A difficult task indeed!

The time has to be judiciously distributed between school and coaching for effective results. For
me, It was a pretty challenging task.

Here I have tried to put my words in simple forms and the suggestions that I have given have
worked very well upon me and many others who have tried it. So i will briefly take you through
different scenarios that occurred during my preparation days:-

(NOTE :- As you move through the answer, try to focus more on the bold parts )

Days with both my school and coaching :-

I had to wake up at 5.45–6 am. School bus came to pick me up at 7am. Took 40 mins to school.
8 periods on normal days from 8.15 AM to 1 PM. In summers, periods were reduced to 6 per
day. It becomes really difficult to pass the time when the content being taught has already been
covered in your coaching classes or if it is not much important from JEE point of view. So initially
I got little frustrated at these moments when I thought that I could have utilised this time for my
JEE preparation. But with time, I understood that frustration and inaction due to disappointment
are not doing any good and are having adverse effects on my studies as well as confidence.

So here is what I did and recommend to all the readers who are facing a similar problem:-

I started preparing short notes and question sheets of my own. Complete theory of each chapter
could be easily accomodated in a single A4 sheet. I didn't incorporate every single information in
that sheet. The theory part of the sheet contained basic formulas, short tricks that I ever came
across while solving questions, and other theoretical laws or statements that I felt handy while
solving questions. And believe me later on these sheets proved to be one of the best revision
techniques that I ever used. For the question sheets, I included those questions which I felt that
I was not able to solve at first go but they had embedded in them some very useful theories or
concepts that I thought might be useful at the time of revision. So I made a lot of these sheets
over time and kept them in separate files.

Now you might ask how did it help me in managing my school and coaching both?

Actually instead of the bulky copies that I made for the coaching classes, I brought these
revision sheets to school hidden between the NCERT books. Whenever I felt that I can skip the
content being taught currently in the class, I just took out the revision sheets and tried to revise
that chapter thoroughly- by writing it on a rough copy or by a simple mental recall of the
contents(when your teacher doesn't expect anyone to be writing anything ;)

So this trick helped me in effectively managing my time in school and later on there came a
stage where I could narrate a whole chapter to anyone and since I had solved the question
sheets a number of times, my subconscious mind had somehow memorized the exact
questions. Hence later on, I would just take out a copy and starting writing the solution of the
questions in my sheets without even seeing the question. When I felt that I have solved a
question sufficient number of times, I used to remove it from the sheet. Well, this number varies
person to person.

So the final bell rang at 1PM. Again 40 minutes to home. Took my lunch till 2.15 PM. This phase
used to be the most difficult in the complete day. A good lunch invited a better sleep. It was very
challenging to control the sleep. I took a rickshaw along with my friend at 3.10 PM and reached
coaching classes at 3.30 PM, attended the classes from 3.45 to 8 PM and then came the most
relaxed phase of the whole day- my father waiting on the bike to take me back to home. I took
my dinner till 9 PM and then I used to revise the coaching content for two hours and I slept at
11–11.30 PM. This revision is the most important revision of the content that one ever makes.
The content is still very fresh. Before this revision, the content taught is still that of the teacher's.
You have to revise it to make it yours and have a better grasp on the content. So this way the
day ended and the next day I again woke up at 5.45–6 AM and………

2. Only school or only coaching:-

These days were relatively simpler than the first category. I used to take a nice sleep of 1 hour
in the daytime to refresh myself and rest of the time I studied with some time for eating and
exercise.

3. No school and no coaching :-

These are the days that should be used for completing the work left for the week or some
intense question solving. A minimum of 9–10 hours should be spent definitely on these days to
maintain a balance of the studies hampered on school days. An interesting thing is that on these
days, people waste a significant amount of time but a common feeling is that they prefer wasting
time at home rather than going to school and doing the same- exactly the opposite of what it
should be ;). Even I was a victim of this feeling at times.

4. Now some more important tips related to effective results and better time management :-

We had a chapter in 12th class English book- “The Interview”. The person being interviewed-
Umberto Eco, is a famous writer and known for his prolific personality as a human being and a
writer. When the interviewer asks how does he manage this, Umberto Eco replies that he uses
the small “interstices” between different events that one performs during work hours. Now
bringing this in context of JEE preparation, the interstices could be anything, for ex, there is a
short window of 5–10 minutes when we take a break from our studies for dinner. One can use
this to revise one of the revision sheets that I mentioned above. Similarly, these windows appear
at least 4–5 times in a person's day. Personally speaking, I was inspired a lot from this thing and
in my case these interstices used to be the time when I travelled in bus from school to home or
vice versa. Yes, a difficult to read in a moving bus but I had to adapt with the conditions and
later on it became a fun. I used to revise the content to be taught in the coaching that day while
travelling from school to home in the bus. So this is a thing!
And please don't think school as an avoidable burden on your shoulders. That will only increase
the already existing mountain of stress. I learnt a lot of basic science concepts through my
school and NCERT books. And never ever disrespect your school teachers just because you
think you know more than them! This is morally objectionable as well as it might affect your
marks too if the teacher takes it otherwise. So create a nice image in the school and then the
teachers also try their best to help you in your efforts. I used to take permission from them for
going to library and most of the times they happily agreed (maybe because I actually studied
there :) )

Make nice memories, enjoy these days, don't waste time on unnecessary things and don't let
your goal ever fade away from your eyes!

Lastly, I would say that we have to prepare techniques for ourselves. Not all techniques work for
everyone but I have told some of the basic techniques that have helped everyone who has
worked upon them with full dedication. Obviously this is difficult, but believe me it's worth trying.

Hope this helps! 😊