Well, buckle up, because this episode is basically a masterclass in how uncertainty doesn’t politely wait its turn; it just barges in right after your one good moment and starts rearranging the furniture.

Let’s start with how I even found out my MIST result, because the story itself is almost cinematic. It was Ramadan, close to half past ten at night, and I was half-watching TV with the particular emptiness that comes after a long day of fasting and studying. Suddenly my phone lit up like it had personally decided to throw a party without consulting me, notification after notification, friends messaging to congratulate me. I remember feeling something quieter than joy, more like relief, the sense that maybe, just maybe, I still had some fight left in me after everything.

But relief, as it turns out, is a very short-lived guest. The moment came to actually decide whether to accept the MIST seat, and my brain turned into that classic scene where someone stands at a fork in the road with two signs, both slightly ominous. Walk away from MIST, and I risk losing a solid, respectable seat in a subject I genuinely wanted. Keep it, and MIST’s early class schedule would collide head-on with my prep for the exams I actually cared more about. There’s an old line often attributed to Yogi Berra that fit perfectly here: “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” Which is useless advice, honestly, but very accurate to how my brain was functioning at the time.

In the end, on a completely random Friday night, I just decided to let it go. Not because I’d solved the dilemma with some elegant logic, but because deep down, it simply wasn’t what I wanted for myself. I did feel a pang of regret afterward, the way you sometimes miss a bus you never actually wanted to board, but looking back now, I don’t regret the decision itself at all.

Meanwhile, the universe decided I hadn’t suffered enough uncertainty yet, so it handed me a fresh serving: the paper-based model tests. And I mean this with full honesty; I bombed them spectacularly. It felt like training for a marathon and then discovering, mid-race, that someone had quietly moved the finish line three kilometres further away without telling you. I kept trying to believe in myself, but the results kept gently, repeatedly reminding me of gaps I hadn’t accounted for. Adrenaline carried me forward more than confidence did, if I’m being fully transparent, because actual visible progress was nowhere to be found during that stretch.

So I adapted. I went back to solving and re-solving question banks, working through model test papers at home, and building two very specific notebooks: one for maths problems that were technically easy but hadn’t clicked for me on the first attempt, and another, almost sacred list, of problems I would skip on sight if they ever dared cross my path again. Call it strategic cowardice if you like, but I call it knowing your battlefield. There’s no glory in bleeding time over a question that was never going to love you back.

I also became a strict disciple of the Pomodoro method around this time, which, if you haven’t tried it, is essentially timed sprints of focused work followed by short breaks, like interval training but for your brain instead of your legs. Look it up if you’re prepping for anything time-pressured; it genuinely helps you build a rhythm for racing the clock in an actual exam hall.

Anyway, back to the model tests showing me zero mercy. To cope with that particular flavour of unhealthy rat race, I started reading the newspaper with my mother every evening after iftar, occasionally turning it into a lighthearted quiz between us. It felt almost silly at the time, a small, ordinary ritual squeezed between hours of stress. But it turned out to be more useful than I expected, and here’s where that story pays off.

Because somewhere in the middle of all this, purely for the love of trying, I sat for the Dhaka University B unit exam. For anyone unfamiliar, B unit covers arts and social sciences, and given my long-standing soft spot for international relations and economics, I gathered just enough courage to apply. The night before that exam was, without exaggeration, one of the most devastating nights of my entire admission season, because I had absolutely no idea how to prepare for it. My entire “preparation” up to that point had been casual newspaper reading with my mother, and the day before the exam, I’d even sat for an unrelated weekly test instead of studying B unit material. I skimmed through Bangla second paper basics that night, tried to memorise the kobi porichiti section, promptly forgot all of it under pressure, and cried through half the night wondering what would happen if I failed an exam I hadn’t even properly attempted to prepare for.

The exam centre, thankfully, was close to home, which felt like the universe throwing me one small mercy. And here’s the strange plot twist: I walked in with nothing to lose, which made me weirdly, almost suspiciously calm. I filled out the top sheet without a single tremor in my hand. When the question paper landed in front of me, I kept recognising things, thinking, “wait, I actually read about this in the newspaper”, and for the written sections, I did what I can only describe as pure, unfiltered yapping. Continuous, confident rambling saved me that day, proof that sometimes your brain quietly stores away far more than you give it credit for, especially from the things you absorbed just for fun.

The very next week brought Buet prelims, and I walked into it already running on fumes, mentally worn down not from studying hard but from the sheer emotional toll of stressing over an exam I never properly prepared for in the first place. So I did something almost ceremonial that week: I put my phone away, cleared my study table completely, removed every trace of B unit material, scrolled some mindless YouTube to reset my brain, reorganised my notebooks, and set the table fresh for Buet prelims, the exam I had genuinely been building towards for months.

As for the B unit result, it arrived before the Buet written test, and I was honestly stunned. Relieved, happy, and a little bit amused at how differently things can turn out when you stop white-knuckling every single outcome.

So here’s the takeaway from this particular chapter, and I think it matters more than any single exam strategy: stay connected to the world outside your syllabus. A newspaper with your mother, a random quiz over iftar, small ordinary things, they matter more than they seem to in the moment, and they might just save you when you least expect it. And please, don’t build sky-high expectations around an exam you never actually prepared for properly, because heartbreak hits so much harder when it’s tangled up with guilt you didn’t even need to carry.

Next up, I’ll be writing about how I actually prepared for the Buet prelims, the exam this entire series has been quietly building towards, but before that, I’ll write about the DU A unit preparation first.

Until then, don’t run yourself into the ground the way I did, and maybe go read the newspaper (only TBS) with someone you love. It helps more than you’d think.

Read part 1: https://tbsgraduates.net/campus/diaries-of-an-admission-season/choosing-the-battlefield-part-i/

Read part 2: https://tbsgraduates.net/campus/diaries-of-an-admission-season/the-medical-heartbreak-and-the-mist-comeback-part-ii/