A peek at college life

An induction programme was held for the freshers at Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communication 

The freshers of Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communication were recently given a rundown of college life in the form of an induction programme. This informative session offered the freshers a chance to listen to lectures from noted personalities in the media and communication sector.

The students grouped together with a sense of anticipation, obviously looking forward to their first brush with a real-world crowd.

The new batch of freshers have come from all across the country and from different backgrounds; the change to share their experience and interact with each other was quite special for them.

The programme began with various ice-breaking sessions. These were conducted by people such as Veena Bhatt, a former participant of the Mrs India competition; Shree Advani, a psychologist and Arvind Varchaswi, from Art of Living, among others.

After this, the students got to meet some people from the advertising and PR worlds — these included Bhaskar, an ace cinematographer; Alan D’Souza, the founder of the Mudra
School of Communication in Ahmedabad; R Sridhar, the CEO of Brand-Comm and veteran statistician, Pratima Verma.

Vibhav Shetye, previously an engineer from Goa Institute of Technology who was part of the programme, says, “I was a typical techie until I realised that my passion was photography and that I wanted to see myself as a media personnel in the years to come.”

“It feels really good to attend an induction programme with such dignitaries from the industry,” he says.

“A programme like this breaks all stereotypes about arts courses being easy. In fact, I think this field is as challenging as the other courses,” adds Vibhav.

Anjana Anand, from Coimbatore, adds, “One of my favourite lectures was R Sridhar’s. I thoroughly enjoyed unravelling the world of brands.” “Instead of speaking about the history and philosophy of putting brands together, he directly hit the bull’s eye by giving us a lot of industry-relevant examples,” adds Anjana.

The students were quite pleased about this quick introduction to college life. Not only did it give them first-hand experience of interacting with industry veterans, but it also proved
to be the perfect way to kickstart their two-year mass communication course at the college.