Balancing academics and fun

Who says talent shows are only for school kids? Shattering that notion, the students of Sambhram School of Management recently hosted a talent show-cum-management fest called Sambhramotsava 2013 on their college premises.

The students put their heads together and drew up a plan of a series of events — both academic and fun — which they felt would constitute the perfect line-up for the fest. It was held over two days, with the management events on the first and the cultural programmes on the second.

This fest has been conducted in the college before, but on a much smaller scale. This time, the students decided to go with the adage of bigger being better.

 Although students from other colleges did not participate in the events, they decide to make the intra-college fest a large affair. Payal Bhattacharya, a fourth-semester student who was part of the organising team, says, “The fest was a space for students to showcase their skills. We wanted to put some emphasis on extracurricular activities as well as academics.” Not surprising, the organising team faced quite a few challenges. “Getting the logistics right wasn’t easy. Time management was also a big problem. Since this was the first time the fest was being held in this fashion, we couldn’t borrow from previous years’ experience,” explains Payal.

Eventually, however, the students came up with a list of events that they thought would be perfect. On the first day, they held competitions such as a business quiz and ‘best CEO’, in which participants were presented with certain situations and had to propose models that a CEO would to fix them. There was also a management game which was loosely based on ‘dumb charades’ — students were given management-related topics and had to enact them to a larger group. Another interesting event, which wasn’t a competition as such, was ‘One State One Problem’.

“There are students from different parts of the country in our college. As part of this event, everyone explained the problems they are facing in their state and presented solutions which they felt would aid development in that particular region as well. It was quite enlightening, because we were all briefed about the pros and cons of different parts of the country,” says Payal. On the second day, the students indulged in some fun cultural activities. There was plenty of singing and dancing. Alumni members of the college also turned up, which the present students appreciated.