Oops... God, why me???

Welcome to my second post!


As the name suggests, I am going to share few moments of embarrassment in my life TILL NOW :) A brief background before I start, I come from a Marathi medium school, ummm, I think that's enough background, now let's get started!! :)


My engineering college life was pretty cool, I was in Fr. CRCE (Agnel) college situated in the most happening place of Mumbai, Bandstand! After two years of struggle with English, I landed here. I was still learning and struggling in English. We had this horrible subject "Communication Skills" in the first year. There was a mandatory presentation for every student as a part of term work. We had to present our topic for 10 minutes. I started my preparations and I wrote enough material to speak for 10 minutes and mugged it up nicely. :) 


Then THAT day arrived, we gathered in a conference room. Time was running, 3135, 3136, 3137.. My heartbeats were running fast and there comes my turn! My number was called 3138!! I was shivering.. Somehow I composed myself and went to the podium. God, damn it, Why is such a huge crowd sitting in front of me??? Now this was a do or die situation, so I started finally. I spoke first line of my rattofied presentation and then??? shit, I forgot everything!! My memory had crashed temporarily. I tried to recollect my stuff looking at the ceiling of the room and then I looked down & said "Ma'm, can I start again???" yeah, I actually said that. :D Professor's reaction was like, "Whateverrr, Go ahead". I had a quick glance at the crowd. I saw my friends group sitting right there and everyone was laughing :( I prayed to God and started my presentation again, but as you could imagine, I was damn nervous, I finished my 10 min speech in less than 5 min!! Oops.....


Now get ready for next one.. The story didn't end there, there was also a group discussion as part of this stupid subject :( Thankfully there were no impromptu topics. From a list of options, our group selected one of the topic. As usual, my RATTA business started. I decided what all points I will say. But I didn't know that a GD cannot be planned, you need to be prepared for anything in GD. 


Finally our GD started. Someone started with introduction, someone raised positive points, someone contradicted and what was I doing??? Of course, I tried my best to chip in, but I was ignored by rest of the crowd. I couldn't shout and get into the action, so for the rest of the time, I kept looking at all of them like a tennis match audience. hehehe.. Now there were only last few minutes left. No no, I didn't realize that, I was peacefully listening. :) Our examiner announced, "last 3 min, now I want someone to summarize, Swati please start!!" shit, why me??? My mind was saying "Can I pass??" :( But then I started, I fumbled and as expected I couldn't give nice summary, so somebody took over and scored the marks over me!! Somehow I passed both of these terrible tests. They gave me least marks so that I don't flunk in that subject. My heart was broken, I felt like a loser and I went into frustration for many days. I used to get goosebumps remembering these incidences, but today I laugh at them!! :D


Thankfully gone are those days now, I gained confidence in public speaking in these years. I owe it completely to my first job for this. No, it's not 3i-Infotech, not many people know, I worked as a lecturer in my college after graduation for one semester! After reading these incidences, this must be funny right?? Even I never imagined myself doing this job. But I was in need of job, So I grabbed the opportunity given by our Principal Dr. Sesha Iyer. 


As expected, there were many challenges in this job. First one, ... no need to tell :D and above that, our junior BE batch had all new subjects. Me and Krupa (one more classmate) were given Multimedia Systems subject. Right from day one, there were many embarrassing moments. It was tough task ahead, I used to study all night for next day lecture. There were many incidences where I had to say in the class "I will need to look into this, I will get back to you!!" After some time, my students gave up and stopped asking questions :D But that's not all.. 


I was once taking labs (practical sessions) for one subject. I was just observing each n every person how he/she is doing it. Same way, I stood behind two boys. And I heard what I was not supposed to hear.. Sharad (Yes, I remember that person :D) said, "abey wo pakati hai, usko kuch aata nahi hai!!" Oops, Damn it, why I had to stand there at that time??? Very next moment, Sharad and his friend noticed me standing there and they were like "Ohh shit".. I didn't know how to react to that, I just smiled and asked them "do you need any help?" and then sat down in my chair!! But in the end, this job taught me a lot. I made few friends (my students) from my class by the time semester was over. Krupa and I had most fun with this job, we loved the lunch time gossip about students ;)


And guess what, I got my pictures (while taking the lecture) after few days from one of my student!! Naughty boys.... I guess, my class never paid attention to my lecture. Anyways, thank you all for bearing with me, Dil se...


Now enough for this post. But there are few more "Oops" moments that I would be sharing, but that will be in my next blog.. Keep waiting till then.... Cheers!!