CDAC: My Second Home (Part Four)

Fruitful Fortnight: Soft Skills
We had to be in formals and before time for the lectures. For girls, it was not a big deal. But boys had to go shopping for formal shirts, pants and boots. On 23rd Jan, the first day of module; everyone was looking descent and professional in formals. The lecture was conducted by Srinivas Rao Sir. Firstly, he briefed on the whole module and then took a session on Communication Skills. End of the session, there was a surprise test (even in Post Graduation!!!). I remember one question from the test. We had to explain the meaning of words and frame a sentence.  There were 30 words. Take this test and find what your score is:

Incisive           Balmy              Discrepancy           Tacit                 Rhetoric
Chortle           Intractable        Pragmatic               Lethargy          Odious           
Mollify            Immutable        Contrary                Clandestine      Masticate
Macabre         Topography     Spurious                 Tryst                Recoil 
Hypothesis      Diligence          Culpable                Fictitious          Idiosyncrasy
Mellifluous       Dearth             Ombudsman          Pellagra            Immobile

Then we had a lecture on Team Building (teams were made on the spot) and Entrepreneurship by Prakash Pimple Sir. On 25th Jan post lunch, we had Extempore and Group Discussions by Mercy Ma’am. I got the topic: Mobiles should be banned in college. The topics were a mix of all subjects: Dress code (Namrata), Cycle (Neha), Haste makes waste (Madhur), Newspaper (Nitin), One child policy (Atul), etc. Niket got the topic: Tough situation in life. Had it been tough situation in CDAC, it would be that one X in most of his MGPAs!! Abhishek Girkar got the topic: Walking/Jogging. Anyways, he used to take long walks in the night with his tab.

We used to have lectures by Srinivas Sir and Prakash Sir in the morning which included Stress Management, Campus to Corporate and Barriers to effective communication, etc. Post lunch there used to be activity sessions. On 27th Jan, we had to present on the question: Tell me something about yourself for 5 minutes. It was like going back to kinder garden and saying: MYSELF. It was easier then, not now. Akshay Sir and Shiva Chaturvedi were to evaluate us. They pointed out many mistakes and also gave tips and suggestions. So we were getting prepared for the interviews also.
The activity sessions were not only confined to the lecture room. We had an outdoor activity also. On 30th Jan, we had to solve the Transportation problem given by Akshay Sir. It is a team building activity where each participant gets one short length of half pipe and the group must work together to deliver a marble down the pipes from start point to finishing point. In our case, the activity was slightly modified. In place of marble, we had the TT balls. We were given 15 minutes. For each round we complete, the amount of Rs. 150000 would be added to our bucket. The cost of one pipe was Rs. 1000. We had to decide on the number of pipes we require for the activity. We had to shell out money for ground use and salary per member. Every mistake/error during the transportation would incur a loss of Rs. 3000. So in short this activity requires a high level of communication and team work. We had to complete maximum rounds with minimum errors within those 15 minutes. We were divided into three groups. My group won the activity by making a profit of Rs. 343000. We made 10 successful rounds with only 46 errors using five pipes. Cheers to the efforts of my team members (Ranjith, Neha, Naveen, Abhijit, Chandu (Chandra Kumar Yadav), Nitin and me). 

On 31st Jan, we had Presentation Evaluations. The topics were given just a day prior; but we all managed to complete the ppts. New topics like Grid Computing and Cloud Computing were presented. My group chose the topic: Time Management. We talked a lot on it; eventually audience gave the expression 'we had enough!’ Even Srinivas Sir cancelled the session on Time Management. On 1st Feb, we had a session on 'Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving your childhood dreams'. It was indeed an inspiring video. We created our Personal Blogs on blogger.com; there were other options also like wordpress.com and tumblr.com. We always write the first 'Hello World' program while beginning any programming language. Here we had 'My First Post'. We customized the layouts and posted what we learnt from Randy Pausch (this was an assignment). We were unique, so were our blogs; but the content of the assignment was common. We cannot help restricting the Ctrl C and Ctrl P concept. 

We had a guest lecture from Faisal Farooqui, the founder of Mouthshut.com. A lot was discussed on entrepreneurship. It also included the SWITCH, now WITCH companies. We had a session on Table manners and etiquettes by Saroj Ma’am, our Canteen Head. She gave information on everything; from sitting on the table to leaving the table, seating arrangements, types of menus, meal management, etc. The most important things: how to hold the fork and knife, how to eat, how to drink soup, etc. We promised to follow the same that day onwards.
On 2nd Feb, we had lecture on the most important topic, Interviews. The Resume and Cover letter formats were shared and all were damn serious into this activity. Shekhar Sir took a session on Interview techniques. Johnson Sir took all the management topics like Project Management, Human Resource Management, Interpersonal skills, Conflict Management, Personal Effectiveness, etc. It included team activities like a scenario was given to us and we had to find solutions to it.
On 6th Feb, we had Mock Interviews. The look and feel was like that of real ones. There were two panels and students were divided into two batches. I was in the second panel wherein the Interviewers were Prakash Sir and Madhavi Ma’am. On 7th Feb, we got feedback for the same. The important points were:
  • Be prepared as if the next person to go in is you; and yes always carry a pen with you.
  • Do not get over-excited when you know the answers and panic when you do not know the answers.
The module was complete. Each day was fruitful, building us for the Placements.

 Read next : CDAC: My Second Home (Part Five)

Comments

Most Read Recent Experience