Placements in colleges: now a history

All the folks in your graduation or post-graduation, please get ready to read this news in the media very soon. A lot of students have pinned their hopes on colleges for their lives ahead. All your hopes might come crashing down once this news becomes a reality soon. Prevention is better than cure. Instead of relying on the past record of history it would be quite helpful if students start relying on their own strengths and skills. Some of you might be wondering as to why this would happen very soon. Let me explain…

Few decades ago, there was nothing called as placements in colleges. Schools and colleges were meant to be places for pure education. They were just limited to teachers and students and a few other technical staff who would manage and run the entire show. Parents expected that their children would come out as the brightest students from the respective institutions and chose them based on the quality of teaching alone. Few years back, when the concept of placements was introduced into colleges, when few companies started recruiting people even before their graduation was complete it was a bonus for those students who performed really well up to the penultimate year in colleges. Since companies also could save time on interviewing a bunch of candidates just to select few, and hence save time, they collaborated with colleges to do the job of filtering the applicants. Even the few colleges chosen by companies, got the reputation amongst public for developing their students so well that they would be recognised by corporates even before convocation. So, it was a win-win situation for all. Unfortunately, as time passed this bonus no more remained a bonus; everyone wanted to make this bonus a part of the curriculum itself which started to ruin things in all directions for everyone. Applying facial make-up products at times can help you look better but applying them day and night shall only ruin your skin. The same started to happen in our education system.

Colleges were meant to concentrate to bring in good teachers, get good lab facilities, and conduct programs for overall development of students. Instead their focus shifted to getting companies to their campus to conduct placements for students. Naturally, the focus on earlier aspects reduced, and hence, the quality of education took a back seat. Companies also had to select students, no matter whether they were employable or not, only to maintain their good relations with the colleges due to past records and future hopes. On the contrary, students who chose colleges based on quality of education earlier, now started to blame the lack of quality, but still joined the same only with the hope for placements. Now, the students, who needed to concentrate on studying well and scoring good marks in tests, projects and exams, instead postponed their seriousness to the final year exclusively for placement tests and interviews. Obviously the subject knowledge went down in them. Hence the students’ quality also started decreasing cumulatively. Companies, who had tied up earlier with colleges depending on quality of education provided by the college and the quality of students graduating from the college, started losing hope on getting the best students from the college. Hence they stopped coming to colleges and students hopes went crashing down. Everyone was only losing in all directions. Colleges and companies started blaming students for lack of seriousness in studies and lack of skills while students started blaming colleges for lack of proper infrastructure and under-quality teaching. It only became a more vicious loop day by day as years passed by.

This has to end somewhere and equilibrium has to set in at some time in the very near future. As people say, ‘History repeats itself’, people will start realising soon the mistakes of their predecessors and start adopting the conventions of their predecessors following the rule of ‘Old is Gold’. Colleges shall soon shift their focus on giving the right quality in education than running around convincing companies to hire their students. Companies shall become choosier before entering any college, or might wait until the right candidates apply directly. Students have no other option but to change because college rules and company laws are in the hands of few wise people who might implement the changes overnight but, a student’s life is only in the hands of him/her. You need to make a wise choice for your life. You can no more depend on the college campus placements for deciding your future. Choose a college for the right quality of education, learn your subjects well, give your best in studies to score the best marks, use the time in college to develop yourself in multiple dimensions, and especially, take the help of teachers, not to adjust your attendance, but to clarify your doubts and answer your questions. Invest your time in developing yourself than your resume. It shall get built on its own and it shall speak to the company heads on your behalf in the interviews.

Many companies have stopped coming to colleges, many colleges have postponed their placement schedules, and many students are graduating out of colleges unemployed even with the best percentage. These are the signs to prove that the news in the title of today’s blog post is going to be in reality and in the media soon. Beware my dear students!

Wake UP call - 12 best lessons from my mentor - Part 4

Lesson 10: Excite your work

 

No matter how many leaves we take from our college or office, ultimately we need to accept the truth of life that we need to work to earn our bread and butter. We need to work to earn our livelihood, we need to work to accomplish our dreams. Ultimately majority of our life is spent only on working because life is just the other name or work and vice versa. As we are aware that we need to work throughout our life, it's mandatory for us to make our work exciting. No one can come and make your work exciting. You've to innovate different ways of exciting your work all by yourself to enjoy doing it day and night.

Lesson 11: Every new skill matters

 

There is no other option but accepting the fact that there are a billion talents and skills existing in this world today. Every skill has its advantages. So no skill is small, no skill is big as long as you know as to when to use it and where to use it. No opportunity comes to us with a pre-invitation. We must be prepared to meet any opportunity whenever it strikes to achieve success. Developing new skills goes into the category of preparation. A new skill which you're interested in may or may not be useful currently in your work but there's no harm in developing it today because it might be of help tomorrow or sometime later. Hence I claim that every new skill matters.

Lesson 12: Surprise the world with something new frequently

 

The world around us and the people in it always like and love surprises. Monotony is ruling the lives of many in current times. People are trying to find solutions to breakthrough the doors of daily work schedule. Unfortunately some are bound by honesty while some others by salary. As a result, they work in spite of all the hard feelings at heart. What brings a fresh feeling in them is that of seeing someone who has broken the shackles of the world, broken some rules, taken some risks to boast of some achievements. When the audience is awaiting, the superstar has to arrive and he cannot repeat monotony. He has to bring something new for every show to entertain the audience . Likewise, each one of us will have to get something new often to surprise the world around us which is waiting for it.

Wake UP call - 12 best lessons from my mentor - Part 3

Lesson 7: Capture the collection on the way

 

How many photos have you taken of the street that you travel through everyday? How many photos have you taken separately with each of your friends? Probably the answers for both these questions is very less in number. We go through a lot of things but don't capture them as memories. Sometime, during the course of our journey when we need a collection of all such things we have no clue as to how to build it. Hence it's always advisable to take a photo at a new place where you are the first time on the way to your work. Like this you can have a huge collection of memories stored with you to refer back at any wanted time.

Lesson 8: Categorize your To-Do list

 

Writing down a to-do list is very important for our work to get distributed into a format such that not even one activity escapes our notice. However, putting all the work to be done under just one list gives no priority or consideration exclusivity for any single task. Each item on the to-do list is equivalent to the ten other tasks that exist there. It's just like training a lion and a chicken in the same training room with the same hunter which is totally irrational. Hence we must categorize the tasks on our to-do list so that we can prioritize accordingly and work.

Lesson 9: Targets are the most essential

 

No run can be scored if the crease is not marked at all in cricket; not even a single goal can be scored if the goal post is absent in the football field. Likewise in life nothing can be achieved if we don't have targets to achieve something. Target need not be only what we need to achieve, target should also be the time limit within which we need to achieve what we desire to achieve. Unless our target is time-bound, we will not be able to drive our energy at the highest peaks possible in order to exploit our complete efficiency. Associate your work with a target and enjoy the benefits.

Wake UP call - 12 best lessons from my mentor - Part 2

Lesson 4: Wake up, Take up, Dress up, Make up

 

If you've to go up in life, then you have to follow the 4 UPs of life. This was taught to my mentor by his mentor. Here are those 4 powerful UPs which can make us go up and grow up in life. Firstly, it's essential to wake up from our sleep early. Secondly, we must be ready to take up every responsibility that comes our way by seeing it as an opportunity. Thirdly, dressing up to be ready for work is the next UP. The world recognizes you by your dress first than your words. To err is human. So, it's very natural to find mistakes happening and we will have to respect the Murphy's law as well. Finally, we must be ready to make up for all the wrong decisions taken and unanticipated events that take away our intended results from us.

Lesson 5: Be time conscious

 

Time is eternal and immortal but humans are not the same. Hence, everything that's associated with us has a limited quantity. Likewise even time is a limited resource that God has gifted us of which we must make a wise choice of while using. A penny spent can be earned back but a minute lost can never be regained. That's why it's important for us to keep a check on where our time is being invested in and be totally time conscious.

Lesson 6: Feel the superstar in YOU

 

No matter how much ever one tries, one cannot be exactly like someone else is. Each human being on this planet is unique in himself/herself. Being so, everyone has unique capabilities and the skill levels to excel at them. It's completely up to us to decide how far we want to reach in life. Everyone dreams of being a superstar by mastering certain skillsets. While you dream of becoming a superstar you should feel the superstar in you. You will have to behave as if you've become the best in what you do and that influence itself shall make you a real superstar someday in the eyes of the people around.

Wake UP call - 12 best lessons from my mentor - Part 1

27th July was yet another remarkable day when I went to my mentor, Sujit Lalwani sir with a problem seeking for a solution only to learn that the problem was not the problem at all but there was something beyond that. The discussion started with just a request of one minute to discuss about the plan on work timings but it took an entirely different course as the real reasons for the confusion started unfolding. A one minute intended clarification went on for more than two hours of discussion and some of the best lessons were shared by my mentor. There is no point keeping these 12 powerful lessons with me alone. They've helped me a lot and I wish to share them with my dear readers so that whoever wants to uplift their lives can use them.

 

Lesson 1: Feel your dream

 
All of us have dreams but not all people feel their dreams. The reason you will find people with dreams but no destinations is because they don't cherish the feeling of accomplishment of their dreams even before dreams come true. Only when you can feel the thriving effect while imagining the dream coming true only then will you be able to accomplish the dream with the drive it gives you. Hence it's very important to feel your dreams while working to achieve them.
 

Lesson 2: Reignite your dreams

 
I am sure that you can go back to your past and recollect a lot of dreams that you had in your childhood. As we grow up we tend to forget the dreams and start building new ones. The same process repeats and old dreams are forgotten while new ones are built. There is no point in forgetting a dream once dreamt. Hence it's very essential to reignite our dreams time and again only to not allow them from dying away. There is no point in allowing your dreams to die away because we are alive to realize our dreams in reality.
 

Lesson 3: Even you're a human

 
While working towards multiple accomplishments in life, we tend to get pressurized by the number of tasks on our to-do list/s. Too much of competition from all directions bog us down. At one point, the frustration reaches its peaks and we might even decide to just get away with all the work at hand and not do anything just to attain some bliss in solitude. At such times, it doesn't mean that you're one of those who run away fearing work; it's just a temporary feeling which is very much natural for a human to feel.

How does LOVE happen?

I am sure that you have had this question in your mind at one or the other points of your life. If not, you will have it right now as you continue reading this blog. Life is filled with so many emotions and feelings but no doubt that LOVE takes the highest priority among all these. Love is the feeling that bonds any relationship stronger. However in this blog I would love to dwelve into the topic of love that happens between two human beings which is not related to any blood-line, probably that tingling feeling that you have in your stomach when you catch a sight of the special someone.

Movies have glamourised this love to an extent that the same concept of love keeps taking different forms in every new movie and they are afraid to showcase the same type of love which has become very stereotypical. No doubt that many of us are influenced with movies and most of us end up our conclusions based on such movie-type of love. Does love happen when a boy sees a beautiful girl in the bus stand? So was it beauty that attracted love! Does love happen when a girl sees a brave boy fighting off the goons? Was it the bravery and fighting skills that attracted love! Does love happen when a colleague helps out the other in office work? Helping selected colleagues lead to love! Does love happen when a girl is impressed with singing/dancing/speaking or any other skills of the boy? So, special extra-curricular skills were the reason for the birth of love! Does love happen when people are married through a arranged marriage? If you don't love after marriage there is no other option, right! Does love happen when a guy satisfies every desire of a girl? Fulfilling desires was the way to love! Does love happen when the person goes to the extent of sacrificing life for the sake of love? Sacrificing life for love, impressive but is it practical?

Probably this is one of the very few blogs where I am not conveying any message of mine. These are some of the questions that keep running on my mind and I am damn sure that many of you also have this in mind. Love is a feeling that everyone desires to feel at the earliest point in life but the only issue is that not even a single person knows as to how love happens. All the best to you if you are awaiting for such a experience. You can wish me as well on

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Unsettle the settled

Have you played the zig-zaw puzzle ever? Have you solved the rubik's cube? What did you feel when you saw the unsolved zig-zaw puzzle or the randomly arranged rubik's cube? Obviously if you're one who is interested in these you would have felt the urge inside yourself to try solving them. How would you feel after solving them? You would definitely feel happy to have solved them for few momemts after you solved them but later you will start losing the excitement that you had while solving. This is because there is no more challenge to your capability and there's nothing to solve, the problem itself ceases to exist. If there is no excitement in life then how would you feel living that boring life? This is not just limited to solving a zig-zaw puzzle or a rubik's cube or some maze, this is the crux of life.

Most of them are in the pursuit of settling their lives as soon as possible. Infact we are coached right from our childhood to achieve the same. The meaning of a settled life in today's world is to have a constant flow of income, constant hours of working, constant day-to-day work with a weekly off to complete personal work. Is this all life about? Did mankind evolve through series of civilizations only to live like a machine at the end of 21st century? People are under the false assumption that once life gets settled as said above you can live a happy life. How can one even accept this fact when one is being so monotonous with no adventure or excitement doing the same stuff in and out of the day? Friends! there is nothing called as a settled life for one who wants to explore life. Its only those who don't dare to put their strengths and skills to test and remain complacent with what's available think for a settled life. For those of you who are strong-minded to achieve and accomplish mighty dreams in life, settling is the last option that you can even think of. The moment you start feeling that you're doing the same work without any new innovation in it and start getting bored just switch on the light to take a leap. This is what I mean by unsettle the settled. Even in the age-old civilizations, those who settled down where good soil and water were available created small tribes but those who travelled and explored more of the world became the immortal names in the world history. The choice is yours to choose the life that you want.

Its a misconception that life gets settled once you start having a constant flow of income staying at one single place. New challenges and problems keep bouncing to challenge our settledness. People who don't modulate themselves for these new obstacles obviously get unsettled in this stream. So its upto us whether we wait for the problems to unsettle our lives or we move towards them because problems exist by default. Remember that you cannot construct storeys upon storeys with the same foundation, you have to break down the existing bungalow to construct the new monument.

Life is all about questions and answers. I have posted my questions here and am eagerly awaiting to read your answers on is.mohanbn@gmail.com
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Uncommon from the common

Probably you're still wondering as to what the title means. Before proceeding let me make it clear that this blog might not apply to all. Generally I write blogs which are generic enough which can be felt and experienced by almost all the people in all the situations but this blog is going to be an exception. This blog is dedicated to those exclusive set of people who feel they are quite different from the general public around. Some individuals exist who don't care about the norms of the society having a very high level of thinking and find it quite difficult to get down to the level of ordinary man's thinking. If you're one among these, you need not feel odd about it as I have the solution for you.

Sometime back when I was watching an interview of Dr.Kamal Hassan in a management college he made a statement something similar to this (as I don't remember the exact words) - "At the age of 22 I thought that I was the lonely genius in this world and wanted to commit suicide but later I got down to the level of the world around and started my work". I also had had conversations with few other exceptional people in their career and success who shared the same feeling. They felt they were really talented and skilled enough and that the surrounding world didn't understand their value. I am not talking about aliens here. Some of us are like this right from our childhood. The silly ego competitions among common men don't interest us, we have some of the most brilliant ideas and thoughts that the general public doesn't even understand, we think quite different and positive than the existing pessimistic world which is always under the fear of survival. When we discuss certain topics with ordinary people, they can't even match the plane of thinking and the talk which just irritates us. When Mahatma Gandhiji announced that he would get freedom through non-violence, no doubt that people laughed at him. In today's world if you go out and say that you're equivalent to Mahatma Gandhiji in terms of thinking and work, people discard it as either you're crazy or just casting your pride around. No one seems to accept when you declare yourself as a genius. But the worst part is we know what we are and that we are right about it and hence can't take any rejections in this regard.

The world is foolish enough to buy aerated drinks just because a physically fit actor advertises for it who never uses it. If you average out the IQ of the world you will find very few geniuses and a large number of stupids, eventually due to which the IQ of the world falls even below average. So just don't worry as to how the world treats your credibility or beliefs. The world understands only factual results. There is no wrong in thinking yourself as the best in the world or the lonely genius as sir says. Just keep patience not to expect any acceptance of the same until you use your ideas and knowledge to create the unimaginable results that the world has never witnessed. All the best to those exceptional people around the globe!!!!!

A strange different concept that I wanted to share. Eager enough to get the response from the exceptional geniuses on is.mohanbn@gmail.com
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The Right Time

Knowledge is in abundance around us. Lessons are in million numbers. Theories and agendas are running pages together in books lying in the libraries. Immemse wisdom circulates through the brains of highly intellectual people whom we are surrounded with. Stories of rags to riches and solutions for all problems in the world are printed and picturised in movies. Yet not even a single person on this earth knows every lesson of life or every solution to a problem. The reason is not just because the information world is vast. The reason is also that the discovery of a solution happens only when the person faces the problem.

'Necessity is the mother of all inventions'. This quote is so famous that even a school going child knows this. The reason for every invention that has happened was the necessity of it that demanded the invention to happen. Bringing this concept at the individualistic level, everyone of us learn new lessons and find solutions to problems only when we require it. It all happens at the right time. Sometimes we feel that we know the answers for certain questions posed by life but later we realise how cliched our answers were when we really face these questions in life. Very few among us actually put an effort to learn solutions even before the problem occurs. Most of us search for solutions only when the problem occurs. Probably this is the law of nature as the first statement of this paragraph says. I am not inclined towards whether you find the solution before or at the time of the problem because I believe in either case solution works only when the problem occurs. Therefore I am fine as long as you find the solution.

Its always necessary as human beings that we grow in our wisdom and intellect day by day. But we know that this growth happens only when we start learning new lessons and solutions to new problems. New questions and problems arise only when you start venturing into new activities and new information. Hence I would recommend my dear reader to expand your horizons of learning and increase your areas of interest so that you get a chance to learn as much as possible and also exercise your skills in every direction because we know that the learning will happen at the right time when you encounter the situation that demands.
Its tough to expect a feedback after you've spent so much of your time and energy to read through the entire blog. Still with a positive hope I share my online addresses - is.mohanbn@gmail.com
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