Student Interaction

Student Interaction by Dr. Archana Kumar

A guest lecture by Dr. Archana Kumar, a 1995 passout in petroleum engineering from ISM Dhanbad, was organised by the ISM student chapter of SPE on 28th of August, 2010 at 9 am in the PET 1 lecture hall.

Madam was very passionate to talk about her alma mater and wanted to enquire of changes, for instance, in syllabus, professors, hostels, etc. She also stressed that one should never compromise with gpa (grade point average) and asked us to shun procrastination and study actively.

When asked about her post-college experience, she said it depended on place to place. Here she talked about studies at Stanford University where, as she put it, there is always vigorous labour because people who are very much engrossed with studies opt for studies like that. She also stressed that fund is usually no problem for studies; people manage it from TA, RA or other sources.

Then she talked of other branches like Electrical and Electronics which are apparently face of IIT Delhi or Bombay. Companies prefer to pick up fresher from there. But then she placated us to tell that a foreign degree matters a lot.

She also emphasised on the fact that only MBA or only Technical jargon does not help. Both complement each other and are direly needed for proper recognition in the industry.

She also told her own experience of training in her company where very new kind of mathematics was taught which undermined what the college students are reading. However, she said that it was a pre requisite for understanding further.

She further stressed on the point that one should prefer MBA to an MS degree.

The discussion was very discursive and finally took the form of an informal and interactive session. She could not help telling her own experiences. She said that her placement was achieved off campus. Her initial efforts were not very up-beat as she had scored less and had been assigned job in production in which she had little interest. But then she quoted, “All is well that ends well.” After initial labour now she enjoys a respectable position in the industry. She advised us to have perseverance for achieving a seemingly unachievable goal. We should not be demoralised by initial setbacks. Then she praised the MIT Pune. She further said that contacts from petroleum industry are very important and one should try to interact with industry figures for this.

Finally, before she winded up, she told us about the nature of petroleum industry. She said that it is little slow in recovering from recession as the projects are long run. But at the same time, because of the same fact, the industry is not easily gripped by it.