CHENNAI: Former President of India Dr APJ Abdul Kalam encouraged students to be unique, “when the world all around you is doing its best, day and night, to make you just like everybody else”, and never stop fighting till they reached their destined goal. He was addressing graduates at the 13th Graduation Day of the Sri Sai Ram Engineering College here on Wednesday.“There are four criteria for building a unique personality, and they are: have a great aim in life, continuously acquire knowledge, work hard and persevere to realise a great achievement,” he said.Sri Sai Ram Engineering College produced 61 university ranks and three gold medals from a total of 865 students. The gold medallists were awarded the ‘Pride of Sai Ram’. a gold plaque, by the management in recognition of their achievement. The first MBA batch of the college were also awarded degrees. Principal of the college Dr C V Jayakumar, presented the academic report. Others present included MJF Ln Leo Muthu, founder and chairman of the college; Dr S Seetharaman, chief strategic officer; M Vasu, secretary and Sai Prakash Leo Muthu, chief executive officer.Early life lessons Urging students to learn how to work with stressful deadlines Dr Kalam narrated an incident from his student days at the Madras Institute of Technology: My professor reviewed one of my projects and declared my work to be gloomy and disappointing. I asked for a month's time since I had to get inputs from five of my colleagues to complete the system design. But Prof Srinivasan said to me, “Look, young man, I will give you three days. If I don't get the configuration design by then, your scholarship will be stopped." I was jolted, as the scholarship was my lifeline. My team didn't sleep that night, skipping dinner and working at the drawing board. On Sunday morning I was close to completion of the work, when I felt someone's presence in my laboratory. It was Prof Srinivasan studying my progress. He gave me an affectionate pat and words of appreciation. Through the review mechanism we understood the value of time. I realised that if something was at stake, the human mind got ignited and working capacity enhanced,” he said, adding that it was a talent-building technique.
Comments
0 comment