Psenti Sem begins...

Its been 3 years of engineering and now the final year begins with everyone stressing about the placements.
But between this stress of being placed, there is something I fear more. The fear of losing all the happy moments and some of the best years of my life.
THAT'S WHAT PSENTI SEM DOES TO YOU.

Psenti Sem (i.e. last semester on campus) is the best and the worst part of college life. You are free to enjoy, less classes and once you are placed, life becomes easier.
But among this free spirit, there is a fear hidden. Psenti sem, as the name suggests, brings out all the sentiments in you. You remember your joys, your sorrows, your adventures, your juniors, your batchies, friends and possibly everything you can think of.
THAT'S WHAT PSENTI SEM DOES TO YOU.

Another difficult part is to leave home when you have spent more than 2 months straight so close to your parents after such a long time. I know this may not seem as difficult for the sophomores as it is for the freshers, but for a final year student this is much more difficult.
I don't know if I will ever get this much time again with my parents in the near future and this thought made me tearful today when I was boarding the bus to my college.
THAT'S WHAT PSENTI SEM DOES TO YOU.

What's most dreadful is that I get to see some of my best friends on campus (who are on internships this semester) only on the Convocation now. It is so much difficult now to survive on campus, alone. I am already missing them.
THAT'S WHAT PSENTI SEM DOES TO YOU.

I don't know what my future holds for me. But I know that this is the part of my life I will cherish the most.
First year and Final year now seem so similar to me. I want to live this last semester to the fullest.
And at this point, I don't want to say Goodbye to anybody.
THAT'S WHAT PSENTI SEM DOES TO YOU.

The Summer Internship of 2017

Hey guys,

As suggested by one of my friends, I have decided to share my experience of the the internship I had last year.

It was the summer of 2017 and I and my batchies were allotted a "Practice School 1" (PS 1 for short) - an internship in which we learn about the industry and it's operations.
My PS station was in Grasim Industries, Nagda for a period of 8 weeks. Nagda is a town in the district of Ujjain whose major area is covered by Grasim's campus and it's environment is full of toxic gases. There were a total of 37 students as interns from all the campuses and we were allotted different mentors and projects.

Now, when you go for an internship, you have all sorts of thoughts. I had too. I thought it would be my first step in the corporate world. I will get to know about potential future opportunities. I will have to go to the industry daily in the morning. I hope I don't screw up my project. All sorts of possible positives and negatives.

So the first week was quite boring as we had to go to these orientations all day long from one plant to another and listen to the managers. But to be honest, our major learning came from these orientations.

After that we were allotted projects and mentors as mentioned earlier and I realized that my mentor was quite a cool person who didn't expect much from us (us means me and a classmate, let's call him S). He told us to visit the plant, collect the data whatever needed for the project and didn't mind work from home. Now our home was a 3 BHK apartment allocated to 5 students in the staff quarters. And S lived in the apartment in front of ours (project partners were random😅).
So finally after another week, we ended up just going to the plant on Tuesdays and Fridays, because we had to put in the attendance (along with proxies for the week😉).

Now comes the best part of PS - the weekends. In a place like Nagda, there are only three possibilities to enjoy your weekend:
1. House parties on the roof of the apartments hoping that guards don't hear us.
2. Going Indore/Ujjain for a movie or food.
3. Visiting this small city which didn't offer much.

Well we did all of this as we had 8 weekends. There was one more option, working on the project, but as said by a great procrastinator - "we can do it later".😂

So it was all day movies/series, taking a walk or eating. And it was not just us. There were many others with same scenarios. I think that now you must have understood that most of the internships are just flash in the pan.

But the project deadline was near and we were far from the end. Some of the "upper class" people (catagorised on the basis of studiousness, aka Ghots) had completed their projects. And they were already preparing their reports.
And this is when we realized that we need to complete our project or else we might get a bad grade (this grade plays a major role in CGPA).
It was the Friday of the sixth week when we actually thought in some direction and finally visited the plants for the data in the seventh week and successfully finished our project on time. At the end of this project, I and S became very good friends. 

( p.s. - most of the results were fake or miscalculated, but we managed to prove the data correct.😅)

To summarize, I had an enjoyable and fun PS, visited a lot of places, enjoyed various delicacies of Indore and street food of Ujjain and my project presentation went quite well too. So, I believe I had all sorts of experiences on this internship and learnt to deal with people and situations.
That's all for today.

Try to have as much fun as possible in your internships along with the work.

Also, your suggestions are welcome and help me in selecting the topic for my next blog.
Keep reading and I will keep writing.

Cheers.✌️
All the best.☺️

The phase of Confusion

Hey everyone,
Ever felt that your life is just going on a random path, of which you don't seem to have control. I think all of us have felt that way at some point of time and many of us are still on that phase.
You feel that you don't know where you are going and where will you end up eventually. This is me right now and my third year of college has just ended.
When I stepped into College, everything felt so clear. I had goals.
I knew where I wanted to be. But as I progressed, I learnt about various paths, faced various decision I had to make, met with a lot of people having different opinions. All of this and some of my own mistakes made that goal hazy as approached it. And now I doubt that do I actually want that?
Is that where I want to spend the rest of my life?

While talking to people, I realized that it is our generation that is facing this problem majorly. Why?....because we have lot of career options? Or because we are not sure if we will be well of eventually or not?
There is not one but many such fears responsible for our digression from our goal.
You see, I started this blog in hope to share my feelings and experiences. But ultimately got distracted in the second year. So why am I continuing it now? Because I think I have something which I need to sort.
I don't know which way I want to go. I am not sure where I wanna be five years from now.
But I hope to find it soon.☺️
And I hope you all find your paths soon and if you already have, give everything you can to reach your goal.

I didn't write much but I tried to express what I felt and do not panic if you feel confused. Just keep looking as I am.
And if any of you have any suggestions to help me or my blog, do comment.

All the Best.😉
Cheers.✌️

Study smart, not hard!

Have you ever noticed that among our batch-mates, there are many who study a lot (day & night), throughout the semester, but still do not perform as they are expected to be (keeping in mind the hard work they do). And then there are those students who study very little (only 1-2 hours a day) and perform much better in the exams, and sometimes even excel the entire class. Well, this is one of the most common experiences we all have felt sometime in the college. And if you have not, you might belong to the second category.

You might have seen many of your friends struggling hard with studies, staying at libraries for the entire day and trying to grasp from those thick reference books suggested by your teachers. Issuing 4-5 books and then studying from them throughout the academic session. Some of them cannot even spend 1 hour with their friends because they do not have it. 

I have seen some of my friends doing so. And the problem doesn't end here. After all this hard work, if they do not perform well enough in exams (as much as they expect from themselves), then theirs nothing more demotivating about it. For those of you, who cannot connect, it feels like you have been wasting time in studying so hard, rather you could have enjoyed like others. But, that's also not possible. Why?

Because you know that if you start enjoying like others, you might even drop from your current grades. And this leads to more depression. 

Now, let us look at the second type of students. They enjoy their campus life, spend time with friends and have private time for themselves as well. And all they do is study for a few hours once a day and still score better than many of us in the exams.

The big question is: How do they do it?

I myself study for only 2 hours daily but still I have performed (mostly) above average in my subjects. The strategy is called "Smart studying".

In this blog, I am going to discuss the concept of smart studying. But, before that we need to focus on a few key points that would assist you in studying smartly. 

• Before using any strategy, one needs to plan and prepare. For studying smartly, one needs to prepare him/herself. Preparation involves looking at the course plan and analyzing the amount of the course in your head. Taking a quick glance over the pages of the books just once might help you realize the amount of time you will need to give. Remember! just take an overview of the book (I repeat! do not start reading blindly). 
• So, now as you have an idea about how much course to cover, you can allot yourselves time according to that. If the lesson is too long (taking 3-4 hours), then you can include 10-15 min of break in between once or twice. But, when you are studying, try to study continuously so as to maintain the flow. Study for only 2 hours, but without any distraction in between. Because then you can have the entire day to enjoy or talk to your friends.
• One of the hidden concepts in Smart Study is that one should try to understand things and not memorize them. Memorizing should be the last option as it takes lot of time and is really unreliable in exams. 
• The best strategy to study which I feel is by making notes while reading the books and lectures. When you make notes, you read the material, interpret it and then try to write it in your own understanding. This way when you are revising for exams, you don not need to read the entire book again. If it is a fact, you can copy it down. But always try to make your notes according to your understanding.You can put in comments, pictures and points in between so as to help you while revising. 
• If making notes feels like too much of time taking, try to highlight the important stuff in the book itself. By highlighting, I do not mean to paint the entire page. Just the keywords, their meanings and examples related to help you understand.  
• Another important point is always try to connect the material. Its not necessary that what you are taught in one subject should always be connected with that subject only. Stuff studied in physics can always be connected with that in maths. Chemistry can always be connected with our daily products we use. 
• Always try to separate the gist of the content given in least words possible so that it gets easier to remember. Try to convert one page of book into a small paragraph of few lines.

Apart from these techniques, one should always first analyze that what kind of a learner he/she is.

There are basically four types of learners:

1. Visual learners
2. Auditory learners
3. Emotional learners
4. Kinesthetic learners

Now, I am gonna explain each of them and tell you strategies to be adapted specific to each type.

1. Visual Learners: They are those who learn fast when they can actually see whats happening. Videos, pictures and animations can help them a lot in understanding. And in this era of Internet, each of these are easily accessible.

2. Auditory Learners: These people always learn faster when they hear it. Such people should focus more in the lectures. Also, instead of making notes in written form, they can make their notes in the recorded form with addition of comments and then listen them later.

3. Emotional Learners: They always learn better when they can feel what is going on. They can use various aids like learning a concept by attaching it to some real life experience.

4. Kinesthetic Learners: They are the people who learn more efficiently when they can actually do what they are studying. Such people can always use laboratories and experimentation to understand things. 

So, now all you need to do is know which type of learner you are and implement these strategies.

I hope I can help some of you and you might try these for better learning. Remember, you can always go back to your old methods of learning, but at least try these once. 

Thank You for reading.

The First Dinner with friends

This is my first post of my college life. And I thought to share my first ever dinner (outside mess) in campus with friends or more like work partners.
This was my fourth week on the campus of BITS - Pilani and as far as I remember, it was 25th August 2015 (because it was a seniors birthday). I have got recruited in a department (group of people who work for college fests) and it was our first dinner by the seniors as a welcome treat or as they called it "The Formal Dinner". I know that the name suggests it to be very formal and all, but it was very much informal.
I have made some new friends who were recruited along with me and we all were heading to a restaurant inside our campus. On the way, I met a final year senior whom I found very polite. I found it later that he was the Department Head. Just like any other first year student, I was shy and didn't speak much. In the midst of various questions, he asked me if I ever had a girlfriend. And the answer to this question is NO. So, he asked me to propose him supposing if he was my crush. I didn't do it.

So, we finally reached the restaurant, we had space booked, chairs arranged in a round circular manner and seniors sitting on one arc of this circle. Actually, we were early. But after 30 minutes, the restaurant was filled up with people, our people, department people.
Now, it was the time for games. Our seniors had some weirdest but enjoying games in their minds. And one such game was The Game of Dares.
Every first year was told to put their phones on a center chair. Now any senior would pick up a phone from the bunch and the phone's owner will be given a task to be completed. It could be dancing, singing, mimicry, acting or anything else.
The beginning tasks were quiet easy ones, but as the game proceeded, the tasks went on the difficult side. One of my friends got a task of performing pole dance over another guy. Another one got a task of acting like an adult star. Yes, you read it correct. I was quiet lucky, not to have such tasks.

Now, it was my turn and that senior (Department Head) got a chance to make me propose someone. I couldn't say no this time because it was a task. And this time he made me propose to a girl of my batch, who was also recruited along with us. She was pretty 😉 , more shy than me. And the task was not just to propose, but to first know her and then propose her. I gathered some courage and finally sat near her and started some conversation with her. It was all going smoothly, and the suddenly a senior of my shouted "He is gonna propose you". This made things awkward between us. I said that I can't do this, but the seniors wanted to see a proposal. So, anyhow, I proposed her. She didn't answer and the task was over. Later, I apologized to her if she didn't like it. She said, its okay. Today, we are best friends on campus.
Then, we had what we actually came for, Dinner. The food was good and we all laughed at this task later.
And that was the end of that unforgettable day. 🙂
I hope you guys liked my First Dinner experience. There are more others to come.

Thanks for reading.
Have a nice day.