Student Leader Interview - Sanskriti Mishra

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1. Tell us more about your role and responsibilities at college.

For the academic year, 2019-2020, I was the part of following teams/ societies and following were my roles, responsibilities and contributions:

1)Head of the Décor Team of the Department

• Systemized and broadened the publicity and composed décor for various events of the department.

• Organized two competitions in the college open to all the Departments

2)Member, Prakriti, The Environment Society

• Gave suitable sustainable ideas to keep the college eco-friendly and suggested a few ideas for the events to be organized.

• Helped in Online Publicity of all the events organized by the Society.

3)Member, Dhyana, The Society for Consciousness and Awareness

• Conducted one Informal Event on Mental Awareness which involved kids from ZDP, an NGO

• Organized one informal online event which was based on a movie screening.

Helped in Online Publicity of all the events organized by the Society

2. How do your parents look at you participating in extra co-curricular activities?

Honestly, knowing that I was a not so active in co-curricular activities in school days, they find it quite amusing that I am taking so much interest in participating in activities which are out of my comfort zone. They feel very good when they see me taking part in activities which are conducted by institutions other than my college like conferences and NGO meetings.

They encourage me a lot to experience diverse things at such a young age as they believe it will add a lot of value to my future. They also very firmly believe that being appreciated for something other than academics will uplift my self-esteem as well as mood and help me to grow into a confident person who is better equipped to take on the real-life challenges.

3. Do you have a message for parents to encourage students to do things besides academics?

I believe that parental involvement plays an important role in influencing students’ participation and development. I just want to tell the parents that academics and extracurricular activities go hand in hand to raise well-rounded individuals and independent learners.

Extra-curricular activities enhance critical thinking, especially when they are posed with various challenges and have to find suitable solutions within those situations. The children learn to apply their classroom learning to other real-life situation and evaluate the posed challenges and arrive at suitable solutions.

Getting involved in such activities gives an opportunity to meet likeminded friends and share a healthy bonding with them. At the same time, they learn and respect the value of teamwork. So doing things besides academics is very important to widen their perspective about the world at large.

4. What’s it like to juggle between a leadership role and normal college life?

Leadership roles do affect study especially when you function at high positions. At times the leadership roles take up all your time and you are left with no time to study. In these situations, you need to maintain the balance by studying beforehand for papers and not procrastinating to do the left overwork.

There should be a proper schedule that one should follow to maintain the balance otherwise, it can leave a person in a problematic situation.

5. What’s your have a message to encourage students to attend conferences and do internships?

Students should attend conferences and do internships as they will get an opportunity to network with people from different backgrounds and that diversity of thoughts and perspectives will make them learn a lot. They will form relations which will be helpful in many ways in future.

When you will meet enthusiastic and likeminded people of your age at such occasions that will encourage you to buckle up (as there is always some constructive competition in such environment) and try to learn new skills and to keep growing in numerous efficient ways.

You will meet mentors or someone else within the organization with whom you can speak openly with about your goals. They can be a resource for questions and someone who can help you develop your skills and foster relationships within the organization.