Mentorship: Key to Enhancing your Self-Study

The UPSC Civil Services Examination has been engulfed with myths of various types, which result in many students not opting to write the exam and many others studying without proper planning and/or preparation. Herein, comes handy the role of a Guru i.e. Mentor, whose chief job remains to clear out doubts pertaining to diverse aspects of the Civil Services Examination, helping the student build a conceptual understanding and therefore, aid the students take their preparation from concepts to tackling the questions smoothly in the main examination. Let us see how

Linking Your Self-Study With Right Mentorship

To make your preparation output-oriented, you need a mentor to guide you in the right direction. The importance of a ‘Guru’ is felt in all academic endeavours, even more in the UPSC-CSE exam.  They help in understanding the length and breadth of the syllabus, decoding it, establishing interlinkages between the topics, focusing on specific topics from an examination point of view, zeroing down on the content of importance etc.

The benefits of a Mentor in Self-Study

Getting to know the canvas of the UPSC syllabus is the most primary of all concerns that an aspirant is clouded with. Like any other journey, it is the start that is the most difficult, even in UPSC preparation and it is here that a mentor plays a pivotal role.

•  It is his/her duty to clear the air surrounding the exam and make an aspirant understand the scheme of UPSC and the method of its preparation. 
• A mentor needs to draw a mental map of how an aspirant needs to approach the exam.
•  It is the mentor who has to flag immediate and minor targets for the aspirants which will ultimately lead him/her to the final glory. 
• Dy-mystifying the syllabus and using it for the purpose of studying is the primary function of a mentor in which the faculties of GS Score have specialization.
•  A mentor, therefore, has to make an aspirant realise that everything under the sun is not important and how to view a particular topic, which is paramount for preparation from the examination point of view.

A Guiding Light On The Path Of Concept To Question

One of the biggest misconceptions about UPSC is that it requires studying everything and all things. Well, nothing can be further from the truth. Civil Services preparation is about systematically analyzing what UPSC wants an aspirant to know, in short, it is about ‘knowing what UPSC wants you to know’. An aspirant here can get immense help here from his/her mentor. 

1. Guides of UPSC hopefuls have to make them understand what intent the Commission have in asking a specific question and if the same is studied well then what kind of topics and questions on that topics can be expected? 

• This will help an aspirant in creating a way in which particular information may be grasped and reproduced from the viewpoint of examination. 

2. Civil Services Examination is organic in nature and it has evolved and will continue to do so in the future too. Students due to their young age and the burden of performance that they carry may not be able to decode what may be expected from them.

•  Mentors of UPSC aspirants, like the ones in GS Score, have to walk them through this evolution taking primarily the help of Previous Year's Question Papers. Igniting the minds of aspirants to understand the philosophy of each subject, therefore building conceptual clarity is crucial and the path for the same has to be illuminated by the teachers.

3. For selecting the information that has to be studied and processed by an aspirant, the choice of books is the most prominent one. As happens in GS Score, a teacher has to not only provide a booklist that comprehensively covers the topics for Civil Services Examination but also explain why the said booklist will suffice. 

• Making a student understand the necessity of affixing his/her attention to a particular booklist will help him/her not wandering around and focusing on achieving peak performance.
•  It will give them the impetus to study the material with better intention and concentration.

In the end, a mentor’s role is also that of a friend and a guardian. He/she understands how emotionally draining the process of examination is and therefore needs to comfort his/her students with care and support. The role of the mentor begins before he/she enters the classroom and does not end with the termination of the lecture session. 

A Right Mentor will help you take your preparation from the #ConceptToQuestion, Check our GS Mains Course for more input and crack Mains 2023 by a concoction of your self-study and our thinking line.