More updates

Some good news and and some not so good news. That's life.

BCom students completed their 5th semester exams on Monday. Most of them have holidays for five weeks. While some students plan to prepare for aptitude etc, few others might go to their villages and a short break. Everybody seems to have written exams reasonably but for one subject: computer applications. The reason for not being able to do well was: lost of questions were asked from Tally software, in which these students didn't have exposure. All the students yesterday requested that they want to go to Tally course. Since many jobs now a days require a knowledge of Tally, it was suggested that the students should decide about the course, fee etc in this week itself, let the volunteers know about the plans and join the course ASAP.

Dipankar Dutta, Pramila Joachim and Anu Kumar, volunteers from Oracle BootCamp came yesterday to St Teresa's to select students for the fourth batch. Yes, it is amazing to see the energy the volunteers bring in. The advice from previous BootCamp students [Nancy, Roopa Lakshmi and Sharada] strongly recommended the program to the new students. Following the last batch logistics, students from Prerana were also allowed to take part. The primarily consisted of BCom [around 20] and Diploma [around 20, all from Prerana]. Starting with introduction on BootCamp and time slot availability collection from students, stage is set to start the new batch - which might begin in January. Then there was a game [I don't know its name] whose objective was finally to give a message "In every communication, there will be key words and distractions. Understand the objective and catch or ignore parts of the content accordingly". Two teams of 20 each were asked to go from one end of the ground to another end. A bunch of old news paper sheets were given. The students are supposed to step only on those papers by putting them on the floor. They were supposed to device a strategy after discussing various alternatives. It was a very good team building exercise.

English classes for PUC-I have been going on for the last three weeks. The classes are conducted from 10.30am to 12.00 noon by a lecturer from MES college. This is a very good activity to bring them up to speed in improving the language barrier issues.

Bharat, [who is not financially supported by FoCh], had a partial paralysis stroke two weeks ago. Now he is recovering in BGS Global Hospital. He underwent many tests and fortunately he doesn't have to undergo any surgery. He goes to ACE for JEE/AIEEE coaching and is a bright student. He will have to be on medication for a long time.