Was preparing for the JEE worth it?

First - there are many people who'll end up cursing wasted time (like me :P ) if they don't make it to IIT. Let me tell you this early on - such a mentality isn't healthy. You always take away something from anything you do, failed or otherwise. Some will say you shouldn't attend coaching unless you're dead sure you'll make it. Hogwash. Nobody is dead sure of making it. I know people who got like 96% in CBSE class 10 boards and didn't clear JEE. I also know people who were in 70s and 80s before class 11 who cracked the JEE. School Boards and JEE test very different things, so class 10 marks aren't a perfect measure of aptitude by any means. If you like math/science, and have the interest to learn more, go for it!

Second thing to be made clear early on - if you're serious about cracking JEE, you have to do some back-breaking work. No other way. Coaching is a must these days, for the drilling more than anything. Ordinary people can beat the JEE with just pure drilling over 700 days. They will beat the talented people who don't work. So coaching is kind of a must, no way around it. Think of it as a 2-year training session for a World Cup Final rather than a weekly chore, and use it to sharpen your skills for the big game!

(Of course, one can get as many resources as they need online right from class 1 textbooks to IMO question papers, and put them to full use at home with zero coaching and ace the JEE. But what are the chances of that when Facebook is just as easy to access? :P )

Now, to the question you asked.

JEE coaching/preparation could be the best time of your life provided the attitude is right. You will meet similar people, and find yourself enjoying things you never thought possible. While Bollywood masala was the spice of class 9-10, you might genuinely enjoy a discussion about the Binomial Theorem!

You know the joy you feel when your favourite football club scores a goal, or when your favourite cricketer hits a sixer? You'll feel something like that when you crack a tough question. You will want more. From start to finish, you'll feel like you are constantly levelling up in an RPG (except that you are playing you). You will struggle and then easily solve the basic questions, then struggle and soon easily crack the medium ones, and so on. When you crack them, you will feel joy, just like when you see "Congrats! You have cleared this level!" in your favourite video game. You will want to keep levelling up, and you should. Don't play the same level over and over.

You pick up several useful skills in this time. You will pick up MCQ-specific tricks (which are quite handy in college too). You will pick up analytical skills. The instructors will equip you as well. Coaching might teach you a bit of humility as well - If you were near the top of your class in school till 10th, being put in a classroom full of class toppers (and then realising there tens of such rooms in the same building, and that are thousands of such buildings) can be a real eye-opener ;) But that shouldn't discourage you. Two years is a long time.

Don't think the time has been wasted in preparation. Don't be the type to chant "JEE, IIT, JEE, IIT" and go mad if you don't make it. IIT is not the be-all and end-all of life. Whether you get IIT or NIT or a good private college, you will find that this preparation would've made life much easier for you than if you hadn't undergone it. You will almost begin to take some of the things you learnt for granted (only when I look back, I realise just how many things I picked up when preparing, academic and otherwise, and indeed how I take them for granted now).

In short, it's a good character-building experience. You learn many things in a very short couple of years (believe me, they do fly by). Some academic lessons, some life lessons, none less important than the other. There's never every chance of making it to IIT, and there's never no chance of making it to IIT. Go for it! And enjoy it :)

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