Sources , Notemaking and Revising - Strategy by Neha Banerjee ( AIR 20, UPSC 2019)

This post will give full details about my preparation for the GS block of both prelims and mains. I followed a layered approach and tried to visualize the entire prelims, all 4 GS papers and essay as a single entity ( remember Pangaea ? 😛) ..This approach was followed by me from May 2018 to Feb 2019. 

 Phase 1 ( Building Blocks) 

1) Geography :- 

Class 11 and 12 ncerts ...did Physical ( India and world together) first and then Human and Economic ( India and world) . Also watched Amit Sengupta Sir 's youtube videos to break the  monotony . Made short summary notes in my copy. If the book is of 150 pages, i tried to keep my notes limited to 20 pages.  I found this a good way to tackle all the Ncerts. One has to do numerous ncerts and sometimes same things are repeated across books and across chapters.  So better prepare consolidated notes on your own one time and revise later only from the notes  ( no need to open the book again and again). Also it enhances your writing ability and helps to retain better. It is advisable to leave some space / margin in the notes ..so that you can fill it up with new facts later. 

2) Environment :- 

Shankar Ias book ..though informative I found it very haphazard ( sequence of chapters are confusing) . So I took help of Shreya  Sharma Mam's Unacademy free course and the ncert Class 11 biology last few chapters and made consolidated notes in my own words. Here also , the same logic ..make notes for once and revise multiple times in the future only from those notes. Moreover the habit of writing concise notes imbibes the habit of structurally orienting your points in tables, charts etc. Also I found studying Geography first and then doing Environment helped. So the sequence also matters

3) Modern History :-

Spectrum Rajiv Ahir book along with Pratik Nayak Sir's course from Mrunal youtube channel. Did not make any notes here 

4) Ancient, Medieval history and Art and Culture :-

Class 11 fine arts book, Tamil Nadu board book, Abhishek Srivastava Sir unacademy youtube course on medieval history. Made consolidated notes from these sources at one place

5) World History:-

Referred Mrunal sir's website for summary of old ncert ( Arjun dev) along with Pratik Nayak Sir's lectures. 

6) Polity :-

One and only Laxmikanth. But studied it strategically like chapters on President, Governor together to retain better. Initially it took a lot of time to remember but there is no short cut as such. Did not make any notes here.

7) Economy :- 

Learnt concepts from 9 th , 10th , 11th ( Indian economic development) and Class 12th macroeconomic ncerts. Made short notes and revisited them through Shankar Ganesh book ( for more clarity) 

8) Science and tech :-

 6 to 10th ncerts and class 11 biology ncerts. Also did random search to list down important scientists, their discoveries , important missions of ISRO , basics of biotechnology , nanotechnology etc  from some unacademy free courses 

9) Society and others :-

Sociology class 11 and 12th ncerts , polity ncerts ( India after Independence, Political Theory),  6 to 10th social science ncerts ( went through the examples only) and Contemporary World Politics ( most enjoyable ncert I have read). Here also made consolidated notes so that I do not have to read pdfs again. Also watched the PradhanMantri web series in youtube ( really useful for understanding post independent India) 

Phase 2 ( Structuring the foundation) 

This was mainly concerned with revising the Phase 1 and adding some new elements to it. Since I was also working at office ,  I found that revising stuff at weekends or at home helped , while going through new stuff  in a relatively stressed mind . 

1) Mrunal Sir's economy lecture became the most dominant part now. I could interlink many topics with his lectures. Example:- population dynamics in Human geography with Human development,  GST and fiscal policy with Centre state relations in polity 

2) GC leong Physical Geography ..revised through the diagrams in the book..and class 6 to 10th geography , extra information I appended to my earlier notes.

3) Nitin Singhania ( revised alongside previous notes)  and new ncerts for history ( highlighted the pdfs) .Did not make extra notes.

4) Shekhar Bandyopadhyay Plassey to Partition for modern history ..this came really late just before starting for prelims. Did not make any notes . Read it like a novel and underlined important points.

5) GC Leong remaining topics with Mrunal sir's industrial location, Food processing notes ( website) . Made concise notes.

6) ARC reports ( just made very short notes from the recommendations) , Laxmikanth Governance book and Niti 3yr report ( found it very useful and made short notes) 

7) Ethics ..just noted down basics from Lexicon ..did not have much time as prelims was approaching

8) Internal Security from the Ashok Kumar book ( McGraw Hill ) . Did not make notes here. 

Also current affairs was going on parallely as detailed in the previous post. 

During this phase I tried to write answers from previous year question papers but found it too time consuming and the quality was not satisfactory at all to me. So left it and focussed on the exclusive prelims preparation around March 2019.