UPSC 2025 AIR 6 Zinnia Aurora writes: ‘How a failed attempt taught me to stand up again’

Ctrl+F. Ctrl+V. No results. Three keystrokes that shattered my UPSC dream on a grey June morning in 2023.On June 12, I was travelling back home in a car when the Civil Services Preliminary Examination result PDF appeared on my mobile screen. I already knew that the examination had not gone well, but like every aspirant waiting for a result, I held on to a faint hope that somehow things would work out. With a thumping heart and trembling hands, I opened the Notes app where I had saved my roll number. I pasted it into the search bar and waited for the screen to respond. It did, just not in the way I had hoped. I remember that moment with unusual clarity. I was sitting beside my mother, and our car had stopped at the traffic signal near Gyarah Murti in Delhi. While the red light blinked ahead, my eyes drifted towards the iconic sculpture depicting the Dandi March.In an instant, months of preparation, expectations, sacrifices and difficult decisions seemed to collapse into that single line on a PDF. Yet I did not allow any of it to show on my face. My mother’s smile was not something I was prepared to break. We reached home, I told my parents that I had failed, and life appeared to move on. Internally, however, the weeks that followed were far more turbulent than the result itself. I had left a job, declined admission offers and invested heavily in a dream that had not materialised. More than disappointment, what I experienced was a profound questioning of self. The examination had exposed weaknesses I did not know existed and shattered assumptions I had quietly carried about my own abilities. Looking back, it was one of the most humbling experiences of my life. The examination that forces you to meet yourself The Civil Services Examination has a peculiar way of forcing individuals to confront themselves. While it is popularly viewed as a test of knowledge, serious aspirants know that knowledge is only one part of the equation. The examination tests resilience, adaptability, emotional stability and discipline. It pushes candidates into situations where excuses stop working and honest introspection becomes unavoidable. In that sense, the examination often teaches lessons about self-governance long before it teaches governance. Most aspirants do not undergo this transformation immediately. I certainly had not. Like many young people, I initially viewed failure as something that happened to me rather than something that could teach me.Story continues below this ad Zinnia shares a picture of her study table as she tells aspirants why it is important to stand up after failure.It took time to realise that setbacks derive meaning not from the pain they inflict but from the lessons they leave behind. The challenge is not to sit with failure and repeatedly revisit it. The challenge is to stand up against it. What Gyarah Murti taught me That is where the imagery of Gyarah Murti unexpectedly returned to my thoughts. The sculpture commemorates the Dandi March and depicts individuals walking towards a goal far greater than themselves despite uncertainty, hardship and overwhelming odds. As I reflected on that image, I began to appreciate a simple truth — none of those figures could have known exactly what lay ahead, yet they continued moving forward because the cause demanded perseverance. Preparation for the Civil Services Examination evokes a wide spectrum of emotions. Over the years, aspirants experience hope, anxiety, excitement, frustration, admiration, self-doubt and pride, often within the span of a few months.Story continues below this ad The journey is rarely linear. Yet it is these fluctuations that give meaning to eventual success. Without setbacks, achievement would carry little significance. Zinnia shares a picture of the traffic signal where she found an unexpected message about resilience and moving forward.As Percy Bysshe Shelley famously observed, “Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.” Many aspirants dis