An Outlet: Part 2

19 July, 2017.

Today was a tough day for our group.

A few days from now, we were going to have a prominent industry person visit our college. For this purpose, all the club committee members were called out of the blue. Each club was designated a place on that floor of the campus and we were asked to prepare an introductory speech for our club.

We all got to work. We had a rough draft of our vision-mission in place. Our Vice Dean then came up to each club, pretending to be the chief guest. My President and Junior Vice President were the ones speaking and they did... a fairly okayish job. We promised our Vice Dean that we'd work on our speech and it'll be perfect by tomorrow.

What we didn't know was that there was a surprise dry run by our Dean. She came up to us suddenly, and asked us to begin. Ms. Paula then called out to the President but the Dean was like "I don't want the President, I want someone who can speak exceptionally well." And even before our President could start his speech, our Dean cut him off and announced that she'd introduce our club instead. All we had to was come up with some gift for him.

How disrespectful was that? Especially for the President, who is one of the only person in college to go for extempore competitions. She found us incapable of even introducing ourselves. Dude, we have 'Orators' in our club name. Atleast hear us out! I personally found it very rude and demeaning.

I really don't agree with the whole 'we shall paint a rosy picture of everything and fool the world' motto.

We were all quite upset after that incident and I now look at my Dean in a very different angle. It's like she doesn't mean what she says at all. 'Developing' is an integral part of me. And college is all about developing. So if you promise us an atmosphere to do that, you can't backtrack and only put the 'developed ones' on show.

An hour later, Ms. Paula called all of us to the canteen. We ate in silence and then what Ms. Paula told us has me feeling that she will be my true mentor this year. She told us that we will all work double hard on our speaking skills and other activities so that no one ever has a chance to think that we are incompetent. I really like this attitude. She did not give up on us. She instead showed faith in us and asked us to believe in ourselves. I think that's what a mentor should do.

We spent the rest of the evening researching about the chief guest to come up with something to give him. We decided we'd be ready with a short story as well as a poem so there are options.

Today was truly not our day. We had been humiliated, looked down upon and considered a weak team.

But I know we'll work on it.