Jeetu Singh, UGC NET 2019 qualified for Assistant Professor (English) wants to be a poet

Jeetu Singh has qualified UGC NET exam twice in English subject for the post of Assistant Professor. Know what he has to say about the preparation for UGC NET exam.

A graduate and postgraduate in English from University of Calcutta and University of Delhi respectively, Jeetu Singh has qualified NTA UGC NET twice in December 2018 and June 2019 for lectureship. His aggregate scores in UGC NET December 2018 and June 2019 exams are 53 per cent and 60 per cent, respectively. Currently, he works as a guest lecturer in Bharati College, University of Delhi.   

An avid reader, Jeetu always had interest in art and literature. His hobbies include writing poetry and composing music.  

Shiksha got talking to Jeetu to know what prep strategy he adopted to crack the UGC NET exam. Read the complete interview with Jeetu Singh below:

The answer key is released within a week of the exam by NTA and upon its perusal, I was confident of my selection since I was aware of the UGC NET cut-off pattern in NET English over the past few years.

The foremost thing is to go through the past years UGC NET question papers while appearing for the exam. The UGC NET syllabus is limitless so you have to know the favourite topics of the examiners. Next, devoting most of the time to the history of English literature and contemporary literature in commonwealth nations. If these and the literary terms are done well, the door is already open and you merely need to delve into just a couple of other topics superficially to crack the exam.

No, I did not take any formal coaching for the exam. It was just a focussed study within the four walls of my own study room. The Youtube and Wikepedia being its windows.

I had figured out no matter how much you study, paper-II will always have a lot of questions on topics you would have probably never heard of. Here you need to use your own mind and have understanding of the trends in various ages of the English literature to guess out the most probable answer. However, paper-I is very scoring and it must be exploited to obtain maximum marks in the exam, which in turn raises the overall UGC NET score above the cut off.

I had studied various books mentioned below. Apart from it, I had practiced past year NET papers and had made my own notes on the important topics (novels and writers) from Wikepedia, Spark/Cliff Notes and Youtube videos.

The most important mistake to avoid is that you must study extensively rather than intensively. More and more topics need to be covered rather than completing selected topics in unnecessary detail.

Any subject in general has never a starting point nor an end point. All subjects are infinite. The most difficult part in NTA UGC NET is exactly that – how to skim out the relevant portions of the subject which will enable you to tackle those 120 questions in paper-II. Once you figure that out, cracking the exam would be slicing a cheesecake.

I was always interested in pursuing an academic career in art and literature (research or teaching); for which qualifying UGC NET is necessary, so yes.

My tip is to start religiously devoting five-six hours of study prior to the exam date and start with solving papers. The rest will fall into place.

My future plans include completing my PhD in literature and being a professor. I also want to be a poet alongside if fate permits.