SUN CLUB @ JITM -The Inside Story...
It was in September that I took up the charge as the CA for my college....I would like to share my experiences as a CA till date...
As a matter of fact I need to mention some things here... Our sessions begin in the month of July-August and we have our end semesters in the early half of December...Our juniors have the semesters in the second half of December... And we have 3 mid-term examinations each in a gap of one month....Well this is all about our curriculum....
Month Of September :-
So when I took up as a CA it was mid-september... The first event I conducted was the Software Freedom Day... The scene still lurks in my eyes... All charged up for my first event when I reached the seminar hall, all I could find was empty chairs... Was this my expectation... Certainly not... Disheartened by the response, I was pondering about new strategies when a glimmer of hope arouse... I saw some students walking towards the seminar hall... After sometime I could see around 40 students sitting in fron of me.... We started off... I distributed Solaris and Netbeans discs to all the students... I gave an introductory talk on Open Source Technologies and SUN Microsystems... We closed at arnd 5 in the evening... One day later we had another session and now I could see that I had begun instilling confidence in the students they are up for something good in the SUN Club... Then we had our internal examinations and then Dussehra vacations were declared...
Month Of October :-
Well it was the Dussehra Vacations till October 14th and the juniors had their internals from 15th. As a result we could not conduct any kind of a event. That month the Club was quite inactive due to the hectic academic sessions. Then came a bolt from the blue... There arouse speculations that we would be having our semesters in the 3rd week of November... A chill ran down everyone's spine... It became really tough for me to come in contact with the students. Thus everything went disarray....
Month Of November :-
Then I thought if this is the way things turn out, it's not gonna help... I thought of reaching out to the students... Distributed forms for joining the SUN club in as many branches as I could....As a result of the sessions held during the SFD, I got immense response and had lot of members joining the club. Hence I had a huge mailing database... Then came the OSUM thingy... This was the golden chance for me.... I used keep on contacting the students through mail and this turned out great... We became the 4th college in India to join the Century Club and won a pizza party for our club... Well this month had some more good stuff in store for me... We had many sessions... Like we had a session on : Code for freedom , One on File Systems, Windows vs Solaris vs Linux, One on OS installation and some more... Due to clashing schedules I had to conduct sessions for various branches individually... But no matter what the sessions were great and it gave me immense pleasure... I was just beginning to consider myself a good CA when examination schedules were declared... EXAMS FROM 25th ... OOPS :(
Month Of December:-
We had our end semester examinations till Dec 12th and from !5th juniors had their semesters... So nothing for me this month... Now its the winter vacations and College reopens on 5th for us and on 10th for the juniors...
So,finally:
Hope the future has something good in store for me...So its a matter of the coming days, when we have more and more sessions, that the club can be vibrant and make valuable contributions and I can be a good CA... :)
SAMPAT PATNAIK
