So, he was a scientist and he has allotted time for the preparation and continuous efforts, he has cleared this examination and he will be, he has gone through the rank of 289. And he will be sharing with you about the career options and about the strategy he has followed for preparing for the civil service examination. So make use of this session, he is the right person to have a conversation with you people. Standing over the session to Mr. Manjit, Manjit, the session is yours, you can start your conversation. Please. Thank you so much for such a beautiful introduction and at the very outset, before starting the session, I would like to thank Shankar Ayes for giving me this opportunity to speak to you people and connect and share my experiences and the strategy in whatever I have learned, whatever mistakes I have done or how I have been able to achieve the result which I have got, which is rank 239 in all India, the UPSC civil services. Before starting this session, I would just like to briefly share my journey of this preparation and this clearing, this examination. This was my fifth attempt and in my first attempt I could not clear prelims, however in second attempt I reached an interview. And in third attempt again I could not clear my means and fourth attempt I could not even clear prelims and this was a fifth attempt in which with God's grace and focused approach I was able to achieve a rank of 239. In this session, which will last around one hour or so, in first half I will share some few things about how a civil service is as a career choice, what it looks like to be a civil servant and then later half I will share about the examination preparation and what are the difficulties or what are the barriers or limitations you people as candidates or aspirants may face. So before starting on the examination point of view, let's see how a civil service is as a career option is when compared to other career options because as I have been told by the organizers that most of you are college students who are in third or fourth year of their education. So I want to share a picture which are both a positive and negative sides of a civil services as a career option. Many of you when it comes to civil services, many of you relate civil services to that of a district magistrate, DM or superintendent of police SP and this is basically we see all these people in Bollywood movies or other movies. So we relate that civil services have those that charm and power of a DM or SP. But at the outset I would like to share that DM and SP is just a tip of the iceberg and civil services goes much beyond that. There are various other services which includes Indian revenue services, railway services, then defense account services, there are certain group B services also which are which one gets through this this examination. And the function cumulative function of all the services revolves in nowadays revolves basically on three aspects. One is making an implementation of welfare schemes so that we are able to improve the life of the people of the country. Second aspect which these services cumulatively try to do is to maintain law and order. Another aspect is that they collect revenue and also audit accounts of the government. So in nutshell what these services contribute is that they make the they keep the government and the country running. This is the role played by civil services and these services are linchpin of the government system or governing system for country. When moving ahead when we see civil services as a career choice it's a pertinent to understand that what is a career and what do we as a people or as students expect from a career.  For example, some may want to do MBA or some may want to pursue in engineering or other professional fields. Some may want to pursue in artistic fields. So we need to compare various avenues of a career compared to civil services. So certain criteria which we can compare careers is based on for example, mind you civil services is not a ground where you can earn a lot of legitimate money. And if your aim is to earn a huge amount of money then you have to rethink because then civil services may not offer that part. Second aspect when we expect from a career is that it should be able to sustain a good quality of life and cover for us as well as for our family. And here I will say that yes civil services may not be a very high ping top but they are they are still able to able to provide a decent standard of life for a person and his family. Third aspect which goes beyond this materialistic needs is that how impactful or how satisfied we get from our work what we do as a inner career. And here the civil services course are very high points because the amount of work or the quality and quantity of work what you will do will be very satisfying and you will get kick out of it every now and then. For example if you see the performance or the work of civil servants during this pandemic times COVID-19 times then they were the main fighting force fighting force for this in fighting force for this pandemic situation. Again one aspect is that in civil services you will be able to create a very impact. You will be able to create an impact through your social work on the lives of multiple people which you may not be able to do in other career options. Another thing is that which is associated with civil services is especially now in days of social social media and mass media is the fame one gets fame per se is not bad it's good only because what fame does is that it gives value to your thought. For example previously I was a scientist and if I go to a village or somewhere and share that for example if I share with a farmer that you do organic farming and this will be very remunerative to you. He may not listen to me but now if I become IAS and when I share the same thing people will listen to you. So your value for your thought becomes very pertinent because of clearing this examination and by becoming a civil servant. People do pay heed to your whatever you are saying. Another thing is that the respect and social prestige which one gets through these services and this is very clear especially in Indian society that civil services are very reputed and very respected and what this gives is that this boosts your own self image and this boosting of self image and growing of your own confidence motivates you to do even better the job and then this becomes a very good positive cycle wherein you get the confidence from the people support and then you do good work and then again you get confidence and because of this your contribution to overall development and overall society becomes very important. And one other aspect is that civil services gives you a lot of legitimate power. Not in only about the based on the quantum of power what you get to influence decision making but also at a certain small age. For example many of the district magistrates are around the age of 30 to 35 years. I don't think that there is any career option in India which gives you such a power or such a such an option to regulate the lives daily lives of more than two lakhs or three lakhs people which reside in a district. You may become a CEO or even manager of a country for a company but you may not be impacting the lives of so many such a large number of people but as a civil servant you will be doing that. That is one of the very great things which civil services offers. However everything is not so rosy in civil services there are certain limitations and impediments also which one may face during actual functioning. One thing is that your personal life will go for a toss. This is a proven fact and many of you may not able to invest a lot of time to your family and friends and because you will be occupied in your professional life. So this is one concern many of you may have. But then again there is a catch because all the civil services do not have this problem. This problem basically is concentrated towards IAS and IPS. Other services for example revenue services or account services. These do offer a lot of opportunity to balance your family as well as professional life. Another thing is that many of people we might have heard in media and on social media also that there is a lot of political interference. But here I see that it is not a political interference rather it is a political guidance which politicians give us. Because for example if the country is a car then the road is the politicians who shows us the way because they are elected members shows us where to make the country move. And the driver is the civil servant. He has to drive that car of the nation. So it's a mutually dependent functioning and yes there will be some bumps in the road but then you'll always also get highways and where you can drive well. Another thing is that there will be a lot of praise as well as criticism when you are functioning on the ground because this is the truth of harsh reality of the world that you may not be able to satisfy each and every individual. So there will always find some people who praise you and then there will be some people who criticize your work. And this what happens is that this will create a lot of mental pressure and emotional bottleneck in your personal and professional life. And there will be occasions when you'll feel highly demotivated. But with time you'll learn to live with this and then you'll find your ways to deal with all these things because for success in not only civil service but in other professions as well. Emotional intelligence is a key and you have to mentally strong for that.  But I feel that if you are performing according to the law and you don't give away to all those things, then things can work in positive way. But this will require a lot of time and patience and things will be improved. So overall what civil service is offered is not just a career choice but it's a kind of lifestyle choice which we choose. Having discussed about what the civil service looks like, let's move on to who is a person or which student can focus or choose civil services as a career option. I feel that a very important thing for a candidate to appear for civil services is that he should be a very good student. A very good student, I will say this because if one looks at the syllabus of the UPAC then one will realize that it's like an ocean, it's a vast ocean and it covers almost everything under the sun. And if I have to say or describe this UPAC's syllabus in one line then a civil UPAC candidate should be able to know everything about the country and a lot of things about the world. So if a person who knows the country well, he can become a civil servant and for knowing the country well you have to have that passion to learn and you have to be a good student. Another aspect for a civil servant aspirant should be that he should be very curious to learn new things. If you are not curious then it will become very difficult for you to prepare for this examination because the journey will be very long and you have to have that attitude to learn new things. Another thing is that a person should be able to embrace failures and learn from their mistakes because in this preparation there will be a lot of ups and downs and there will be many things you may not be knowing but what I feel is that the first step to learning is to accept that you don't know. Once you accept that you don't know then you have that curiosity and zeal to learn it then things can work out and you can move forward. Another thing is that you have to develop your intellect and your own thinking because the nature of the service itself requires a lot of intellect for you because you will be involved in higher decision making power. You will get a lot of higher decision making power and that will be very impactful. That will change the course of the nation and the society. So you have to be a very intellectual person. You have to grow as an intellectual person. Another thing is that you have to develop a lot of skills based on your knowledge so that you are able to handle very dynamic situations. For example, yesterday when I was watching this Mumbai Indians and Chinese super king match, IPL match, I saw Hardik Pandya when he came and he starting two balls he hit two sixes. He was playing after one year or so but he was able to start with two sixes. This is because in the background he has worked very hard and he has developed that skill that in any situation he can deliver. That should be your preparation, level of preparation that no matter what is the question paper, what is the dynamic situation, you are able to perform well. I haven't discussed all these things. If you are able to make or if you are making a civil service as a career choice, then one thing comes is that how to start the preparation and what all to study, what all not to study. So I will try to cover stepwise that how a very fresh candidate who doesn't know anything about the UPSS syllabus or preparation, how he can start the preparation. First of all, step is to know yourself. What I mean by knowing yourself is that to identify your strengths and weaknesses. Someone may not be a very good student by default. He may not have performed well in his college or in school days. But what is required for this is that you should be willing to now learn and now become a good student. That is important. Your past does not determine your future to a large extent, but your present does determine. Another thing is that you have to get understanding of your aptitude. What I mean is that when going through UPSS syllabus or preparation, you should be able to understand that what are the things which you are able to grasp easily. What are the things you are not able to grasp? What is your aptitude? Your aptitude is for which subject or for which language. All these things you have to do a lot of self-analysis. After that, when you are convinced that yes, you can go for this preparation, then you have to start the preparation. And for this, one thing I would like to say that the exam does consist of three stages which have all different nature. For example, preliminary exam, which is objective type in the paper. And then may even see the very comprehensive examination, where you have to write a lot of long answers, which includes even a paper on essay. And then the third phase is the personality test. But the preparation itself is not a discrete, rather it's a holistic preparation when you prepare for the examination because the syllabus by and large for all these three stages is same. And all the preparation for all these three stages is related to each other. So when you start the preparation, then you have to go for a holistic preparation. And yes, one month before the various stages of the examination, you have to augment your studies dedicated to that phase of the examination. To start with, first of all, what I'll suggest to the students is to go to the UPSI website and look at the syllabus. And look at syllabus, UPSI does give a lot of detailed syllabus. And you have to see the syllabus in a detailed manner and try to understand what you have already read in your life in school or college days, what you have not read. So here you'll figure out the amount of hard work you have to put in and the quantum of preparation you need to put in by looking at the syllabus. And then I'll suggest is to also go through the question paper to just to get awareness that based on this syllabus or these topics, what are the nature of the questions UPSI ask in the examination, and then try to answer or at least understand the questions that whether if you read this part of the syllabus, you'll be able to answer those questions or not. These questions you should ask yourself. Moving on, then you have to figure out the book list. And for the figure out book list, you can go to various websites. You can also go to the website of the coaching institutes or you can many toppers write blogs. Even I have a blog at manjithyadho.wordpress.com. So here I have shared my book list. Other toppers have also shared on their, their blogs, which is very easily available. Just go through the book list by enlarge the book list is same for almost all the aspirants. And what I'll suggest that you pick out few books from that book list and read for one or two months. When you read for one and two months, then you'll figure out that what is your level of understanding, whether you'll be able to make it or not, or whether you are finding it interesting to prepare for the examination or not. When you find it interesting and you get involved in that preparation, then actually you're then only actually your preparation starts. After reading one or two months, then if you get a calling that yes, I can do this and I should do this, then another, the next step lies in that preparation or detailed preparation. For detailed preparation, one question many aspirants ask is that whether to go for a coaching or not. See the coach call for coaching, taking a coaching or not depends on your personal level. There are various factors which contribute for this. One factor is that your affordability. If you're able to afford the coaching institutes, you can try for that. Another is that what has been your background, whether by studying by self, you're able to understand or not whatever the syllabus part or whatever the books you are reading. If you're not able to understand, if you're not able to grasp the depth of that subject, then you may need a professional help. If you need a professional help, then one should not avoid that, but we should seek for that. Another is that some people are not able to prepare in isolation, they may need a competitive environment. So these coaching institutes does provide this competitive environment with their examinations and regular assessments. This does help in improving your performance and your ability to answer questions. So about the coaching institute, this depends on your personal choice. I also took your professional help in whatever I required, be it test series or anywhere else. So just think over it and decide based on your strengths and weaknesses. Another thing is that choosing an optional subject. All of you may be aware that you have to choose one optional subject for this examination. My optional subject was geography. When you see the mark list of the people who are qualifying or who are getting good ranks, one thing which all of you may understand is that optional and interview marks are the key to make or break your attempt. If you want to score very high, you want to have a very good rank, then you have to score very high in the optional subjects. And for this, the choice of optional subject becomes very important. The choice of optional subject can be based on various parameters. For example, one may choose based on his or her interests, another may choose based on the length of the slayers. Some people may choose based on the availability of material or coaching institutes. So various factors contribute. I personally feel that many people also choose an optional based on how the past year optionals are performing. But then there is no rule that optionals which have performed well in this year will perform well in other next year also. So for me, what I feel is that your interest becomes the most important part in choosing your optional subject. So choose based on interest. And another thing is that you have to have that aptitude. Each optional subject is a subject in itself. For example, my option was geography. So geography itself has its own dictionary. There will be certain words. Many people choose anthropology because of its short slayers. But then anthropology has some technical terms. If you don't have aptitude to understand those terms or remember those terms, then although anthropology has a relatively smaller slayers, then that is not very fruitful for you. So you have to have that aptitude to understand that particular optional subject. And you have to have interest. Interest, what I'm saying is this because the journey is very long. And irrespective of whether a slayers of an optional subject is small or large, because of the very nature of the long journey, you will be able to cover even a larger optional subject. So length does not matter much, but interest and aptitude does matter. Another aspect is that mentorship. What I feel in my preparation, I was preparing isolation in Bangalore. I was working. So I could not find a good mentor. And what I personally feel is that a mentorship is very important. You should have someone, maybe in a friend circle or someone senior who is already a civil servant or who has gone through this journey or some good teachers in your coaching institutes who should act as a mentor to you. But why this mentorship is required or why these mentors are required? Because in starting, things will be fine. But you'll reach a stage where you'll need to make some incremental changes. And you need to have a certain person who understands you, who understands your strengths and weaknesses and guide based on that. Because at that stage of time, this generalistic strategy is what I'm sharing now or many other topics have shared that will not make a very big deal. For example, if you're scoring out of 500, 270 or 280 marks in your optional subjects, but for getting a good rank, you need around 300. For improving those 20 marks, these generalistic strategies may not be very fruitful. At that juncture, you need some proper mentorship person, a person who is able to guide you based on your strengths and weaknesses so that you can score well. After finishing this coaching mentorship, let's discuss about various phases of the examination. First phase is the prelims examination. Most of you may be knowing that it consists of two papers. General Studies 1 which covers 5-10 questions from various fields, be it quality, geography, history, art and culture, environment, ecology, etc., etc. And then there is the qualifying paper, which is GS2, which is basically based on aptitude. So here the main preparation hovers around the GS1 paper, which decides the cutoff and whether you'll go for means or not. For preparation of prelims, initially, as I told before that the preparation should be very holistic, but I start basically two to three months before the prelims. I used to focus on prelims specific. Here you have to adapt a little bit in your preparation strategy. In adaptation, what you have to do is that you have to look for various facts and you have to focus on factual information because there are a lot of factual information which are asked in the prelims examination. Then you have to widen your scope of knowledge. Widening the scope of knowledge, what I mean is that you have to read a lot of topics and the periphery topics as well, not getting too much in depth, but you have to widen your understanding. Whereas for the main part, it's other way around, that you have to go in deeper also. So you have to widen. Then other aspect is that you have to write a lot of test series because for test series, by writing test series, you'll have a regular assessment of yourself and where you're moving in your preparation. Just coming to the main part, what is the most important in means is that, see, for clearing this examination means place a vital load because it is of 1,750 marks and most of people, you'll become a civil servant based on your amount of marks you scored in main examination. And main examination score depends on whatever you write on those white sheets and for writing good well on those sheets, you have to prepare very well. Preparation will be two aspects. One will be content development. You have to develop the knowledge on various topics, various topics of the syllabus mentioned and other is that you have to write, you should be able to reproduce the knowledge what you have gathered. For reproducing that knowledge what you have gathered, you have to write very good answers. Then you write very good answers. Then only you'll be able to impress the examination and then you'll be able to score well. For writing an answer because many of you are just starting people, I mean, not going into detail. We can take up this in question-answer session. But generally for a good answer, you have to have a very organized answer with introduction and a main body and conclusion. In the main body also, you have to hit the nail on its head. You have to understand the question precisely because if you see the question paper of UPSC, the questions are very dicey and very vague. So you have to have that understanding to come to a common conclusion that what this question asks and what you have to answer. When you understand the basic core of that question, then you have to address it from various angles. One important thing for addressing various aspects of answers is that you have to support your arguments or logic or whatever points you are making based on various examples and case studies and numbers. Generally, what I used to do is that if I'm writing 8 to 10 points, I'll try to ensure that in five to six points, I am giving some examples, some numbers or some data. Because this makes your answer more authentic and it gives substance to the answer that you're not bluffing around or just writing something, but rather you know it in detail. After that, when it comes to the personality test, which is the third phase of the examination, it's basically not a test of your knowledge and it's of your test of your personality, whether you have that in you to become a civil servant. So you are judged by a very eminent panel who are mostly retired civil servants. So they try to understand whether you have that, the personality traits or the characteristics which a civil servant have or should have or whether you have that potential to learn all those things or acquire those personality traits. You are basically judged on that. But what I understand from all these three phases of the examination is that the quality and quantum of your knowledge decides your success in all these three phases. It's not information because of the internet and everything, there's a lot of information. But you have to derive knowledge from that information. You have to go deeper and you have to understand the fundamentals and concepts of various subjects, be it economics, the quality or environment, ecology, all these aspects you have to understand. So your knowledge will help you to sail through various phases of this examination. Another question aspect which very students ask is that how to cover current affairs? See, for current affairs covering, my strategy was simple. I used to read newspapers because I'll recommend all of you to read newspapers because when you read from the source, the true newspaper, then you'll understand the concepts. And actually it does not take much time because many of the articles or issues are repeated in the newspapers. And your newspaper also you don't have to read through state or national or sports news. But you should focus more on editorials and just go through in five minutes about the national and international issues. Around 20, 25, 30 minutes, you should read three or four editorials. You can take any newspaper, basically I mean for English medium students. The Hindu and the Indian experts, both are very good newspapers. You should not go for Times of India or some newspaper like that. I followed the Hindu. And I used to regularly read the editorials. After, say, half an hour or 40 minutes you give daily for the newspaper, this will make you be updated with the current affairs. And actually, this will also improve your understanding. For examination point of view, what I additionally used to do is to read a monthly magazine. All the coaching institutes come out with current affairs monthly magazine. You can follow all are equally good. You can follow any of them. And what happens with this is that it is very easy to revise the monthly magazine. It's not easy to revise the current affairs from a newspaper. So for understanding pollution, I used to read through the newspaper. For examination point of view, I used to follow monthly magazine. And whatever additional data I have or additional things which I have, I just used to jot down on the monthly magazine itself. I did not make notes for the current affairs part. Another aspect is the note making. How sure whether we should make notes or not or how should we make notes and when should we make notes? There are these are various questions. So in note making, what I'll say that, yes, note making becomes important, especially when for revision point of view. Because throughout this purpose, you'll read a lot of books and you may be reading around 10,000 of pages. But it is not feasible to revise all those 10,000 pages. For this purpose, you have to make notes. And in note making, you have to be very careful. For example, don't make notes in the first reading. When you are reading the book for the first time, you just underline whatever you are understanding. Then read again for second time. Then additionally underline a few things. And probably it's good to make notes in the third reading, third or fourth reading. This is because in first reading, your understanding will not be too much and you will not able to actually make a very good quality note. You may be putting a lot of information which is not desirable and you may be missing a lot of information which actually should be present in the notes. So preferably make notes in the third or fourth reading and not in the first or second. Another thing is that your notes should be very crisp. For example, if there is some important topic, for example, Mahatma Gandhi, you want to make notes on that. But you have in your book, say two pages written about Mahatma Gandhi. So, and since he is a very important figure, so you'll maybe ask to write almost everything from whatever is mentioned in those two pages. But then this is not feasible because then you are copying the entire book. You should not create another book by writing yourself. So what is important in this case is that what I used to do that in my note making, I'll just mark a reference to the original source that, okay, this I need to read in detail. So I'll go to and read the book itself. And in the book, I'll underline and write down additional points if required. What overlay in your note making or over reading, your aim should be cover the entire syllabus of the UPSC. When you go through the book list, many of including me, many of us will suggest to read this book, this book will not be giving you details of what to read on in that book. So you don't have to cover the syllabus by book wise that you have finished 10 books. Your major should be that you have finished all the topics mentioned in the UPSC syllabus. So there will be certain topics which may be mentioned in the book which are not required for UPSC syllabus point of view. So you can skip that part. Then there will be certain syllabus points which are mentioned in the UPSC syllabus, but which are not covered in those books. So you have to additionally Google it or read another book for those particular topics. So your aim should be to cover each and every topic which is mentioned in the UPSC syllabus. And you have to have, and you don't have to go too much in detail. I mean, reading part you have to do in too much detail because then this will improve your understanding. But when you're writing the notes because UPSC gives around 150 mark questions and 150 words questions and 250 words questions. So effectively you have to write in any topic, 150 to 250 words. So one page content for each topic is more than enough. But those that content should be very quality wise and it should cover various aspects because for example, in UPSC syllabus it is mentioned issues related to women empowerment. But you don't know UPSC will, from which angle UPSC will ask women empowerment or issues related to women. For example, UPSC may ask through issues related to family planning or issues related to decreasing child sex ratio or issues related to impact of urbanization on women or impact of feminization of agriculture on women impact of rise of higher education on women. All these aspects from various aspects UPSC can ask. So your notes should be able to cover from various aspects or notes or whatever book or thing you are reading. It should be able to cover from various aspects. Another thing is that you should remember that examination is of two things. One is that content and syllabus covering.  You may be knowing everything what is mentioned in the UPSC syllabus, but if you're not able to reproduce it in the examination hall and the way UPSC wants you to present, then everything is futile. You may not be able to qualify this examination. So you have to understand that and you have to do a lot on this temperament. Examination temperament can be improved based on a lot of practice. And if you are, for example, for prelims you have to give a lot of test series so that you are able to eliminate the wrong options because no matter how much you prepare well, you'll be able to know only 45 to 50 answers for the 100 questions. But the cutoff goes, but in examination you have to make around 60 to 75 correct questions. So you may have to go for some guesswork for that part also. So you have to develop that aptitude that how to eliminate certain options and how to proceed with that. Another phase is that for means also you have to, there will be, when you go in detail preparation, there in the UPSC generally what it does is, it gives one statement and then at the end of the statement it writes, writes for example, critically analyze this statement or analyze this statement or discuss this statement or give examples in support of her answers. So all these guiding words which UPSC uses in the question paper. Each has to be tackled in its own way and you have to develop this aspect because for a critically analysis question you cannot discuss that topic. You have to actually critically analyze that. So for example, in critical analysis you have to give some points in support of your argument but say around 60% points against that argument. So these are the details you have to eventually go into when you proceed with your preparation. So this is what I call the examination temperament. You have to develop that. And then plus you have to finish your answers within three yards. For example, means consist of 10 questions which are 15, 10 markers and then 10 questions which are 15 markers. So for 10 marker question you have to write 150 words and you precisely get around seven minutes to think and write. And for 15 marker question you get around 10 minutes. So you have to develop that aptitude to finish these questions in seven and 10 minutes. This is the various aspects of examination preparation. Now I'll share a little bit about how difficult your preparation journey may be. See, when we compare this examination is really tough when compared to other examination. For example, if you are preparing for CAT you may prepare for six months, seven months over a year you get into it. Even for IITJ you prepare for two years and you get into it. But this examination, some of you may be lucky to crack it in first or second attempt. But for most of you, this is a harsh truth and harsh reality that most, for most of you it will take more than two attempts. So your journey may go to three, four years. And since this journey is very long and that to peak youth years then you will be missing a lot of things. And this will create a lot of stress and a lot of uncertainty in your life especially in your peak years of 22 to 27 years. That is a negative side of this examination. But once you get into this then life is very different. Now I'm sitting on the other side of the table and I can tell you with surety that all the efforts what I put in this success or whatever I'm feeling right now everything is worth it. And if I have to put in more than 1000 times more effort to gain this, I should do it. So when discussing on difficulty part then it is that what makes the differentiating feature for a successful aspirant and a person who is not able to qualify. One important thing is that their mental strength which differentiate both these class of people. You have to vary mentally strong because that will make a lot of big difference. Then your difficulty will depend on whether you are preparing with job or without job. For example, some of you people may have some financial issues or may not because of other issues you may have to take up jobs.  So your challenges and your difficulties will be of different level. For example, with job you'll have a lot of shorties of time. For example, in 24 hours around 10 hours of my 10 hours was gone for my professional commitment. So effectively I was having a 14 hour a day. For me it was a 14 hour day for a person who is preparing for without a job for him the day was of 24 hours. So in that 14 hours I have to sleep for six hours, six and a half hours. So I effectively got around seven hours to prepare for the examination and also to do my daily chores. So effectively I was able to put only five hours of studies for the five to six hours. And you have to do this with 10 hours of your professional commitment. That makes it very difficult. But then I have done it, many others have done it. So even you can do it with job also. That's not a very big thing. Things can be managed. Other things is that with preparing with job you'll feel a lot of distraction because you'll have your, when you go to office you will meet different set of people. So every time your mind and you will not be occupied with preparation things and slavery parts. So this is both beneficial as well as harmful also. Beneficial as in the end that in the sense that you'll get a option, option to relax because then you are involved in some other talks also. But then this also diverts you from your main goal. That is the preparation for the examination. You may also lose track of what you have read in past days or like that. So distraction is one issue. And another is that lack of competitive environment. This you will feel when you are preparing for a job I have felt it. Because when you are preparing without job in a area, in a living in an area where there are other students who are also preparing then you give that competitive feeling. And then this actually puts you, motivates you to perform well and perform better. Another thing is that you may face complacency when you are job with preparing with job that I already have a good job, decent job and then why to put myself under so much stress and so much pressure. But if your ultimate aim is to prepare for the exam you have to overcome all this. There are issues with preparing without a job also. For example, because this journey is very long. So you'll always have that uncertainty that when I'll get a job because your friends or friends may be earning good money and they may be moving ahead in their lives but you'll be stuck, your life will be stagnant. Then there will be pressure from society. Some people may be talking that he has graduated but he's not doing anything.  Some of you may be unlucky that your parents may also may criticize sometimes this happens but most of parents now do understand all these uncertainties. But one aspect, one good aspect is that when you're preparing without job your efforts will be dedicated. You'll get a lot of time to prepare for the examination which this examination calls for. Another thing is that you'll always have that fear of failure. You'll always fear that if I'm not able to do well in this year, if I'm not able to qualify my life will be shattered or what I'll do next. Because of this constant fear of failures this may or if you take it, embrace it positively this may help you to succeed and this may actually push your efforts beyond your limits. That is one key aspect of preparing without job. This whole entire journey actually makes your life stagnant and you'll be missing a lot of family functions. You'll be missing a lot of trips which your friends may be doing. Even your personal life for example your marriage may even get released. All these things you have to witness during this long journey. And apart from all this there will be situations where you may not be able to succeed in first or second attempts. Then you'll have, you'll face failure and that will be devastating and that will actually demotivate you a lot. I remember in my second attempt I was now I could not make it into the final list. I went for interview in 2016, 2017 interview. But I could not make it into the final list and that was actually devastating and I was shattered. But then again you have to gather yourself and move ahead because this is a harsh reality that this exam requires some more number of efforts, some more number of attempts. And always remember one thing that there's no success in this world which is permanent but at the same time there's no failure which is fatal. You can again always rise back from a failure and you can succeed. You have numerous examples in front of you and you should proceed according to that. Another few things which I at the end I would like to mention is that you should make out your own plan, your own strategy. You can take feedback from various stoppers talk and what we people have done and based on all these things you should make your own plan. Do not get too much bogged down and too much distracted by listening to many stoppers. You go through blogs or listen to two, three, four people and then based on that you make your own plan. Because most of us what we say or what we write have almost similar plans which is customized to our own strengths and weaknesses. So should be yours. And don't be so fickle-minded that you keep on changing your plan every now and then. Yes, when you are not performing well and you get some guidance to improve on that.  That actually will not be anything. And another thing is that I cut your negative thoughts and cut the clutter basically especially during the social media tanks when there's a lot of distraction be it Facebook, Instagram. You should have to manage it. You have to manage your social engagements. But at the same time you should not go into social isolation that you're not aware of the world and you lock yourself in a shell. That should not be there. You should cut the clutter, not get distracted but yes, you have a small social engagement because that will help in reducing the stress levels which you will have. And keep the spirit alive and for example, whenever I used to get demotivated what I used to tell myself is that if I'm not better than others at least I'm not less than others.  We all have two hands, two legs. We all have red blood. So if other people are able to get through this examination even we can do that. So that is the attitude you should move ahead and then you should have a lot of courage and strength and perseverance to move ahead and shouldn't give up at any stage. That is the thing. If you are honest in your efforts and you are working hard and you have put in a lot of effort then that will be reflected in the white sheets when you write for a main examination or the answers you take in the prelims examination. All these efforts are actually reflected in that. And at the end I'll share you that yes, dreams do come true. It has come true for me. It can come true for all of you also. So all the best and prepare well. And now we are open for question and answers. Thank you Manju. Thank you so much. It was an extensive speech actually. They've covered all the sections of examination and you have given what are all the positives and negatives about the each and every part of the examination. That was great. So I will just moderate the question on behalf of the students. So the thing is that in the college, so like every guy will have a problem in starting, right? So they want to start first. What will be the first for the college student to start the examination? Which will be the first start? I feel first start is that you go through the UPC syllabus and you go through the book list. For example, what is that I have shared my book list in manjithyardho.worldclass.com other stoppers also I've shared. You read for one month or so. You have to, and based on the syllabus, pick two, three interesting books and you read through them. If you're able to understand if you are getting interested or excited while you're reading that, then you can think of pursuing it. Because remember one thing, when we are reading for the sake of reading or enjoying it, it's interesting. But when you are reading the same thing with the point of view of examination, point of preparation, then it becomes very difficult. Preparation for examination is never fun. That's the harsh reality. But then you have to derive fun in that. And if you are able to derive fun or if you are able to push yourself to read and understand those things, then you can start the preparation. And again, then the next step becomes that whether to go for coaching or not, those things are calls you can take. Yes, yes, yes. Thank you, Manjith. The next thing is that reading newspapers. So people like when they start the preparation, they feel like they are spending more time in newspapers for three hours, four hours. So I'm not understanding anything. So how to like start reading newspapers and what are all the things that need not to be done while reading a newspaper? See, when initially you start reading the newspaper, many people go for underlining or making notes of it. I suggest to avoid that. Because nowadays coaching institutes are providing in notes for those newspapers. If someone is doing hard work, for example, Shankar IS or other coaching team, why you should repeat that? There's no point in repeating the same hard work. There's no point in reinventing the wheel. You should gather and capture on the hard work which coaching institutes are doing. So you don't go for underlining or making notes of the newspapers. And yes, it's true that initially, you'll not be able to understand newspaper. This happens because we as a human beings have a knowledge base. And whatever we read, we interpret based on that knowledge base. Initially, when you start preparation, you don't have much knowledge about the economy or the quality or environmental, all these issues which are the part of the syllabus. Because so far you have been concentrated in your field of education. So you don't have awareness about various aspects. So you will not be able to understand all the things. That's true. But once we start the preparation after two, three, four months, when you get awareness about the terms of various issues in various fields, then you start interpreting whatever is written in the newspaper in a better way. And then you start understanding. So this eventually initially it will take some time. But I suggest that three hours is too much, two, three hours. Maximum initially you can give one hour. And that part you read two, three editorial articles and just glance through the national and international news which are there. But don't get too much detail in reading the national or international issues. You can avoid reading the political issues. Some political parties have said this, some leaders have said that. That is not very much important from examination point of view. But when there is article with critical analysis of certain issues, then those articles you should read. Yes. Yes. Next question will be like taking tests for the problems. So success in the preliminary examination is like how many tests they are taking, how they are taking the test, they are taking seriously. So the preparation is the one part and taking test is other part. What is the importance of taking tests for the problems? See, important part of taking tests as I discussed in my talk also, there are two aspects. One is the content and syllabus coverage. Other is the examination temperament. So with taking a lot of tests, you have to improve that examination temperament. In examination temperament, what I mean is that for especially prelims. Prelims is a little bit dicey situation because it is uncertain and there will be many questions you will actually not be able to answer. Even the top parts also what we have qualified this examination, they for sure they know around 45 to 50 questions only. So if they are attempting those questions, they'll be scoring around 80. So around 30 to 40 questions, we also do some guesswork. But these guessworks are intelligently chosen and you have to develop those aspects during your prelims test series. Then you have to find your own accuracy percentage. For example, if you are attempting 90 questions, how many questions you are able to answer correctly, how many wrongs. This accuracy percentage you can gain through this. Then you'll get that heck of eliminating options. When there are two, three statements given in a question, then if you have practiced a lot, then you can figure out that which statement is wrong. You'll figure out what is the combination of statements which can come because lot of UPSC question papers if you are able to eliminate one statement, then actually you are able to arrive at a right answer. So all these aspects you'll get that. I meet a lot of friends who have very good knowledge base, but actually they don't know how to attempt this prelims test series and they are not able to clear this prelims stage. So I'll suggest all the students to take this test series very seriously because actually when nowadays when prelims has become even more uncertain, this test series becomes very important. And this also help in revising or what you have missed in current affairs, especially parts or some issues related to science and technology or environment ecology because these are very dynamic and changing things. So all these coaching institutes put a lot of effort to in coming out with whatever issues related to science and tech or environment ecology, all those things which are in use. So you'll get a lot of information from that also. So one should take the test series very seriously. Yeah, the next question will be regarding essay writing because like essay plays a major role because it'll show up or it'll show up. So you need a lot of things in an essay for example, you need a coherence in an essay. Your essays would be interesting and you should have a proper introduction or proper conclusion. How to prepare for essay paper in mains examination? For essay paper, one thing is that some people do have a very good way of writing things, excuse me. So this from a student time only many people may develop that writing ability. Some people may not have very good writing ability. They may not be very good at writing things. But when you're preparing for the same kind of examination when you are competitors, all of you have to improve your writing skills and you have to drive away all your thought process. You have to convey your thought process or whatever you're thinking, what are the arguments you are making through your answers. Because remember that your essay or answer reflects your personality.  So essay is also a part of content and other part is that how well you write it. You have to be very structured in approach. For example, for content point, it may not be a very big issue because you will read such so much that you will be able to have a very good content on any topic which is mentioned in the essay. But then there are, you have to choose the topic of essay very wisely because certain topics will be philosophical or spiritual in nature. Some things will be on core hardcore facts. For example, there is an essay, let me say a fourth industrial revolution. So a person who is very good in science and technology who is very aware about science and technology development, he may choose that topic. So first step is to choosing a topic which is relevant to you. Second is that in each essay, initially you have to cast the attention of the examiner. For this you can start with some small story or you can start with some quote or some quote or some anecdotes. All these things you have to prepare beforehand that if an essay is related to say, women, I may use this quote or anecdotes or it's related to certain issues related to use of technology, then I may write this. These things you have to prepare beforehand. And then you don't write in point ways. Essays are, need not be written in point ways. They should be in paragraph wise. And then you have to connect each paragraphs. For example, for one paragraph, you can talk about one aspect of essay. Then when you go to next paragraph, you can talk about other aspect, but there should be a connection. There are a lot of connection words. For example, in one paragraph, if you end with something, then you can start the second paragraph and the second thing is with this or then moving on, we can discuss all these things. And your essay, one thing is that it should be very wide and it should cover various aspects both horizontally and vertically. What do I mean by this? Is that on any topic, if you're writing essay, you should cover the past, present, and future of that topic. And the more number of angles from which you cover that topic, your essay becomes more interesting and then it becomes more holistic. And also one thing is to remember is that your essay should not be one-sided. If you're writing some positives also, you also write some negatives. If you are writing 70% positives, then 20% to 30% negatives, also you write about that topic that what are the issues involved. And then you also write how to overcome those issues. So these are a few points about essay. Okay. So the next thing is write in mains. We use a term called answer writing. So people might be very knowledgeable. They would have cleared the problems with scoring very high marks in the problems, but still there is a problem called answer writing. Everyone are not writing good answers. How to practice for answer writing? See, for answer writing, what happens is that everyone has his or her own potential. What happens in your, what is the process for answer writing basically?  Then there is a keyword attached to that question which suggests you to what to write on this topic. For example, the keyword may be discussed, analyzed, or enumerate, or critical analyze. Those are the keywords that drive you to a particular direction. But when you read the question, the structure of the answer should automatically come to your mind. This becomes when you practice a lot. That practice is subjective nature. I cannot say that you write a hundred question, then that will come. For example, in my personal case, before prelims only, two months before prelims only, I used to write two, three answers per day. And by this, I did this exercise for two to three months. And after two to three months, I could see that those answer, if I read a question, the answer framework, at least structure is already prepared in your mind that I have to write positives, negatives, or how to conclude the structure becomes ready.  If you practice sufficient amount of questions, this is structure part will automatically come to your mind because the topics actually get repeated in the questions. Once you get that structure, you have to then fill information in that or fill content in that. And that will improve based on your studies and that will actually improve and become better and better the more you read and more you prepare. So for deciding on answer writing thing, you have to go for a test series for that. And you have to practice sufficient amount of answers so that structure comes into your mind. That is the key to answer writing. Then there are structures. For example, for each question, you have to have a different structure. For example, introduction and conclusion are must. It is must because now everyone is writing that so you also have to write. Otherwise you'll miss it because the examiner is reading or checking all the notebooks. So if he's finding in 100 notebook that introduction conclusion there and you're not writing, then you're missing it. So you have to actually write introduction and conclusion. And this introduction could be a very small one or two liners. That topic has been in news for certain reasons. You can just quote that and then move on your actual answers. So your practice and actually with practice, this will come. Yes. Thank you, Manju. The next question will be ethics, right? Ethics plays a role again. Like SA, it pays a vital role in deciding the service of a candidate. So here, quoting examples are very important. Quoting examples for the question. So going through the case study and giving a proper solution for the case studies are very important. How to inculcate this knowledge of giving examples on our own or understanding a case study? See, actually in my last two attempts, I scored very poorly. I scored 80 and 87 in my ethics report. I was very pathetic in writing the, I was not able to get the heck of it how to write ethics question paper. In ethics, what during preparation is what you have to do is that each topic you have to, beforehand only you quote, write for example, if there is a topic mentioned in the syllabus, you have read the content on that topic. Below that topic, you should have one example which is universal, another example which is from a personal life. So beforehand only you prepare two examples of case studies or for each topic. Then what happens in examination, all you don't have to prepare your example. Rather you have to just recall that what example I have mentioned in my notes for that topic. So this exercise you, what I did in this 2019 attempt is that for each topic, I had two examples, one with universal, for example, from lives of great leaders, Buddha or Mahatma Gandhi or someone. Another example from my own life. So for each topic, when you have that, then you can do your work becomes very easier and you can just recall it. Or regarding case studies, nowadays the pattern of case studies has been shifting. They are no more pure ethical nature, rather they are integration of governance and ethics in that. So this future, I am expecting that this trend will continue. So now we have to work a lot on involving ethics and governance issues. For example, I recall that in this year there was some case studies on criminalization of politics or politicization of administration, something like that. So all those things you have to then, you have to work a lot beforehand only and take governance topics and include ethics on that. So all this exercise if you do beforehand, then in examination, it's become very easy because then you have to only recall them. So this is the way you have to do it. And then you have to practice a lot. You write to many of people, what even including me, what we do is that we ignore the ethics part and that this is a very small syllabus we can do in five, 10 days like that. But I feel that before going to examination, you should write a lot of case studies and a lot of ethics answers also. And in case today, if you at least not writing answers, at least you think you read a case study question paper take from last year question papers also and spend some five to 10 minutes thinking on what should you write? What will you write? All these things. And you do include some ethical terms in all your case studies and answer. Because generally what mistakes or what I did in last few attempt is that I was not including those key terms of ethics. But remember that each subject has its own dictionary, it has its own language and you have to adhere to that language and that core concepts and words you have to use in answers. These are the few things which can be done to improve on ethics. Yes. Thank you, Manjeet. The next question will be regarding interview. We call the interview as personality test.  Personality in the sense that the way we speak, body language and all those stuff. And the other part is that you should have a proper understanding of an issue to give an answer for a person related question. So how to like groom our personality and how to create a broad thinking about a topic to answer in a personality test. See personality cannot be changed in one day. It is a ever going process. And from our birth, our personality has been changing slowly and dynamically. And this will happen in UPC preparation itself. When you actually, when you start preparing, even you start reading, when you start feeling the issues which are prevailing in the world and in India, then you start associating with those issues. And eventually your personality improves based on that only. But what personally I feel difficult is that actually many candidates personality does improve through this preparation. But they are not able to reflect that same improvement in the interview. This is basically because during preparation, we have not been speaking very well and we have not focused more on projecting ourselves. Because you are good at something that is one part of it, but you have to project that goodness in front of a panel. That is another aspect. So the development of personality is not a big issue. It will improve. But in interview, when you are going there, what is that required is that before say one or two months, before mains and interview, you will do a lot of mirror practice. You will do a lot of speaking. You do a lot of extempo speech by yourself on various topics. So that you are able to convey what you feel or what you think about that topic. And during the same course, you should also improve your knowledge, keep up to date. Many of us, sometimes even I have done that, after mains we become complacent and we do not read newspaper or we do not read our optional subject. All these things we ignore for some times. But I feel that you maintain that momentum in studies because see the truth is that if you have knowledge about certain things, if you know about it, if you have experience about that, then you will be more, you will project or you will be able to say that thing in both a lot of conviction in you. If you don't have knowledge, then you will be actually blabbering about that thing. So this knowledge part is very important. And then you have to practice on improving your confidence and all this thing. This will come with a lot of extempo speech and a lot of mirror practice. These are the few things you can do for a personal education. Majid, can you please share your interview experience? Some two, three questions. How was the interview? How you felt at the time of the interview? Yes, actually I'll share with comparison to my 2016 interview attempt, which interview I gave in 2017. I ignored studying the newspaper in Mainz and interview of those two, three months. I did not read much because I was working also. So I focused on my work and I was a little bit out of touch of this UPCA syllabus and all these things. And when I went to interview a panel, actually I was not very confident in conveying my thoughts, but for this interview I read well and I worked on my knowledge part. So I was kind of a little confident and luckily my interview was basically focused on issue-based. So for example, in starting, they asked you work in DRDO, what you have learned from DRDO? So that answer was already prepared with me, so I conveyed that. Then they start with, can you share some thoughts on me too movement? So this me too movement, since one thing of what I learned during my preparation itself is that if the question is based on certain issue, then one should absorb the question, wait for two, three, four seconds and come out with three, four points. This is not a one-liner answer. For an issue-based answer, one should not focus on a one-liner answer, but three, four points. So for me too movement when they asked, then I took my time and came out with three, four options and three, four statements.  There was a lot of discussion on that issue. So for each, then there was some questions on what is the education system in India? I mean problems with higher education system and then the performance of DRDO, there was some questions on geography also. So all these questions basically were issue-based. So when I was speaking three, four points, the next question was based on those points only. So this basically I was able to drive my interview in the direction what I wanted to solve some extent. And that is key to a good interview. So if you have knowledge and you have confidence, then things can work accordingly. That's great, yeah, that's great. So this is the last question. So this examination needs a lot of patience. You have already said about it. Please a lot of patience. Minimum it requires two to three years because one years of preparation and the examination process itself will take one year. If he's not clearing, then again one year. So this process continues like this. So keeping the motivation is one of the main factor to clear this examination. So you will face a lot of doubts. So how one should keep his motivation, his or her motivation to crack this examination? You see, what I want to tell to students is that motivation is not a one-time thing. That if you today get motivated, that will remain for a long. No, this doesn't happen like this. Today, many of you people after hearing this talk maybe may get motivated, but this motivation will last for three, four, five days. Again, from six to seven day, your motivation will come down and then there will be a lot of negativity which will surround. When then again, you have to, what I used to do personally was that there are various factors. One is that why you want to become a civil servant. So that answer, actually after six, seven days when you ask to yourself, why actually you want to take this job? That answer, what do you get? That will actually propel you to survive or go through this long examination process. Now that is that repeatedly, even I used to talk to my friends or who I prepared. I have, luckily I had one or two people who are already in civil services. I used to talk to them on regular intervals. Then one can also read through some motivating articles. Some can go to TED Talks. But remember one thing that it is not a one-time thing. You have to, again, this is a process. It's a never ending cycle. You'll get demotivated, but again you have to recall everything. You have to motivate yourself. Then study for five, six days. Again, you'll get demotivated. Again, do this. This is cycle. And actually many of you will actually get used to this and there will be a lot of songs, movies. There are various aspects, but don't overdo it. Do for half an hour, one hour, two hours. And also one more thing I would suggest is that don't burn yourself because this journey is long. So you occasionally take breaks also. For example, I used to study for six days from Saturday to Thursday. On Friday I used to take break. Friday evening I didn't use not to study. Even during my busy schedule with working also I did not study on Friday. Because when you exhaust yourself then the next day you're not able to study. But if you take a break, then you again get a lot of energy and freshness and again you can proceed for next six days. Occasionally if you get a chance one can also go for trips or something like that. So this is a kind of lifestyle you will choose, but this is a cycle and you have to positively make this cycle. And keep reminding yourself that if I'm not better than someone I'm not also less than someone. One day I should clear this examination. Your aim should be very firm. Thanks a lot, Manju. It was more than, it was nearly one hour fast. It was a great motivating. You have covered all the parts of the examination and you have answered all the questions also. Thanks for that. So I thank you on behalf of Shreya Tais Academy for being here and sharing your experience with us. I hope that a lot of people, a lot of students would have got motivated because of you.  Hope you will be, you will have a successful career in civil services. Thanks a lot for being here. Just a minute. Are you there? Ramesh sir? Ramesh sir? Yes, he has gone somewhere. Okay, no. So thanks a lot for being here, Manjit.  Please. Thank you, Prem. Actually some are going to take the examination in the next two weeks. The prelims examination is on. So some advice for the students for the last 15 days preparation. In the last 15 days what I'll say that now you people have prepared who are going to give this examiners, they must have been preparing for last one year or so. And have faith in yourself, have self-belief. If you worked hard that will pay in the examination and don't get panicked because now the question papers are unpredictable. When you see the question papers, you will not able to understand whether it's difficult or wrong or easy paper. But based on your knowledge, whatever you have worked hard in this preparation phase, give your best shot. You attempt the questions based on your logic, based on your knowledge. There are two things in attempting a question paper. One is the recall thing. Another is the logic thing. There will be certain questions for each you have read somewhere. Then that answer will come to your mind that yes, I have read. Then you recall what you have read and answer accordingly. Then there will be certain things which you have not read. Then based on your logic, if you are able to arrive at the correct answer, you go for it. And yes, the number of attempts you have to decide in that examination hall itself because for some people it will be say 80, 85, 90. But what I personally feel a good number of attempts is 85 questions. Something around 85 questions is a good number of attempts because if you are able to do 65 correctly, 20 wrong in that 85, then also you'll be able to qualify the prelates cut off because that is generally around 100. And in last these 15 days, request you all to revise whatever you study, especially Lakshmikanth because there will lot of questions on Lakshmikanth and you will get a lot of confused. So one or two days you give for Lakshmikanth, then all the syllabus one, one days you revise, current affairs you revise, whatever you, you can revise in last 15 days you revise. And one day before the examination, keep yourself calm. And actually during the examination hall don't get panicked because you will not be realizing whether you are doing it correct or wrong. It will be only after coming out of examination hall you'll, I'll share this story with you just a small two minutes. Yeah, please, please, please. This 2019 attempt, I was very serious about this because this was my fifth. I thought this may be my last attempt. I may not be able to give anymore because every life is stagnant. You have to do other things also. So when I saw the question paper, I got panicked because I was not able to answer it correctly. So somehow I managed to give the exam examination, this prelims question one. And then after the end of those two hours, I thought this I may not be able to make it to this attempt. And I went to those three hours break. I was so negative. I was so demotivated. I left the examination. I went to a friend, to meet a friend. I had lunch there, enjoyed there, then come back just for the sake of formality to write the GST. I already gave up on that. Somehow I just wrote GST and came back home. But however, when I checked by max, I was scoring around 1.16 to 1.20 max. So actually it can happen things. And now based on that, there was a phase between GS1 and GS2 preliminaries that I was demoted that I am not making it. And now I'm sitting here with rank 239. So the exam is unpredictable. Just believe in yourself and continue the hard work. Actually everything hard work does pays off.  I hope that will be true for all of you. Thanks a lot. Sir, please, please, sir. It's a wonderful closing note, Manjit. It's a wonderful note for all the students here. Relax a bit before the examination. And of course, during the examinations are key over here. So what are the hard work the students have? I mean, as students have put in, that will be materialized when they have a relaxed mindset. Thank you so much for the message. And I hope your message have reached all the students over there. Thank you so much for joining us. On behalf of Shankarayis Academy and all the students from MIHU and those people who are watching live. And on all their behalf, I wish to thank you and I wish you all the best for your future as well. Thanks, Manjit. Have a great day. Thank you, Manjit. Thank you for being here. Thank you so much. And all the best to the students and take care of your health, especially in this COVID times. So all the best for the examination. Thank you. Thank you. And one more last thing. Yeah. In my personal life, I did not have so many mentors to guide me. But if any of you students want any help, I'll be there to guide you. You can contact me on Facebook or wherever possible. I'll be more than willing to help you in whatever capacity and ability I can. Thank you so much. That is great, yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Please take care, Manjit. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much.


I'm presenting today a project that we've been working on for the last four years I'd say the idea is that reuse is a set of best practices to make Licensing easier free software licensing Free software is all about licensing licenses that ground for freedoms. Therefore. It's right very important that developers that users Reuses are aware of the chosen licenses so we have a few typical issues with licenses and Probably all of you know these issues I would just quickly go over them since our time is quite limited We have often missing information about who what's the license who's the copyright holder? Perhaps for the whole project perhaps for single files where you cannot be certain which license which copyright holder Sorry file is affecting For we users using code by other people it's Perhaps quite simple depending on on the structure to overlook a chosen license So if you're a developer you set the conditions for reuse So you want that re-users are actually following the conditions under which you share your code And sometimes it's quite hard or it's quite simple basically to to overlook this license and these conditions The problem also is affecting how to deal with multiple licenses. It's quite common that a Software these days doesn't only contain code under one license because you wrote it all yourself perhaps But you use assets by third parties JavaScript code in a sense of Websites, but you might also have icons by by artists You have license ambiguity, which is another problem like which version exactly of the GPL the General public license are you actually using here having in front of you is it two is a three Which exceptions and so on so there are many special rules and in all cases especially for communities contributors need some kind of training and so you have to invest a lot of time and Getting them on board and telling them your best practices and speaking of best practices We have a lot of conflicts there so many different approaches so many different ideas how to tackle these Unfortunately, they're often conflicting and most often not really solving the issue So in the end we are in the position where it's for users for re-users for legal officers and companies for communities like this It's really annoying right you have licenses license thing and say why why does it have to be so complicated? so in 2017 we sat down at the FFV to gather with a few other Contributors in this field and thought how can we make copyright and licensing easier for everyone and with everyone? We are not only speaking about legal professionals who know their stuff But actual developers who have want to spend their free time on creating free software and actually do not want to be burdened with like all these legal efforts The result was reuse So reuse has a few principles that I would just quickly skim here The ideas that we want to make it easy to find copyright and licensing information for every single file in a repository So what we see these still these these days is like you have a single license file or copying file in a repository And you're not certain why it doesn't apply to all files or like also these icons by a third party So we want to make it easy to have this information available that you can really say this file is on the this and that license from this copyright holder But we also want to avoid silos like No external databases or databases in general no websites that can go offline or which you cannot access if you don't have internet So the idea is that we store this information directly inside of the repository The information should be readable not only by humans, but also by machines other approaches have been tackling the one or the other side But we also don't want to reinvent the wheel So there are some best practices. There are some initiatives. We try to be compatible wherever it's possible And most importantly, we want to make licensing easy and fun for developers So again, not only for the legal professionals and getting complicated and so little but no developers should be able to license the code apply the copyright or communicate their copyright in Normal development routines like so really developer focused Yeah, so the idea of reuses that we have three simple steps I will go in the next few slides over these like manually Theoretically so you can see what's the whole logic We can also run this all with a tool that I would also like to present here We are too limited in time. You can ask me afterwards and I give you demo So the ideas of these three simple steps are that you first of all choose and provide the license texts So they settle down on one license and provide the full license text Then the more complicated part that you add copyright and licensing information for every file Yeah, so that we have a number of options with we will see and the third step again It's easy. You got to confirm whether your projects then is wheels Compliant already. If not, then you go back to step two basically So the first step choose and provides licenses that should be quite obvious Actually, it's a hard choice which license do I take so for new projects We ask people to really think about this heart and you save this license text So the full conditions of reuse you save in a dedicated licenses folder that we have and Not only just put it here on the random name, but following the SPDX license identifier What's SPDX? It's a project whose main Contribution to the community is to provide unique identifiers for every license So that you can no longer confuse the different gpl versions, but that you have a unique identifier and In this case, we chose the gpl 3.0 or later license And we save it under the same name under this identifier, which you can find on the SPDX website in the licenses folder Then the second step is to add copyright and licensing information to all files so we have two parts of information the license and again here we use the license identifier and Use the SPDX license identifier tag for this And you add the copyright holder can be one can you can you be multiple ones? So in this example, we have a file here as a commentator in this file We have a gpl 3.0 or later as a license and you have two copyright holders. Let me Jane Doe and Foo bar and we use different ways how to Like use these copyright texts, so we also support these more traditional Copyright c-symbol lines that you can use so again try to be backward compatible What can you do if you cannot edit the file directly? So ideally the information would be in the file because then if you copy the file to another place or to your own repo You would Conserve this information, but sometimes it's not possible You have a binary file like a picture or you have a JSON file that does not support in file comments So in this example, we have a picture called cat.jpeg So you can just create a blank text file with the same name and appended by dot license Inside of this file. You write the very same information that we've seen at the previous step namely a License identity fire and the copyright text or the copyright line Now what do you do if you have a let's say a directory and there are 500 icons files in there like for your application Now you could of course create 500 dot license files in addition Needless to say that this is not really wished for so we offer a third option to communicate this information Namely that depth file that five is a Format the specification by the DBN project which we again landed here Yeah, we try to reuse those things and here we have a plain text file and dedicated location And we say basically all files in the IMG folder and now the asterix All files are with a copyright of the create artist and now under a different license because we took them from someone else Let's say you're in this creative commons Attribution and the version 4.0 again here using the SBDX license identifier So this way and with these three options We can cover all kinds of files in a repository and you for yourself can decide Ideally, I want to write it in a commentator so that the information is as close to the files as possible Or using the dot license file or using the depth file file. So we cover a lot of use cases here The third step is again probably the simplest one confirm reuse compliance So this is done wire a helper tool that we provide The we use helper tool. It's free software. Obviously. It's written in Python You can install it as a compound command line tool. It's usable on all Linux's on Windows and also Mac OS as we know and one of the main commands of this tool is To run a lint. So you run go to your repository clone it or have it there and it runs reuse lint So the tool goes over all files in your repository and checks whether it finds information about this file in one of these three locations and That's done really rapidly and like if you run reuse lint on a normal laptop on the Linux kernel I don't know 80,000 files takes you roughly one minute or so. So this tool is quite quick The reuse helper tool With this lint command can also be included in a CI pipelines, for instance So once you have your project made reuse compliant You can put it in the CI pipeline and with one check you can see whether a pull request for instance or the new commit Does negatively affect the reuse compliance and you can use it for many more processes here as a pre-commit talk or so In this example, we run the reuse lint on this very small Project here with only six files and it reports to you well We have here three licenses CC by 4.0. We have the CC 0 in this example We have one file for whatever reason there and we have the GPL also here And so for all files There is copyright and licensing information found and the end this means you're wheels compliant with this project So this is now the starting situation of this hypothetical very simple project You have these six files here You have a few a binary finds that we've seen before the cat and the dog picture Now traditionally like what you would see today is that people just add the license file there But as you know, we have here now files under from different copyright holders different licenses So it would be really hard to reflect the situation with the existing standards That looks a little bit larger, but that's the effect of the reuse tool or the reuse Yeah initiatives or the reuse best practice being adapted So we are having here in this example. I mean there are different variations You can say well, we have here now a license file for the cat picture a license file for the dog picture with this information We have All the license text files here for fully downloaded Included there cleanly in a separated folder So they don't clutter your your repository and the other files here the three text files the C file make file and markdown file They carry all this information As a commentator in their specific Common syntax. So the cool thing about the reuse tool Unfortunately, we cannot peek at it right now is that it automatically detects the the common syntax and So it's quite easy There are also commands to make files reuse compliant and with just a few commands So we try here to go many steps Towards developers. So that is quite natural and easy to use We use has a number of components Meanwhile over the years we have the best practice which is a rather formal specification Can be picked up has been picked up by industry and also communities We have a tutorial and an FAQ which also covers this example that we've seen here in the slides The FAQ is not only speaking about reuse but also about licensing in general like to really on board you and a person who are not familiar with a licensing copyright on reuse on licensing and Demystifying a lot of things we have to set helper tool that not only lins, but also Helps in becoming wheels compliant and we have the API Basically reuse as a service you can register your project online there and get a badge which you can include We have a number of reuse adopters already. So we know of 800 projects registered with the API Oh Still okay last slide or second last slide as we have KDE the large community Which made or adopted reuse for their purposes in their community on the corporate side We have Siemens, Huawei, the European chapter SAP, LiveRay, LGE and many others at least these are the ones we know about Partly the Linux kernel already they're cleaning up their long history and the question is whether you are already reuse compliant Whether your projects are reuse compliant if not then these are your next steps I just told to show the slide you can participate in the project with code by by discussing on the mailing list Contribute code and integrate reuse in your community So there are plenty of options and I would love to discuss perhaps later with you how we can make you reuse compliant in your projects Thank you very much


Hey there friends thanks for checking in. Today we're looking at a CMMG Banshee called the MK17. It's a new release that's chambered in 9mm. I've taken it to the range already. I've put a lot of rounds through it. Let's go ahead and roll through some of that footage and we'll come back and talk more about this pistol. They were looking at a new release from CMMG called the Banshee MK17. I'm a huge Banshee fan. I've got the 5.7x28mm and a Banshee 300 blackout. This one's chambered in 9mm. It's called the MK17 and what makes this unique is that it accepts 6 hour P320 mags. Now the expanding 6 hour line of 320 handguns offers so many. It's become extremely popular and many people have these mags. The MK17 will accept them. Now we know that many of the Banshee models take Glock mags. This one here takes 6 hour P320 mags and I'm super excited because I think a lot of people like mags that are interchangeable. It's an AR pistol. This one has an 8 inch barrel that make another Banshee model with a 5 inch barrel or the carbines which is the resolute line has a 16 inch barrel. Still has the rip brace there and that is super nice. Let's go ahead and take a few shots. Man that is awesome. Now I have a Sig P320 X Compact and here's the mag here. This has 15 rounds. The one I just showed you had to come from the X5 because that has 21 rounds and that's what it ships with. But this is a 15 round mag from my 6 hour P320 X Compact. And the MK17 will take this. No problem. Bolt locks back after the last shot. Now you can see this is a gorgeous finish on it. Just an amazing silver look to it. It's actually called Titanium. They offer I believe 9 different Cerakote finishes. Alright so here we are. A 50 arch shot on the right side is a 10 inch round target. The left side is a 12 inch square target. Let's see how the Banshee does. Overall length is just over 24 inches with the brace fully collapsed but this is a rip brace from CMMG. It allows the shooter to preset their length of pull position and all they have to do is rip it out to that point. Very quick. Right there it says fast back. That refers to the track underneath the buffer tube with angle cuts that allow the rip brace to deploy so quickly. Mag pull MOE grip. CMMG single stage trigger. 21 round P320 mag. Had to come from the X5 models. Here we have a M lock aluminum handguard. Rail all the way up top here. And then the brake here is a CMMG SV brake disperses the gasses which will reduce the muzzle rise. Additionally the optic that I'm running is a vortex spitfire one power prism optic that works great with this setup. And the single point sling is a grove tech. CMMG uses a radio delayed blowback system which softens the shot quite a bit. There's just a slight delay from when the shot is taken to when the bolt actually goes back into the buffer. You can hardly feel it. Now the 9mm it's not that important although this does have the delayed blowback system. But I really feel it with my 300 blackout banshee. The optic that I have here is a vortex spitfire AR. It is a prism optic. Let's go ahead and take a few shots here. Yeah, it's really nice. You can hardly even feel it. So there it is a CMMG banshee MK17 with the 8 inch barrel. They also make it with a 5 inch barrel or the CMMG Resolute Carbine and a 16 inch barrel. And I've taken this to four or five separate ranges. I put a ton around through it. It's performed great. Everything from steel case to brass you name it. It's ran outstanding and I'm very excited about it. I think it's an outstanding firearm and I look forward to spending a lot of quality time, range time with this CMMG Banshee MK17. If you like videos like this please subscribe and share. I always appreciate thumbs up button. Thanks for watching and you guys be safe.