Getting Started - The first hurdle

Just yesterday I got free of my obligations at job and now i have all the time in the world to do what i love most - interact with CAT aspirants and help them with their preparation and not worry about biz targets or cope with systems and procedures of an organisation or try to get the best out of mediocrity.

Have been toying with this idea of a blog for almost a fortnight now. So spent the last hour identifying the best way to start. Read through the initial posts of most major bloggers, browsed to identify what sort of protocols exist here, spent quite some time ideating how the posts should progress. As usual did not help. So it just confirms that one has to just get going. So thats what i am doing and am starting with what i do best - teach and hope to inspire.

Its high season for the CAT 2006 aspirants, with about 4 mocks already over. For few, the results would have been encouraging and assuring. For the others, where despondency is setting in, doubts are creeping...please understand what you do next is what differntiates the winners and losers. Winning without facing any hurdles, does not season a man for further victories. It is only when one wins even after being in the ditches is character shaped and lessons learnt for victories in most further endeavours. So smile a little at the failures, understand that the adversary is worth-while and get going...

Get going with what? For one, your resolve that CAT 2006 is THE battle. It is very easy to rationalise postponing your preparations for CAT 2007. But it is withdrawing from a battle even without putting up a fight. If need be CAT 2007 is there, but that decision should wait till Jan 2007. And definetely not without giving a good fight. Those who do not face the enemy today, would never.

Secondly, ponder for just a few minutes to identify the hurdle and then get into action mode. From my experiences, the hurdles could be:
1. Depth of subject matter: Weak in undestanding subject matter or even being too strong in subject matter, yes, even being too intelligent has its pitfalls (more on this later).
2. Approach of attempting the test.
3. Fear or inability to handle pressure.

With the changes in CAT - it stressing more on the depth of subject matter rather than test taking strategies and smart work - working on the fundamentals and building a strong base is imperative. If this is a weakness, face it immediately, accept it, do not bluff yourself into believing a particular topic is your strength unless you can pick up a challenge of solving atleast 8 out of 10 given questions.

There is ample time to build a good depth, provided you spend your time very effectively. Start living, breathing only CAT for the next 55 days. The posts here will be focussing on building this depth in topics. Occasionally we will talk about approach to attempt a paper.

So let the comments and requests with problems or hurdles faced keep coming, so that i can post need-based help.

Chandra