I dived into my Bachelor’s (in Communications Studies) right after school. Having been exposed to both the corporate world through college and the NGO world throughout my life, I realized during my year off, that education was perhaps the best balance for me as a career possibility. The field seemed optimistic, challenging and exciting enough. This led me to pursue my MA in Education at Azim Premji University. I have also been extremely privileged with all the learning spaces that I have been a part of, and taking up education seemed like the best way of giving back what I had received all my life.
I graduated from APU in 2017, carrying with me several interests that I had picked up during the two years there; love for sociology, children’s literature and empowering people through making knowledge accessible. The work that I do now involves each of these areas, both independently and as a combination at times. I teach sociology to 11th and 12th graders at a school called Creative, and I am also involved in the Kannada translation initiative at APU. I have slowly started venturing into work related to children’s literature, dissemination of the same and library work after completing a Library Educator’s Course in Goa.
I have always considered myself very lucky to have found a home and a family in CFL. At every stage, as I moved from one educational institution to another, I have observed different aspects of the school’s philosophy get highlighted and challenged in my own head. And it is reassuring that CFL is a space that is not afraid of letting its students or alumni question it endlessly at any point. In fact, it sows the first seeds of that. And because one carries this sense of skepticism wherever one goes, it becomes difficult to accept/take anything blindly; but at the same time, it makes it also extremely easy to be open to new ideas, experiences and challenges, simply because one is able to take oneself less seriously and be less rigid. That is perhaps my biggest take away from school.
The idea of ‘watching patterns of thoughts and emotions’ has only taken different meanings as I have grown up and made sense at a deeper and deeper level. And this in itself has been an interesting journey. All the other spaces that I have been a part of, have contributed to and revealed different facets of the question. But I’m grateful to CFL for instilling it in me in the first place. And it is these very values that dared me to feel my way through life and be micro ambitious, doing things that has given me peace and meaning at the point of time without perhaps compromising on rigour. It has relieved me from the pressures and stresses associated with high ambition and success, because it becomes possible to question the very nature of that ambition itself.