How engineering made me an all-rounder

-Vinay Rane
Breathtaking View of Sea Link from college and a cool breeze constantly blowing. One can’t ask for a better place for college campus than Bandra Bandstand! I’m Vinay Rane and I’m studying Electronics Engineering at Fr. CRCE, Bandra(Fr. Agnel’s, Bandra). The college has four departments, i.e., Production, Electronics, computers and IT. There are numbers of councils and technical teams.

My experience as a Formula Student during Engineering

I learnt about these teams and councils in college in first year. Abbas used to tell me stories about his roomie and his friends who used to work hard for IITB’s BAJA team when I was preparing for JEE. These stories motivated me to join Formula Student CRCE in my second semester. As the name suggests the team designs and fabricates FSAE vehicles(F1 prototype)  and participate in Formula SAE competitions. As a part of team I mainly worked on hub-knuckle assembly as a fabricator. We participated in Student Formula Japan-2014 and Formula Design Challenge-2015. I’m glad that I was part of a team which fabricated college’s first FSAE vehicle. We are now designing our new vehicle for SAE Supra-2016.

Student Learning Program: Akanksha Foundation

I was also selected for Student Learning Program(SLP) by Akanksha Foundation in the same year. I would like to admit that SLP was a completely different and yet amazing experience for me. We used to meet on Sundays and try to learn about various social issues like education, environment, religion and caste, sex and sexuality etc. We were lucky to have two best facilitators in the business who tried their best to cover all the aspects of the issue and help us know the issues better.

At the end of first year of SLP, we all chose a theme and interned with an organisation working around that theme for a month. I worked with Reniscience Education LLP and my theme for internship was ‘Science and Education’. My work at Reniscience Education was mainly concerned about their project called City as Lab (CaL). The City as Lab conference is an attempt to provide children from marginalised communities an opportunity to participate in authentic research about their city. I also used to teach children Mathematics at Down To Earth Centre at Lower Parel during internship. The internship was followed by a self-project in which I chose to work on ‘Family Issues and Generation Gap’.  After I graduated from SLP, I continued to work with Reniscience Education and I’m happy to state that we have successfully conducted second City as Lab conference.

This year I’ve got an opportunity to work with college’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship Development Cell (IEDC) in which I am working along with two other peers. We are working on a Underground Water Detection System using Reflection Seismology.

All of these experiences have helped me to come out of my shell and develop my leadership skills. Right now I’m trying to concentrate on my projects and enjoy remaining one and a half year of engineering. I’ve got some amazing friends here in college and I’m looking forward to experiencing some amazing adventures with them.