On the 15th of July, I was invited to give a talk at the SNDT Women’s University. The occasion was a one day workshop for faculty from different departments – (mainly Home Science). And it was on Writing and publishing.
I had to speak on the topic “Literature Review” – which is an important part of any research paper. I divided my talk into two areas – Literature Searching and the Literature Review components. I stressed – that it would be easier for them to learn the latter anywhere, but the former – is barely taught. And when I finished my talk – they agreed! They were delighted that I had put in enough emphasis on searching!
Then came the fun part. Out of four faculty for the day, one was from the host institution and three of us were invited speakers. As the three of us introduced ourselves to each other and chatted, we discovered that all of us had done our first degrees from the same college (Women’s Christian College) – in the city of Chennai! We could not stop marvelling at the coincidence.
We had all studied there at different times of course. When we later shared our picture in the college alumni group – we could not help feeling that we were all special!
Reminiscing further I feel that we had all been grounded well even in our first BSc degree and that’s what made us do well later in life too.
We went back home with a great feeling of having made our contributions for the day!
-Vasumathi Sriganesh