CHIT-CHAT with Alumni: Episode 10-A transition from Engineering to Civil Services
Published: 2021-03-08 12:21:18

The **SPECTRUM** club is one of the core technical societies of the College of Engineering and Technology, Bhubaneshwar founded in 2015 by **Mr.Bikram Keshari Panda**(2015 graduate), scrutinizing on the sole motive of Instrumentation and Electronics Engineering branch having a club of its own.

Apart from being involved in a plethora of competitions and technical events, the club decided to start its very own **"Alumni Talk Series"** called **"Chit-Chat with Alumni".**

The goal is to bridge the gap between the current and previous batches of our college and increase the awareness of students in terms of work that one does in college, exposure, jobs, higher studies, and of course networking. These interactive sessions are a small shot at helping college students to step out of their fishbowl life.

The first episode was first hosted on the 17th of October, 2020.

The 10th Episode was hosted on 28th February 2021 and the speaker for the afternoon was **Mr.Arghya Patnaik.**

**Mr.Arghya Patnaik** has graduated from CET in 2017, and is from the I&E branch. He is currently working at **Indian Railways Traffic Service.** He has secured an **All India Rank of 361** in the **UPSC Civil Services Examination.** He formerly worked as an **intern in DRDO** and worked on the **Agni-V Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Project.** He has gone Nationals in the Indian National Academy of Engineering Essay competition and also in a case-study competition organized by IIT Kharagpur.

Mr.Arghya made a very unique way to start the session. He began with a question to the audience *"Why are we here?"* and turned it in a short figuration continuing with *"Free advice anybody?"*  *"The funny thing is we have to stay"*(as we are here let's use this time to something useful) *

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He laid down the agenda for the session by describing himself, college life, the reason to choose Civil Services, and more.
At first, he considered himself as *"confused atma".* While elaborating more about his college life he began with the interactions with his friends, clubs, cricket tournaments, studies, fest, bunking class, and many more. He talked about the contributions he made to the literary club of CET i.e "CETADEL".He advised us to make our college life as diverse as possible and learn from each segment.He stressed on the fact: "Soft skills are as important as hard skills" And about his future plans, he described its uncertainty by saying *"Picture abhi baki h mere dost".*


**Why Civil Services?** He answered this question distinctively by another meme. It was a dialogue between a UPSC aspirant and his friend.


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Par yeah nasha kyun h?-He explains this briefly by a mix of 3 attributes.
**Diversity**-He explains this point by relating it to the life of the district collector.The way the entire schedule is divided and how his importance is felt in every sector.
**Public Service**-He shared his outlook that if he could help someone to get their aadhar done, or getting ration done or save someone from getting their chain snatched then that's quite good and he would like to join civil service.
**Perks and Privileges**-He briefed about the accommodation facilities, salary, standard living, comfortable and satisfactory life with great pride and recognition.
He also shared a glimpse of some civil servants in action such as Kiran Bedi, Ananya Das, and more.

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**Engineering and Civil Services-A love affair better than twilight?**

He shared an anecdote from his life. His batch at Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie consists of 450+ engineers out of a total batch size of 700+.This enlightened the fact that engineers are excelling in the Civil Service sector.
He also presented many articles depicting the success ratio of the engineers.
Moreover, he reminded us again of all the UPSC aspirants from our college who have successfully established themselves as reputed officers and we cant be much prouder.

![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/cahpmojwgl3b48z3rj3h.png)

He shared some major *mantras* to crack CSE from his life. These were not only for CSE but also for all spheres of life.

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**Understanding yourself**- Mr.Arghya believes that identifying our own strengths and weaknesses and then working on them makes us win the very first phase of the battle. He advises us to be our own doctor, diagnose ourselves well and choose the right path. He recommends us not be trapped under peer pressure and parental pressure. He gave the example of an Indian *Cricketer VVS Laxman* where his father suggested him to excel in whatever field he chooses. He had biology in his 12th  and could have chosen medical stream, but he followed his dreams and the rest is history.

**Perseverence**- There's no shortcut to hard work. We have to brush up on all our skills to reach our goals.
 
**Setting Targets**- He shared one of his personal mantra that he follows in his life. *"Drift is the nemesis of success".* As long as we keep drifting we cannot reach anywhere. We have to make our own choices and complete our life exercises soon. He advised us to set long-term, mid-term, and short-term goals wisely and work on that.

**Consistency**- He says consistency is the key to all life goals. He gave a beautiful comparison between *Haile Gebrselassie* and *Usain Bolt.* Haile Gebrselassie is a world champion in marathons and Usain Bolt is a short-distance sprinter. He told us that most tests in life require us to be as consistent as a marathon runner and not just a sprinter.


The end of the session was a question-answer round. All our attendees asked their queries about UPSC, Civil services Examinations, and other related questions.

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We got to know a different perspective towards life, career, and our goals in just an hour.
We wish him all the best for the future!