OPEN MICS
31st July 2021
Open Mic Session
On July 31st, The Elysian organised an open mic session with Mr Keshav Chandra, a 21-year-old student at Hindu College with cerebral palsy, to discuss the lack of infrastructure and training in educational institutions with reference to specially-abled students.
In the session, Mr Chandra talked about his own experiences with the educational institutions while we talked about the challenges and stigmas he faced due to him being a differently-abled individual. Mr Chandra also highlighted the importance of addressal of the needs of specially-abled students, and not just the ones with physical disabilities but the mental ones as well.
In the end, we discussed what changes Mr Chandra considers an important addition to our education system to make it more inclusive and the changes he suggests we, as individuals, can make to help the specially-abled people around us.
3rd July 2021
Pride Month
Open Mic Session
On July 3rd, The Elysian hosted Sue, the President of the Hindu College Queer Collective, for a conversation on queer presence in Indian popular media. We spoke of inaccuracies in the media portrayal of the queer community, of gender identities and pronouns within the LGBTQIA+ community, and of the struggles faced by queer individuals by the onset of COVID-19. At the end of the conversation, they left us on the very important note that Pride month is often used by companies and industries to queerbait, which is highly tokenistic, and it's important to keep in mind that this month is so much more than rainbow-themed logos and queer hashtags. Pride month is a commemoration of the Stonewall riots (1969) and it serves as a reminder of all the queer individuals who paved the way for a new generation of political activism for queer voices.
24th July 2021
Open Mic Session
On Saturday evening, The Elysian Mag organized an open mic session which was to know the Impact the COVID-19 has had on NRI Students.
Kirpa Kaur, currently a Sophomore pursuing Computer Science at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University joined us and spoke about how Education especially for NRI Students has been suffered greatly in the wake of pandemic, how her college life have been lately and what challenges she faced?
Although online classes can mark the crates of wrapping up and covering the syllabus, school students and under grad students still feel they have missed the "experience" of learning and the “interaction” with alumni, professors and the other fellow students at an institution, that is irreplaceable.
As Virginia’s Time Zones (VA) is 9.5 hours behind the Indian Time Zone (IST), she has to attend online classes in real time which totally differs from IST and thus the whole schedule becomes chaotic. All the students, who are from different countries, have to manage and adjust according to their time zones and this is a quite major issue which every NRI student or any student studying abroad has faced during the pandemic.
She talked about the application process which she followed to get into the university. Admissions to universities abroad require a large amount of documentation along with the right test scores and resumes which was also a major concern as a school going student doesn’t have any experience so to say.
Having fellow colleagues from different of the world and still not able to interact with them is a very awful situation. She had her classes but since no cameras were on, none of them was able to interact fully unlike the offline classes where we got to see all our colleagues.
Students are not well-equipped with all the computer applications and platforms used for imparting education and learning.
Furthermore, she talked about the student’s clubs who took the initiative of bringing all of them together and which really helped them in building a bunch of friends. They organized Game Nights and other ice-breaking sessions for making the environment comfortable.
Challenges she faced
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It was a hard time for her getting a Student Visa and the process took a very long time for to get it because of pandemic adversities.
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Staying up all the night and the difference in schedule.
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Making friends, a really difficult task.
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Not being able to spend family time due to the time difference.
Piece of Advice by her to NRI students
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If this pandemic persists, don’t take gap for getting everything settled. Find out for more options and opportunities.
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Don’t make your weaknesses show while applying.
17th July 2021
Open Mic Session
The pandemic brought an unexpected change in everyone’s lives that no one expected – a change that left many in a mentally vulnerable state. On July 19th, The Elysian organised an open mic session with Dr Bhavna Chadha, a renowned clinical psychologist and the founder of the Skills Hub named 'Adhyapann', where we discussed the psychological impact of the pandemic; specifically on students. We discussed the sudden spike of cases of mental health issues in the youth and its causes, along with exploring the effect of social isolation and the sudden transition from offline to online mode on both the students and their education. Dr Chadha also highlighted the need for resilience in today’s youth and encouraged the audience to explore their limits and boundaries. In the end, we talked about the importance of understanding as well as validating the problems faced by the youth and how it is no less than the issues faced by adults.
26th June 2021
Pride Month
Open Mic Session
Being queer comes with a lot of struggles; not only in society, but within yourself too. On June 26th, The Elysian had a conversation with Shivangi, a member of the Jamia Queer Collective, JMI on the intricacies of being queer. The perpetuation of cis-heternormative family standards, the recent amplification of queerphobic voices, and the struggles of internalised homophobia were some of the topics we traversed during our conversation. Shivangi also helped us see the relevance of activism through sensitization, the clarity that literature portrayals of queer relationships bring, and most importantly, the value of the acceptance and love that queer individuals can find within their chosen families. In a nutshell, this discourse helped shed perspective on the arduous challenges faced by those individuals whose identities don't adhere to society's cis-heternormative standards