The Bridge

I would like to tell you a little about myself before I start telling you the story about the bridge that changed my life.

I am a nineteen year old undergraduate pursuing my engineering in electronics and communications field. Engineering these days is just another degree and its really not easy to find a job out there with just this one degree. Being above average at studies and a very good athlete is of no big use when there are 2,80,000 engineers graduating every year and competing for the same jobs as myself. I would be lost somewhere in the crowd struggling for an opportunity to showcase the best of my abilities.

Every person in the world has a dream in his/her life. Even I have one. The dream of achieving something in life. About being remembered me for something like starting a company and creating opportunities for fresh minds that are filled with brilliant ideas. But when I tried to visualize my dream, I always found myself standing on one side of the river bed and my dream on the other side. I never really understood what I lacked to make my dream turn reality. Was it focus? Determination? Or was it the will power to achieve it? I never really understood what bridge would take me to my dream.

I remember the day I went for the AIESEC Interview (after having heard so much about it). Going through all the rounds of the interview and then getting a call from someone telling me that I have been selected to join AIESEC gives me a great feeling of joy even today after being a part of it for more than 10 months. I was called for a training seminar with other people where they showed us the AIESEC way of doing things. That very day I realized that I had finally found the bridge that would help me reach my dream. I figured that the AIESEC way of ‘Taking Responsibility’, taking up a ‘Leadership Role’, going on an ‘eXchange’ and ‘Heading For The Future’ was the base of this bridge. It was the substance out of which my bridge had to be built. Networking and interacting with the most dynamic youth in the city that had been selected out of the two thousand people who applied formed one of the cables which held this bridge together.

As a part of AIESEC I have been in the corporate sector meeting a number of clients in reputed companies from whom I have learnt a lot of things like professionalism, client relations and so on. I have raised funds for a project, handled a project which has given me the best experience of project management, fund raising, crisis management, cultural exchange, leading a bunch of talented and diverse individuals which I couldn’t have got anywhere in the world. I successfully completed the biggest project in the Corporate Sector of AIESEC India and I realized the bridge was becoming stronger every day. Whenever I gave time to AIESEC it would give me in return a new learning eXPerience, right from solving the smallest of the problem of an intern to raising lacs of rupees. I have grown professionally as well as personally being a part of this wonderful organization.

The bridge to my dream has become very strong today as I have added a lot more cables - I am a mature, young professional and a much more focused person who is all set to create a positive impact on the world.

Even after ten months of being in the organization I still feel like a new recruit in quest for more and more knowledge from this ocean called AIESEC. I just want my experience to continue till I finish the ocean :)

Rohit Mishra
Organizing Committee President, Tourism Project-Corporate Sector
Student, S.V.I.T