GASICS Part 2

My past track record in school had been terrible. I definitely would have failed 10th grade if our exams hadn't been cancelled (one of the benefits of Covid).

The Hindi subject had become my personal hell since when it was introduced in 4th grade, and that didn't change as I went through school .After submitting an empty paper in our last set of prelim exams in 10th, they made me to sit for a 2 hour long session with the school counselor(who was, quite ironically, my Hindi teacher).

Previous mishaps aside, the odds right now were clearly not in my favor. I had the attention span of a toddler on a sugar rush, 0 work ethic, and was a year late to what was supposed to be at minimum a 2 year long marathon. My rank of 956 in a batch of ~1000 in an internal test drove this point home.

Still, I made up my mind to do well. You need to cross a certain threshold of energy to break habits, and all the pent up rage at having been left alone by my friends proved to be an excellent source.

I was going to show the same people who had left me, that I could do fine, and even better without them.

That aside, another big driver in the decision to do JEE was knowing that even if it didn't work out, atleast I'd be able to trust myself to do whatever else with commitment.

Even at this time, I could see that developing a work ethic was a skill that would transfer to whichever field I chose to work in. So the call was made.