Sometime during her second year at engineering college, Yashaswini was drawn to the idea of attempting the civil services examinations—conversations with a group of like-minded course-mates helped to flesh out the thought, she says. It took her the next two years to convince herself, and later her parents, about making the decisive move.
Though she studied engineering in Bangalore, Yashaswini comes from Banur, a village near Chikmagalur, where she studied in a Kannada-medium school until the seventh standard. Her environs didn’t offer much exposure about these possibilities or how to work towards them, says Yashaswini, whose father is a school headmaster.
“Initially, even my parents thought this was too high to aspire for. I had to convince them that I’’ll try once.” After she graduated from engineering college in 2017, Yashaswini took a year off to prepare for the UPSC exam and cleared it in her first attempt with a ranking of 293. “I couldn’t get the service I wanted, so I wanted to make one more attempt,” she says. This year, Yashaswini ranked 71.
But what is it like to try and better yourself? There’s an equal measure of nerves and confidence, she says. “Every stage, from the prelims to mains and the interview, is so very unpredictable. It’s only after writing the exam that you might get some confidence. But you will have to work as hard as you worked before, or actually put in more effort, because you are writing to improve your score.”
The civil services, says Yashaswini, is the “only platform that gives you the opportunity to do so much.” Over the past two years, she has got a first-hand feel of the varied backgrounds that civil service aspirants come from. “The background doesn’t matter so much if we are ready to put in that effort for the examination.”
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