Explore to Excel
It was a sunny Saturday afternoon when the usual college campus would look deserted with only a few nerds on the way to the library. The hustle bustle on such a day was quite different and the difference was a campus full of exuberant participants from various locations, age groups and domains who were connected by one common factor – alumni of PSG tech. The amount of joy that they get and the warmth they feel, when surrounded by faces and hearts that gave them memories, experience and knowledge, was priceless.
Meanwhile, the Department of Computer Science was even more excited and thrilled owing to the alumni guest who had promised a guest lecture, MR. S. SARAVANA PRABU (B.E CSE, 2000-2004), SQC Lead at KLA Tencor India. He has handled a variety of roles in the corporate industry by serving as the project head at Amazon.com, a quality assurance engineer at Alcatel Lucent and a senior software engineer at Novell Software development. Apart from reaching such heights, he has always been up for helping young students and youth and has been a life changing factor for almost 25,000 youngsters in TamilNadu, Andra Pradesh and Karnataka.
This is not the first time Mr. S. Saravana Prabu has agreed almost immediately on invitation, as he is always up for any event, speeches, and motivating sessions that involve the college and the faculty. He is probably so attached to the alma mater that he seeks satisfaction in staying a part of it. He has been able to understand and draw boundaries between the amount of success he has had in the corporate industry and the positive look on life and its shortcomings.
He entered the hall, this afternoon with his trademark smile and excitement; and what followed him was even more interesting- a bag of candies! He proposed a welcome note to everyone seated and graciously enquired everyone’s well-being; leaving the hall filled with smiles and warmth. The smiles grew wider when the candies were distributed! Everyone was equally puzzled as they were eager to open up wrappers, an instruction – the candies weren’t to be eaten until the end of the event! The temptations increased, but were soon nullified as the students were engrossed in the unexpected activity that followed. It involved getting to know three strangers in the hall, their dream occupations and pass a small honest compliment. Though it began with a certain degree of hesitancy, the students soon caught the purpose and idea of this unusual activity. When similar questions are asked and absolutely unique answers are received, it leads one to the realisation that every person is different and the purpose of life would be to respect and comfort others’ interests and beliefs. Mr. Saravana Prabu added that this was a basic understanding that if cultivated could lead to a better corporate outlook and practice.
When everyone were in awe of a lesson learnt in less than 3 minutes, Mr. Saravana Prabu was ready for imparting more. And this time, the activity involved a paper and a pen. Everyone had to write about what they thought was their strength and weakness, in a list. And soon enough as the list was completed, a short story of a chained energetic dog came up. This small dog that loved to run around swiftly and cause trouble to the one walking it, was chained by a long leash, just as much to keep the dog believing that it was free until it ran the length of the rope and to its disappointment, it realised that it can go no further. This was wisely compared to the societal system that we follow. If the dog was the weaknesses in the list and the rope was the fears one had, one could only overcome his/her weakness if unleashed from the fear of embarrassments, fear of making mistakes and fear of hard work. While this was said, a question was raised from one of the faculty, “How and when do we start getting rid of our weaknesses, and what if it involved others?” This question was attended by an interesting answer – follow the three options, give your best effort in getting better; if that isn’t enough and the matter isn’t of much importance, ignore; and if it involves mostly others’ efforts that weren’t very reliable, concede!!
As the session was coming to a close, the speaker unwrapped the candy and everyone followed, when everyone startled astonishingly at the sight that the speaker began chewing the wrapper instead of the candy. Then, he uttered…
“Isn’t this how you see life? You know something is wrong, yet you go for a take in doing it. The result is you end up chewing the tasteless wrapper forever and never get to experience the sweetness and essence of the candy. So, get up and spit out the wrapper (weakness), the candy (success) is waiting for you!”
