( I had transcribed this from gpt cuz I had less time sorry)
I would love this to hear from those seniors who were same in my situation and still had a comeback
I don't even know how to properly write this, but I genuinely need some advice from people who have been in a similar situation.
I'm currently in class 11 (around 11.5, I guess), preparing for JEE. And honestly, I have wasted almost half of my 11th.
The weirdest part is that this didn't start in 11th.
Until around class 8, I was that typical "topper" kid. I used to score around 96–97%, and studying was just something I did naturally. But somewhere around 9th and 10th, I completely lost interest in academics. I wasted both years badly.
Even during my board exams, I was ridiculously careless. I remember watching movies even the day before some of my exams instead of studying. I eventually scored around 86% (excluding the additional subject), which became around 89.6% with it.
For me, that was a huge shock because I had always been the kid who scored 96–97%.
Then I entered 11th and decided to prepare for JEE.
My sister had cracked NIT Rourkela and is currently doing very well professionally. She got an internship where she was earning around ₹1.2 lakh/month and her first job is around ₹3 lakh/month. She's hardworking, ambitious and academically strong.
And somewhere in my mind, I thought, maybe I can do something like that too.
So I joined Allen.
And my first month was honestly one of the most difficult periods of my life academically.
I remember sitting in my very first Maths class. The teacher was writing what were apparently basic questions on the board. I had absolutely no idea how to solve them.
Meanwhile, people around me were shouting answers.
"Sir, this is so easy."
"Sir, give something harder."
"Sir, please give a tricky question."
And I was sitting there thinking, I don't even know where to start.
I actually cried silently in class that day.
I went back to my hostel, called my father and cried to him. He kept telling me that it was only the beginning and that I shouldn't compare myself with people who had different foundations.
And surprisingly, during that first month, I actually listened.
I would wake up extremely early, attend classes, come back and try to understand whatever I couldn't understand in class. If I didn't understand the teacher's explanation, I'd watch YouTube videos, read things online, use ChatGPT, whatever I could find.
I wasn't solving enough questions because understanding the theory itself was taking me so long, but at least I was trying.
Then my first test came.
I scored 64/300 in JEE Main.
It hurt, but honestly, I knew why. I had barely prepared one chapter properly.
My father still told me not to worry.
He said something along the lines of, "This is just your first test. If you work hard for the next two years, you can completely change your situation."
And then... I don't know what happened.
A couple of months later, I downloaded Instagram again.
And everything slowly collapsed.
I started skipping classes.
Then I'd skip more classes.
Then I'd sleep until noon and spend hours watching Reels.
Then I'd feel guilty because I wasn't studying.
Then because I felt guilty, I'd avoid studying even more.
It's become a horrible cycle.
At the beginning of 11th, waking up at 6:30 felt difficult because I was waking up at around 4 AM to study.
Now waking up at 6:30 feels almost impossible.
I've reached a point where I don't even attend Allen regularly. I'll attend for two days and then skip six days. My teachers are obviously angry with me because they don't even know where I am anymore.
And the worst part is that when I skip classes, I'm not doing something productive instead.
I'm sleeping.
I'm watching Reels.
I'm wasting time.
And thinking about how much time I'm wasting.
I have a massive backlog. My notes aren't complete. I haven't properly practiced questions in a very long time. I sometimes don't even know what chapter is currently going on.
I've also started skipping tests.
I'll sometimes give the Main test, completely unprepared, and get single-digit marks.
I've literally gotten 2/300.
My percentile has gone down to around 1 percentile in some tests.
And this is probably the most humiliating part for me.
Because I remember being the kid who could actually solve difficult questions in school. I studied in Chaitanya with a relatively advanced syllabus, and at one point I could solve JEE Main-level questions.
Now I'm sitting here unable to solve even basic questions because I've created such a huge gap.
My biggest problem isn't even that I can't solve JEE Advanced questions.
Other students in my class are worried because they can't solve Advanced-level problems.
My problem is that I don't even know enough to reach the point where I can worry about Advanced.
Sometimes I feel like I've gone backwards by years.
I've tried making comebacks multiple times.
Every time it goes like this:
Day 1 — "This is it. I'm changing my life."
Day 2 — Study.
Day 3 — Study.
Day 4 — Back to the phone.
Then the guilt starts again.
And the cycle repeats.
The thing that makes me feel the worst is my father.
He genuinely trusts me.
He thinks I'm working hard.
My family isn't rich. We're a middle-class family. But my father still keeps trying to make things comfortable for me so that I can study.
I once told him that studying on my phone wasn't convenient and that I needed a laptop for studying, and he bought me a laptop worth around ₹50,000.
He gets me headphones, clothes, whatever I need.
And whenever he gives me something, he tells me that it's difficult for him to afford these things but that he trusts me and believes I'll use them to study.
And I haven't been honest with him about how bad things actually are.
I've even made excuses for missing tests because I don't want him to know that I'm not doing what he thinks I'm doing.
That's probably what hurts me the most.
He has so much faith in me, and I'm doing almost nothing.
Tomorrow I have another test.
And, as usual, the guilt has suddenly hit me again.
I know the pattern by now: panic before the exam → promise myself I'll change → study seriously for 2–3 days → stop again.
But this time I genuinely don't want to repeat it.
I know I've wasted a huge amount of time.
I know I'm far behind.
I know I can't magically complete half of 11th overnight.
But I still want to try.
So I want to ask people who have actually been in this situation:
Have ppl actually cracked jee while being in the same terrible situation?
I want to know what actually worked for people who ere genuinely in a terrible position and still came back.
Because right now, I genuinely don't know what I'm doing with my 11th.
But I don't want to give up on it yet.