents had to agree to my stubbornness & I shifted to a single room. It was all of me. In the starting I used to feel a bit alone & lonely & that was the starting of my deceleration days. I had this habit which I discovered after shifting to the single room that I can study better if I have at least one person around me, & you can guess what happened lately. The birth of my downfall started & it started at a lower pace because I was then fighting with myself to achieve the best & I was not able to. Imagine a person, going to coaching 6-7 hours, eating lunch alone, coming back to the room & is all alone in the room, what I developed was that afternoon sleep habit that I never had & I was an exception in my family to that habit. I developed that, would sleep for 2-3 hours, wake up till evening eat for 1 hour something or the other then the time for dinner used to arrive & would come back to room, study 1-2 hours again would go to sleep. This was my time table & obviously I started scoring poorly in my tests. Failure has never been my piece of cake ever in my life, when for the first time I faced it, it felt to me like the end of the world. And you know what happened I didn’t fight back to that; I went into that deep whole. That 1-2 hours that I used to study I stopped even that, & started watching movies. There was a famous system of Kota, purchasing downloaded movies one of rupees 5, it was an easy treat for anyone, so I started watching movies, missing classes, used to eat lot of junk, started lying to my best buddy my mommy that I am studying. I came in 12th grade I had that guilt, & I knew for a fact & I may not improve like this. I used to think that if I again switched to double room, I would study nicely then again, I would want to shift to single room so I started forcing up on myself studying I knew nothing was going in my head but that process of trying to fit in, running from failure, not sharing anything with anyone that just digested the soul out of me I realise today. I never want to erase that image of being an ideal child to my parents & to others so I never tried doing something else & would cry out alone, suffer alone. I knew nothing is going to help me externally until my internal motivational drive hits me, & what all I did was I waited for my internal drive to hit & even stopped trying any further. My NEET exam was almost 60 days ahead, I could have done what not but then one more philosophy hit me that I have heard a lot & I guess many of you also must have that “ जो होता हैअच्छे के लिए होता है“ & “ Bhawan ji drives lot of our actions “ I still remember those days I would step out of my room see my competitors studying even while having lunch & dinner & I had become shameless till then I would take a book with me showing I am also studying, come back to room throw that book & again go to sleep. Those 2 years of Kota all they gave me was losing myself, I came up with a couple of health issues due to my depression, and obviously I couldn’t crack NEET. But somewhere I don’t know I had that feeling that I can do it, so I convinced my parents to take a drop year & that year I did my coaching from my home itself, that really boosted up my preparation but what again was I hit by was, before 2 months of my exam I fell ill, I had Measles & typhoid one after the other that just drained my energy. I don’t know why but I started feeling that my Kota days were back & I again went into that space, I tried , I tried how much I could force myself to but I knew I was not all into it so I failed yet again. That day when I came back giving the exam, I thought I did really well because I did but not that well that I could, at night since the coaching classes used to release the answers of the question papers, I came to my room crosschecked my answers. Wrong, wrong, wrong, right, right, wrong, right, right my heart was just pumping fast because I was thinking that I did it this time but when I calculated the score my heart sank like anything, I didn’t tell anyone that day but that failure just hit me very bad. I couldn’t think, couldn’t talk, just couldn’t do anything. I was in that ideal state of depression back then, my father was watching me he also didn’t said a word since he knew what I was going through, because that year I really worked hard like anything, just those last 2-3 months screwed up everything. My confidence just dropped like anything, I was just drowned. Further was the time when we were supposed to decide which college am I supposed to go, I had no will to do anything in life then, so my sister & father took the decision & I went to a college in Pune. I was definitely not at heart, with anything in the world anymore. What again I did was started preparing for NEET along with my college studies, I prepared for the same for 2 years back-to-back during my college time, just study for the exams of college & rest all time would study for NEET. I didn’t succeed still, but I would mention one thing, during the 2nd year when I was preparing, we were hit back by corona, so I came back to home, I was still preparing but something inside me was not happy enough. I thought & questioned myself that even if I cracked NEET will I be happy enough, because my bachelors I am in i.e. homeopathy (BHMS) , I used to get influenced so much by it during the college lectures that I felt that motive for what I am prepping for NEET is to serve for people, I will do it in a more curative & harmless way in homeopathy then in allopathy that I am fighting for ( no offence to any pathy ). I still remember it was 23rd June 2020 when I dropped the idea of NEET, something I had been following for past 5 years but when finally I got brains & that’s why I preferred listening to my heart. Summing up, I would state that in life whatever you are crazy for, whatever drives you go for it, go for it madly, because the other day you should not repent that I didn’t try, in my case I tried my ass off but then at the end of the day what matters to all of us is the satisfaction of soul. Homeopathy satisfies my soul; it is something that my religion also teaches that is to be harmless. So, to all the readers out there I would like to advice especially the teens that go follow your goals, whatever it takes never ever give up, never let any sort of guilt eat you up any day in future. Somewhere in my 1st year of college I was having that guilt so I prepped again & again. Today I know one thing is to have patience in anything in the world because always remember,” every good thing takes time to come to your door, because that’s when you will realize its value & importance right”. Stay patient enough, stay motivated enough, believe in yourself good things & best things will always reach you & just remember failure in life is always to teach you. You will never be able to appreciate good things in your life until you see failure, so embrace every bit of your life & keep learning, & never ever let anything take away from your dreams.

Moreover, I would like to share that I never had the guts to narrate this story ever to anyone, because feeling and going through all this always made me feel like a big loser, but later I just realised we all are in some or the another way going through our failures and if this could just add up to someone's life that courage that they are not alone, it's life we all just have to learn to be strong always and just believe in ourselves then I would be really more than happy  because when I was going through all of this I felt myself the biggest loser because no-one easily becomes vulnerable about their downs in their lives so it is definitely something that I would like to reach up to the readers. Thanks a lot if you came this far reading this, this is probably my first write-up going to be published in a book so I hope it conveyed the massage I wanted to pass on. Growing together, from each other’s failures is what I have learned so far so I will encourage you also to do the same and stay vulnerable. Being vulnerable never means you are weak, it in fact means you are courageous enough to talk about your falls & flaws.

By Sejal Jain