A Rendezvous with Shinu VS, Praise Pious and Anish Pappachan

The rendezvous with Shinu, Praise and Pappie gave the audience three perspectives - one of dedication, hard work and transformation; a second, of learning from down-to-earth life experience; and a third, of opportunities and avenues with IT interface.Anish Pappachan (MSW 2013) fondly christened Pappie conversed on the broad prospects for Social Work being an inclusive discipline. He highlighted the wisdom of the host of task, challenges and programs envisioned on the campus; the most endearing being the compulsive “PIME” approach to everything ‘overdid’ in and out of campus. Praveen V Thomas (research scholar) qualified this as a ‘pipeline’ something you go through, without any options, but ultimately push you into a new phase in life. Anish opened up the immense possibilities offered by IT in the form of Moodle and more recently MOOC which provides access to innumerable course materials offered by overseas Universities. These platforms put you in better stead for employment especially with international agencies such as the UN, UNICEF. He also stressed on the importance of inculcating the confidence in ‘cracking the interview’ by presenting one’s self effectively.

Praise (MSW 2013) confessed of his loyalty to the Loyola, having made it on campus at a crucial juncture of his career; he had to take leave on the third day of his new assignment with Ikiya International, which was into capacity development and skill training of BPL candidates. He stressed on the importance of learning from on hands and from ground realities. He posed that may be he have done ‘very little,’ but whatever little he did, he did  it consciously and from the heart; that taught him a lot. He punctuated on the importance of going out of campus to learn about diverse cultures and languages which would add both to the personality as well as perspectives.
Shinu who was keen on cracking the civil services stressed on the need for determination, dedication and hard work as key to success. He recall of how quiet he was in the initial days, and how a request to cut out a violin by a senior ‘chechi’ helped discover his flair for arts. This artist in him was instrumental in designing and decorating at least four college days and Christmas celebrations and further the Golden Jubilee as well as two NAAC reaccreditation visits.
All of the presenters stress on the need of gaining familiarity with computers and higher order applications of Microsoft Excel, which was a versatile tool of database management. Dr.Sonny mentioned about how this was important, Excel being compatible with most soft wares such as R, SPSS, to name a few. They were also unanimous of the need of documentation skills that one develops through report writing. They stressed on the need to ‘stand out’ during the recruitment process by working right from the beginning with definite plans to a career, designing appropriate resumes and become adept in cracking the interview with suitable illustrations from their experience to establish their credibility in staking claim to the post. They poked Sonny recalling the abundant ‘red notations’ on all their reports as part of travelling through the pipeline. There was an apprehension about the stress owing to workload which Pappie and Praise laughed off in a quick reply “… stress is what you make of things… stress …at Loyola…” They recalled the long hours they slogged in the run up to the golden jubilee and the occasional visits to the beach to get their minds off stressors if any. Viswathi and Aswathy appreciated the speakers regarding the perspectives.
Complied by Viswathi, Sherin and Sonny ... Published by Praveen