Out of my comfort zone – Extraordinary life as an Internshala Student Partner
About the Author: Sampada Bhatnagar, a student of Giani Zail Singh Campus College Of Engineering & Technology, joined Internshala’s extended team as an Internshala Student Partner (ISP) and talks about her learning experience.
Be the kind of woman who when hits the floor every morning, the devil says, “Good Lord! She’s up.”
This quote was written on one of the many posters that adorned the walls of my room, but my groggy night-owlish-self had never experienced this feeling. That is until I joined Internshala and turned into an early morning bird! My first tryst with Internshala was at an IIT Delhi fest wherein amongst the scary educational drive stalls, I spotted a lively one with students happily buzzing around. Curiosity got the better of me and without telling my friends, I marched towards it. So while my poor mates were searching for me, I was huddled inside the Internshala hut playing intriguing quizzes, building up resumes, and having helluva fun! The cherry on the top was that while all stalls had haggard representatives, the ISP managing this stall seemed to love what she was doing and was very enthusiastic. After winning my idol Steve job’s freebies as part of those games, I remember wondering wistfully how it would feel to be an ISP myself.
The journey of actually becoming an ISP though, started out of the blue when after exactly a year, I got an email regarding the commencement of the new edition of the ISP program. Never having forgotten that feel good memory, I was game and decided to give it a shot. After a brief selection procedure, I was selected!
I had never imagined that after a period of merely of five months, I would have so many of my first experiences:
· First telephonic interview (I had so much to blabber that I gushed on like a Rajdhani Express, trying to escape the time limit!)
· First webinar devoid of any nerve-wracking jitters (An occasion of ice-breaking with an apt introduction to the energetic Internshala team)
· First social media campaign (Online traffic contests and offline promotions helped keep my procrastination at bay)
· First seminar at an inter-institutional level (Confidence boosters – my own business cards!)
Some of the memories from this journey that I’ll always cherish:
a) Making the students experience the power of online trainings while ensuring that they are familiar with integral stuff like ‘Resume vs CV vs Cover Letter’ via a real life analogy of ‘A La Carte vs Main Course Meal vs Dessert‘.
I learned to develop fun stuff spontaneously for the audience to stay hooked up while ensuring that the curious cats were comfortable in asking questions to make the seminars interactive.
b) Staying in contact with the students from rural backgrounds even after the seminars that I conducted. It was especially inspiring for me to hear from the girls that they no longer felt their dreams locked up due to lack of opportunities since all of them were astounded by the zillion possibilities of internships. The ensuing bombardment of registrations on the website was a treat for me!
c) Using WhatsApp for productive work for a change. Those healthy discussions and the truckload of innovative ideas in the WhatsApp groups, under the watchful eyes of the ISP buddies, inspired me to think out of the box myself.
To cut short my never ending tirade of gratitude, I would just like to thank the entire Internshala team for giving students like me a life-changing learning experience and for bringing an extraordinary flavor in our otherwise ordinary, mundane college life.
Want to taste the flavor of success yourself? Applications for ISP 8.0 are now open – you can apply here.
