Hello friends, this was my first attempt for SSB and it was the most exciting, memorable, enjoyable moment of my life. Those five days have taught me many of the things, and their I came to know the real meaning of unity in diversity, which India has. In my family there was no one from military background, I never got any of the information about how to join this, but one of my college mate, Krishna, told me about AFCAT and even filled my form, I’ll always be thankful to him. later when I cleared my AFCAT written, my NCC sir, and other friends Nikhil, Ranjit, and Dipak helped me with their guidelines for SSB preparation.
According to me, the one who is desperately willing to join defence can easily crack SSB, only the thing is we have to analyze our self, don’t hide anything or tell lie about your achievements, the people there are experts, they can easily catch it!
Even I was unable to handle the command task, but didn’t hesitated to ask for help, and even I always kept encouraging my group candidates while performing the tasks. I think, may be this was my pulse point. Our group was the best one because we had co-ordination among us, and that is what required in defence. Even in GD we didn’t had quarrels, instead helped others, one who were unable to speak, to put forward their points. I thank Swathi for helping all of us by giving basic information and preparation tips.
Those five days were the best days of my life as I was bestowed with three very good friends, Shilpy, Amritha, and Ann.
Day 1 : We were escorted to AFSB from railway station, when we reached their, we were given chest numbers and started with our test aptitude, PPDT these were the screening tests, in which out of 180, 90 candidates were screened.
Later we had Picture perception test (PPT),Word association test (WAT),Situation reaction test (SRT),Self description test (SDT) even PIQ’s were filled. It’s better to go prepared for this tests, at least have the overview of some solved examples. I was not knowing this but Ranjit (SSB recommended) told me this before.
Day 3 : Day 2 was a break for our group, on day 3 we had our personal interviews, my interview continued for 1 and half hour. The questions in the interview were general, about family, friends, colleagues, achievements, but were rapid fire type questions, we need to be keen listener and attentive, before replying I categorized all may answers, this had helped me in giving better performance . And one thing is to be remembered, the answers in the PIQ, SRT, SDT and the one you are giving in interview should match. The interviewer is very calm, he appreciates our answers.
The favorite question of my interview was “if I place Tr. Annie (favorite teacher) on 1 number, on number scale, which teacher will you place on number 7 ? why ?”, and I replied “Tr. Sumitra on number 7, because mam Annie taught me the values of life, and mam Sumitra encouraged me for my activities “.
Day 4 : Our GTO was conducted on 4th day, in that we had some Indoor and outdoor activities.
Indoor activities : In this activity the GTO showed us the map and explained the situation in the form of story, and we had to find the solution and perform all the tasks. later we were given time to write the solution individually and finally had to get the combined plan for the operation. Thanks to my group mates, they were very supportive, each and every one of us were able to explain our idea. and finally got to the conclusion.
Outdoor activities : Here we had Progressive group task, Half group task, Individual task, Command task, Final group task, and we were provided with helping material such as balli, rope, plank and a load, which we had to carry along with us while crossing the obstacles. There were some color codes to the obstacles.
- White : Helping material as well as candidate can touch.
- Yellow : Candidate can touch but helping material can’t.
- Red : Neither Helping material nor candidates can touch.
Progressive group task : 5 hurdles were to be crossed with increasing difficulty, at first I
went numb, I was thinking GTO as easy think but everything went wrong here, I was not getting even a single trick to cross the obstacle, but then I decided to just follow Swathi as she was good at logic.
Half group task : In this task we were divided into group of 5, even number in one group and odds in one, and again we were given a single hurdle, and Thank God! luckily Swathi was in my group. so crossed hurdle easily.
Command task : In this task every candidate is called and she has to overcome the obstacle, and she can take two other candidates as her sub-ordinates, this was my biggest tension, but then I again called Swathi and Shilpy as my sub-ordinates and as usual both helped me out.
Individual task : Now this was where I was perfect, in this task we had to pass over seven obstacles within 3 mins, they were high jump(1pt), ramp walking(2pts), monkey crawling(9pts), jumping through tyre(7pts), rope climbing(10pts), Burma Bridge(5pts), and walking on the wooden bamboo(4pts). I had crossed 5 out of 7 obstacles.
Final group task : This was also very easy task and we accomplished it within 5 mins.
Day 5 : On this day we had our conference, this was the best experience I’ve ever had, nearly 20 to 30 IAF officers were seating in a conference hall in a semicircular manner, and I was given a chair in the center, write in front of the president and one of the officers just next to president sir, started asking me questions. I quickly Identified the one and replied. the question was, “How was your stay at Mysore? what places have you visited in Mysore?”. It was just of 30 sec, but when my friends came up they told me that the time taken for discussion was much, I was getting tensed and was eagerly waiting for results and after an hour the DSO sir came with a result sheet in his hand, my heart started beating very fast, was nervous. He started telling the results of recommended one’s, chestno 1, (some 5 girls were in middle)…. chestno 22 and directly chestno 44, I crossed my fingers and started praying coz I was in despair, as no one was recommended from 30ties, but soon sir said chestno 46,47,48 and me, Shiply and Gargi were selected and chestno 44 was of Swathi. I was very happy as 4 candidates from our group were selected, and 20 candidates from our batch (M-AFSB/83).
later on DSO sir said this was the best batch there, coz many times the batches of girls get washed out totally, and only our batch had recommended 20 girls.
In the evening we were given a dozens of forms to fill and I was missing Amritha and Ann.
Day 6 : On this day we had our PABT test, for which 9 girls appeared and 6 were selected as pilots. I failed the exam but Shilpy has cleared.
Also Read: My Medical Examination Experience
Author: Komal Pawar: I’m an engineering graduate, from Information Technology and working at a software company in Pune.
