Story of Two Literature Students – Temporary Pain To Crack UGC-NET Exam

Long before I started preparing for the UGC-NET exam, I’ve understood a simple secret of achieving anything. 

I understood that if I have to bring permanent results, I need to accept the temporary pain from difficult activities like reading a book, developing a skill or mastering a new subject.

With every skill, positive behavior, and big mindset I developed, I see my personal and professional life grow stronger.

When I look back on my seven years of journey as a writer and teacher, I find a strong connection between pain and growth.

The decisions which were bold and painful brought me where I’m today. Reading the lives of monks and authors for half a decade, I got the guts to choose what was better for myself.

My parents never believed me. I cannot blame them. The problem of financial security and social reputation is common for many middle-class working people in India.

It took me years to convince my family and others to let me decide for myself. A lot of times, there were conflicts of thoughts among us. 

However, all’s well that ends well. I’m grateful to all the odds that life placed before me. 

It was a hard journey, and I understood the breakthrough powers of pain and suffering amidst all the discomforts.

The only way out is through. – Robert Frost 

Difficulties In Literature

There will always be some concepts, topics, ideas, schools of thought in English Literature that you find difficult to grab.

Often most, many students avoid facing obstacles.

For instance, the Theory of Forms by Plato, Phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, Imagination of S.T. Coleridge or Letters written by Keats are a few topics that students find difficult to understand. 

Now, here a student ignores such ideas and picks the easy topics. It can be because of two reasons:

1. The myth that these topics require a brilliant mind to understand. 
2. They tried to understand but failed. Now, they have lost the motivation to read them again.

An often-ignored fact: It is not the easy topics that will help you crack the exam. It will be those topics that all the students find difficult, but you understood them to the core. 

Every difficult topic, theory or subject you master will increase your chance of getting ahead of the average students.

You don’t need a brilliant brain to understand them, but a positive mindset that if an engineering student like me can understand them without guidance, you too can.

Everything you do to raise your level of understanding, including close-reading and learning about writers’ lives, increases your effectiveness in English Literature.

Two Students

There is a story of every literature student. One feels satisfied and takes God’s name for making the day well spent with literature. Another student wasted his time procrastinating and delaying his studies.

First student, “I will cover five writers from African Literature tomorrow morning.”

Second student, “There are so many authors in African Literature. It’s impossible to remember so many works. I better skip the subject and deal with it in the exam.”

You can identify yourself: “What type of student are you? Are you student number 1 who is patient and courageous enough to decide for himself, irrespective of all the uncertainties, or are you another student who is waiting for a miracle to happen?”

Again, a student with a high self-image and positive attitude goes on to crack all the examinations.

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of. – Benjamin Franklin 

Two Pains

Although I was criticized for being a boy who never listened to anyone, I have no regrets in my heart. Even if I’ve to leave everything here, I would be happy to let everything go.

The bad thing about life is that it’s painful. It spares no one. If you don’t choose pain for yourself, life will choose the pain for you.

You can choose the pain of today and make your personal, professional and financial life great tomorrow. If you avoid today’s pain, you cannot escape the pain of tomorrow originating from regrets and difficulties. 

The best thing you can do now is to embrace the hard work and pain to get through your examinations to get into a PhD program and become a teacher. 

Deliberately choosing the difficult path today will open the doors of opportunities for tomorrow. 

It Shall Pass

As you have decided to become the teacher, the minimum eligibility is to crack the UGC-NET exam. You know you have a big task to be done. You cannot escape from it.

It is a hundred miles journey. You will have moments of depression and moments of pleasure. Remember any emotion, be it of happiness and sadness, it shall pass.

The very best English Literature students understand this and kept on moving, unaffected by the mood swings.