Don’t lose heart if you didn’t make into an IIT

– Priyanka Palshetkar

Every other kid in India wants to crack the IIT-JEE and get enrolled into the IITs. Three years ago, I was also one of them. I rooted for IIT-Bombay! I gave my best and cracked the JEE advanced. Sadly, I couldn’t secure admission at IIT-Bombay. I was despondent and really sad. So much that I wanted to take a drop and try hard one more time hoping to get in. But Abbas Sir (Avanti Mentor) advised me to get over it and look forward in life. I took the leap of faith and got admission in Vishwakarma Institute of Technology, Pune as an Electronics Engineering student and trust me, I have never looked back since then.

I was away from my parents for the first time in my life. I remember my first day in Pune. July 16, 2013! It was my 18th birthday and I was really sad and scared. But today when I look back and relive that day, I feel happy because if I hadn’t taken that step, I wouldn’t have been so confident and independent. Living away from home has its own share of pros and cons. You miss mom’s food but on the brighter side, you learn to cook! I have experienced both the good and the bad side of the coin. I have forgotten my phone to be found back later (thanks to the autowala!) and I have learnt to manage my expenses. But the best part was that I was responsible for my decisions which were an indication that I was a grown-up now!

In pursuit of my passion for writing

Talking about my college life, it has been fun and awesome. There are two kinds of people you’ll find in every engineering college. The padaku kind and the extracurricular kind. I am glad that I belong to an entirely different clan. I score a CGPA above 9 (9.05! :P)and I participate in college activities. I am the content head for MUN (Model United Nations) team of my college. I am also the editor-in-chief of the EDC (Entrepreneurship Development Centre) magazine. We are organizing an Entrepreneurship Summit this year in VIT and I work as the organising head for this event. Also, I am the Technical section head of VIT’s annual magazine (PI Magazine).

So basically, I have nurtured my writing skills even when I am studying for engineering against the popular notion that you have to give up your hobbies once you become an engineering student. And I get good grades!

The point is not whether you get into IITs but how you make the best out of whatever you have. If you get into IITs or even if you don’t, your success wholly depends on your dedication and hard work. It has nothing to do with the college you are in. This applies for everybody and not just the aspiring engineers. I appreciate people who cleared the IIT JEE.  But for those of you who don’t, remember ‘Where there is a will, there is a way!’