STORIZEN CONTRIBUTE

Fall Forward

An epoch that visualize the life of 2 young engineers (Anand-Me & Raja- My Friend) who endeavors to bring out their best with all high, low and struggles they traveled.

To my beloved Readers, “Struggle, a default option in all our life and there is no way that I was an exception” All would have faced some sort of struggle in their life, so do I where I had not some but many. It took a longer time to understand that each and every struggle teaches a new lesson, leaves you with a matured mind and most importantly it makes you “stronger to the strongest”. A stronger person, who falls often, rises on his feet again just to face the difficulties, the failure and to move forward by overcoming it every single time.

“Struggle, a default option in all our life and there is no way that I was an

exception.”

And to start my journey, I joined my engineering in one of the colleges in Tamil Nadu. That feel of being an Engineer started from the day 1 of my joining. We all

know and also felt that the college days are the happiest days in our lifespan and it was the same for me “a heaven on earth feel”, is all I could say.

The happy era of my life begins here…., Class fun, group talks, gang forming, bullying friends, infatuations, love, laugh, fights, sharing foods and clothes, mass bunks, first day first show movies, visiting friends place on vacations, attending all happy and sad moments of friends family, and what not the best part of my life….,

Couple of years passed and we were in the third year of Engineering. There started “the twist”- Our friends started participating in symposiums conducted by other colleges, where Symposiums are the group of events that has paper presentations, project presentations; quiz competitions, poster presentation and some knowledge based fun activities.

Most of our friends started winning prizes from other colleges; we were still the same as our first day of college. And, yes it was really interesting for us to see our friends participating in all events and winning prizes competing with other college students.

This created an interest in me and my friend. We decided to participate in paper presentations we actually didn’t knew that it wasn’t a straight forward affair.

It was a long tough process in fact. We need to prepare the concept or the proposed ideas which we are going to present, wait for other colleges to call for papers, send paper to the symposium panel, wait for the paper sent to be selected by the symposium panel(out of 100’s of papers received they would hardly select 10-15 papers) and then an email confirming the paper selection, on duty permission from our college…, yes it is a very long process.

We spent more time on it and somehow managed to finalize few concepts and prepared a good power point presentation. To be frank, it was Raja who was preparing these papers and I was just assisting him.

We started sending our papers to different colleges. Luckily, our paper got selected in almost all the colleges where we have sent.

We went to the selected colleges to present the paper. And it was our first presentation, we were really excited to present our first paper. Eagerly waiting for our turn in the auditorium, and other teams started presenting their papers. We were watching it and also reviewing our points to speak out. It was our turn and we went on to the stage and now we were literally blank. It was a stammer show for others, we were not able to speak what we are supposed to. I could see people laughing at us, but still we waited for the valedictory to get the participation certificate.

It was a mere shameful situation for us. Sometimes situations show you who you are and what your actual capability is.But still we did not give up, we waited for another opportunity. We got selected for Paper presentations in few other colleges. We tried to improve our weaknesses. It moved from one college to other and still we were waiting for our right time.

Remembered few humorous moments on the way -

1. Literally slept in the waiting hall until our turn came and just attended the stage to get the participation certificate.

2. Things improved, able to present the paper but failed when it came to queries.

3. More than what we spoke, we could always see the laugh of the audience.

Finally we started accepting the fact that it’s not our cup of tea. We were actually not fit for it. We were eligible only for participation not for winning.

We stopped sending papers to other colleges. Infact, we never concentrated again on any symposiums. But God had different plan. We got invitation from a famous college at Tirunelveli, we sent the paper long back and it came in the exact time is what we thought.

Initially we thought to drop this event, but then never felt like giving up. Here we started a new beginning. It was an overnight journey from our college to Tirunelvelli, and our intention was for sightseeing the new place.

Reached our destination for the day, waiting in the auditorium and this time it was not an eager wait. Finally it’s our turn for presentation, we both went on to the stage. This time things were different and unbelievable. It was a very confident presentation and the best was the queries raised were all answered clearly.

We also participated in other events like quiz competition and marketing competition. I think it was a day where God had a plan to favor only me and my friend; we were Runners up on quiz, won Winners on marketing event.

It was Valedictory. Actually this was the first time we were eagerly waiting till prize distribution. There was a voice from MoC table, “And the first prize for paper presentation goes to Anandand Raja from XYZ College”.

We also got prize in other two events, quiz and marketing.

We literally stole the show. Every time our names were called, whole auditorium applauded. It was a real moment of proud for us as well as our college. As the proverb goes “failures are the stepping stone for success”, this was the first time we experienced such sweetness of successful moment after facing continuous failures. We went to the stage 3 times to get the prize, shield and medal for the three different events. Many students congratulated personally as well. We bought the famous Tirunelveli ‘Halwa’ for our friends. We were missing our parents. How great it would be for a parent to see their son being honored from another college!

We failed and failed in multiple colleges but failed to realize that each failure led us a step ahead. We all fall in our life at some or the other point of time. Every fall in our life actually takes us forward. Every time we fell, we should make sure to stand again with a new hope, new confidence.