GUIDE : A Guide on when to change your Optional by Prajit Nair, IAS Rank 87

By Prajit Nair, AIR 87, CSE-2016

Failed in Mains, blaming your optional? Thinking of changing it? Read this before you decide.

So the Mains result came out about a week ago. A lucky(and probably smart-working) set of people cleared and the remaining got to hear the dreaded 'ting'. The 'ting' is the sound that your computer plays when the search result on Adobe PDF Reader returns 'No results to display' when you type in your roll number.

As if the message needs a background music to help you get the enormity of it. I have personally had the misfortune of hearing it twice. And I can tell you that it isn't less dreadful when you hear it the second time.

The Difficulty of Making a Decision

So here is the thing, the ting is just the alarm that warns you of a difficult phase ahead. Difficult because failure is a bitter pill to swallow. All your efforts of the past year getting erased by something so ordinary as a 'ting'. You find it very difficult to accept. You want your failure to be swan song of sorts. You want it follow the story line of a movie. You want a villain to complete the story line. But you don't have one. So you end up making up one.

You create a villain

To play the role you have nine probable candidates to choose from. And the most (in)famous candidates are Optional-1 and Optional-2. Now that you have your actors, you start giving them a character. And there is a list of attributes that you can use to build your character.
Here are the typical ones:
-tough paper
-‎butchered optional on UPSC's hit list
-‎paper setter had constipation
-‎out-of-syllabus questions
-‎vast syllabus
Yada Yada.........

And after you have done choosing the villain of your choice you start to build the plot of your movie. This is the plot that describes(justifies) your failure. The villain was simply too powerful to be defeated. He has to be, doesn't he? Otherwise, how is the sad ending of your movie justified?
But wait. Is this plot the actual story? Do you want this to be your story? Everybody wants a happy ending. Don't they?

Toh picture abhi baki hai mere dost!

For this the hero has to rise up. And the hero is you. The hero has to plot the downfall of the villain. Can this be done?
Yes.
So what is the first step towards this?
The hero has to see things with clarity. And in clarity of thought is the first victim. That is the purpose of this article. I want the hero to win. I want you to win.
So let me help you put things in perspective.

(I had written this article with Geography in mind but I think the points are pretty general and apply to all optionals.)

I had failed two times in Mains

I had failed two times in Mains before I cleared in my third attempt. And in the attempts in which I failed, I blamed geography. Looking at the trend of candidates getting selected with geography I used to think that this subject would not help me clear this exam. I used to curse this optional and the paper-setters for making this subject so difficult. So much that I used to contemplate changing my optional to some other subject. I even had a look at basic books of few optional subjects. I used to curse myself too for choosing this optional.

I'm pretty sure you will be going through similar thoughts.

I can say that a majority of the failed candidates end up with a flawed analysis of their failed attempts because they seldom find help in analyzing their performance before the marks come out. It is an excruciatingly long wait before the marks come out and it is very easy to build plots after plots in the waiting time. You lose precious time and effort in doing so and end up ruining your next attempt too. I did it once after my first attempt failure and ruined my second attempt.

But in the course of my third attempt I realized that this is a very flawed way of going about your preparation. I'll be blunt. The moment you start blaming the subject you remove every possibility of individual improvement.

I realized a few things in the course of this attempt. I'll try to explain them.

The problem lies in the way we view the optional papers. We think of getting average marks in optional papers looking at scores of selected candidates. So we put a proportionate amount of effort in these papers. We think we'll get average marks with such efforts. But this doesn't usually work the way we desire.

In optionals, to clear you need to score marks that are in the top 4-5%. You try to do this in both optional papers and you'll probably get somewhere around the average score of selected candidates. It is necessary to prepare to top in your optional papers. If not top, at least reach the top 4-5% of scores in your optional. Only then can you think of ending up somewhere in the list.

But why is this important?

Now how does all this relate to the question of thinking of changing optional subject or questioning your choice if optional?
Any optional has 3 sets of parts:
-easy part,
-‎moderately difficult part and
-‎unknown/difficult part.
The same set of differentiation can be made in the question paper also. Every question can be put into one of these three parts.

In the course of preparation you cover the easy part of the optional with good preparation. Majority candidates are able to do this well. The competition is not eliminated here.

You pay for what you ignore

The unknown/difficult parts of the syllabus you tend to ignore. Not out of choice but out of compulsion. Questions from these sections do not decide the competition. Very few get these questions correct. So it doesn't matter much in the final competition.

The moderately difficult questions decide who clears and who doesn't clear mains and probably interview too. This is an area that requires strategy and effort. And this area decides the comfort you have with the subject.

This is what you probably need

But for cracking this section of questions you need two things:
1)knowledge regarding sections of the syllabus that fall within this difficulty level.
2)knowledge and comfort with the remaining sections that allows you to focus majority of your time and effort in this section
And supplementary requirement is the ability to find answers to these sections of the syllabus. You should know which books, teacher, notes, or friends to follow for covering topics that fall in this difficulty level.

These rules apply to all optionals. I can say this with confidence because I myself have gone through the effort of shortlisting optionals to change over to from geography. These rules apply with remarkable similarity. So whenever you think about changing optional or simply question your own optional subject, bear the above points in mind.

So what made me settle to stick with geography?

The two needs I mentioned regarding the moderately difficult questions can be better done with your existing optional than with a new optional. Think about it. It is the best way you can utilize your time and effort.
Even the supplementary requirements can be easily met with your current optional as you already know the books, teachers, you have friends who have prepared with you and most importantly, you have a set of notes that you have already prepared and can serve as a good base to build your strength on the subject.

Dig an older well than a new one

To give your analogy, it is like digging a well. It is better to keep digging with a better strategy in a half dug well than to take a new optional and start digging a new well from ground zero.
Before you think of countering me by saying that geography seems to be on an arid land, remember that every optional is on that same arid land. The same rules apply.

To sum up: your present optional has the best input:output ratio!

As for the success rate with regards to optional: some optionals do better statistically vis-a-vis others?
This is variable. I completely agree. I have been a victim myself before I succeeded. But that is luck. You cannot do anything about it. These kind of variables have been a part of the examination process before you started. You started with a aim to ace the exam irrespective of these variables. You wanted to bend these variables to your benefit with your efforts and strategy. So keep doing it.

And always remember, there is always someone in the list with your optional in top 100. Even in 2013 when the geography papers were as tough as it was in 2017 AIR-7 & 34 had geography optional. You can be the one every year, whether the papers are easy or not. So stop questioning the optional and focus on your strategy.

When you should actually change Optional

The only reasons for which you should definitely think about changing your optional are :
-you are absolutely bored of studying the subject
-‎you have no interest at all in studying the subject another time and want a change of subject matter
Only in these cases change your optional. Else it is counterproductive.

Every Optional requires a strategy

I can say with enough experience that any optional can land you in the interview list and a low rank(at minimum) with a proper strategy. You can plan out your time and effort to reach the list. The first step would be to not play into your insecurities and think that the optional is the culprit. Remove these thoughts. The earlier, the better.
This is the beginning of the hero's story. My job was just to give you a perspective. I hope you can envision the remainder of the plot.

All the very best. :)