My first day at SCIT-Kapil Malik

A day without an aim is a day wasted!

–          Kapil Malik (Yes, I thought of it just now. No kidding!!)

Hello readers, I am Kapil, a student of SCIT-ITBM, batch of 2014-16 and 5th June was officially my first day at the institute. Although I had reached Pune yesterday but I could not attend the induction ceremony (which I heard was quite intuitive and inspiring) due to unavoidable circumstances. I unpacked and settled in the ‘D-hostel’, the first I heard, sounded to me like ‘the’ perfect name for a thriller movie! And yeah, I went to the campus to collect my ID-card.

This morning I woke up to my alarm at 8:07 am, though I had set the alarm for 8 but it took me 7 minutes to figure this out because its sound started to build up another story in my dream, happens to me all the time, heh! Anyways, I got ready, had breakfast and came down to the campus with another SCIT student whom I met during breakfast and was able to strike a conversation with because of Hyderabad, his hometown and my home away from home during the 2+ years of my tenure with Infosys Limited.

As we sat in the 2^nd row towards the left of the assembly hall, I was anxious to hear and meet the faculty of the institute, especially Dr. Raman, our director and his words of wisdom but I have to say and I am being honest about it, I was taken by surprize when he started off in a very serious, strict manner and it worked, I suddenly felt at home as sugar coating and sweet talk is something which I personally do not prefer when it comes to getting things done while sticking to the time lines. I was impressed by the straight forwardness and the blatant manner in which he spoke to us. Another thing that impressed me was that he wanted to start off by introducing the staff support workers whom everyone refers to as ‘bhaiya’. He made sure that they felt that their role in the institution is as important as anyone else’s.  As we proceeded, we were introduced to the our faculty and staff, we got to know about the grading system, the course structure and we met Col. P.L. Kadam, Chief Campus Administrator who gave us valuable information about the campus & hostel facilities, rules & regulations etc before we finally broke for lunch.

During lunch, I met my friends’ parents who had come with him to see him off as it was his first time away from home. They had to leave for their train back to the land of twin cities (and now even twin states so to say) in another 15 minutes. I reassured them that there is nothing to worry about. I could see tears of a mother and overflowing emotions of a father as they said goodbye to him which reminded me of the day at the IGI airport, Delhi on the 17^th of December, 2011 when I was leaving my hometown for the first time to Infosys, Mysore. I touched uncle and auntie’s feet seeking their blessings and we both moved towards the assembly hall as we were asked to be there by 2:30 pm.

And in came a surprise, an ice breaker session!! We were divided in 10 groups of 10-13 students each and given an activity which involved putting our heads together with team coordination. We were given 10 1-1.5 feet long PVC pipes, a bundle of rope, two elastic strips, a table tennis ball, a holder for the ball, a pair of scissors and some rubber bands. All we had to do was to build a structure that could project a ball using a single gesture from the user and without his or her supporting the structure. The structure should be stable even after the ball has been projected. The team whose ball goes the farthest wins! The activity had two phases:

Phase 1: 

Duration: 30 minutes.

For each team, three designs of the structure had to be prepared and submitted to the clients (five volunteers amongst the students were chosen for this job) out of which the team had to unanimously choose one. One representative from each team had to present the ideas or rather ‘sell’ the ideas to these prospective clients.

Phase 2:

Duration: 30 minutes.

The construction phase-The design approved by the team in the previous phase had to be built now using the materials provided and its testing, further improvement and regression activities.

My learnings from Phase 1:

• Being the most knowledgeable or skilled is not everything, one must be a good listener and take into account suggestions from other team members and discuss on them.
• Create a positive work environment, happy people perform better.
• There might be people who are not interested in the work assigned, ask them why and guide them if required.
• For presentations, one must at least sound confident and know everything and I mean everything related to the submitted proposal by the book.
• The client knows when he’s being taken for a ride.
• Only commit to what you ‘know’ you can deliver. One should have a proper estimate using a prototype etc. to come to a proper commitment of the services and products one can deliver.

My learnings from Phase 2:

• Only the experts should ‘construct’ the requirement otherwise it’s of no use and plainly a wastage of resources.
• Proper testing is a very important aspect.
• Appreciating the team on success and motivating during hurdles is foremost important.
• Due recognition to excellent performers should be given, but in a way that encourages other to perform better and not the exact opposite.

And yes I had the privilege to be a part of the winning team! 🙂

So this encapsulates an overall experience on my first day @SCIT. Hope there is more to come in this sojourn of ours. Take care and thanks for the read!