Essay

Amaradri
Mukherjee

Describe a personal achievement that has had a significant impact

on your life. Give specific details. What did you learn from this
experience? How did it help shape your understanding of yourself
and the world around you?
On, 16th Jan 2007, at 4:30pm the awards for the All India Engineering Fair
were being announced. My two team-mates and I were anxiously standing
and keeping our fingers crossed to see if our project on Bio- Medical was
good enough to win a prize. The announcement began and the host started
to read out the names of the winners in descending order. Accordingly, the
fifth place winners were announced first, followed by the fourth place
winners. . When he was about to read the names for the third place, I
realized that I was having butterflies in my stomach. He went ahead and our
names were absent. Then it was for the second place and my heart started
to beat even faster; I thought that well, this might be ours, God might bestow
us with this award for our tremendous hard work and dedication. The host
announced three names, and they were not ours. I was heart-broken, very
depressed and in the pits, I thought that we lost the contest. Being a fierce
competitor, I controlled my emotions. Yet, I stayed on at the same Fair to see
who won the Best sScientific Pproject of the Yyear aAward. When the host
was announcing the first name, and he hadnt even finished the full name
when I realized that thunder had struck me and my team-mates. Why?
Because we had who won the Best Scientific Project of the Year Award"Best
scientific project of the year award. There were hundreds of people who
clapped, whistled, and celebrated our success. For a moment, I felt that we
had won the Nobel Prize! It was a great achievement of my life whose
success changed my life forever.
With time, the euphoria sunk in. I started to analyze the reason behind the
success of our project, what made us stand out among 30 thirty other
projects that who were our co-participants; in short, I started to find out our

Amaradri Mukherjee

USP. After weeks of exercising my grey cells, I concluded that it was my

balance between the innovation and its commercialization. I always believe
that an innovation is only as good as its commercial value, and this idea and
reflection made our project a winner amongst the best. Hard-work, great
team work and dedication were the basic things that everybody did, but our
smart work and the proper sense of correct market value of our innovation
made us stand apart from others.
This success story taught me some invaluable things that have become a
part

of

me

since

then:,

smart

work

above

hard

work,

self-belief,

determination, and compromise to succeed as a team. During the

development of this project, there were a number of occasions when we
argued among ourselves regarding implementing ones ideas and thoughts.
But now when I look back on those days, I see that it was our control over
our egos and the art of selflessness that made our team a winner. The
invaluable lessons that I learnt from this project made me a man out of a boy
and this was again reflected on 5th November 2009 when I won the first
prize for "Best Poster" in MemBis 2009 at FCBE. This competition was very
tough as I was competing with the very best in the field of Science and
Technology, namely Duke University, University of Princeton and also UT. I
was nervous in the beginning but I told myself, Follow the lessons that you
learnt---strike a balance between your research and its commercialization
and believe that you can do it". I constantly told these to myself, and God
answered me by making me the winner amongst the best.
So, the success story of project 2007 gave me the impetus to believe in
myself and gave me the necessary confidence to walk ahead in life, with
head held high where there is no fear. I have learnt that the motto of success
is self-belief, smart work and dedication, along with proper goals.

Amaradri Mukherjee

Amaradri Mukherjee