STC India Education Program Initiative

The Education program has begun its good work… Friday, the 24th of February was a very special day in the history of STC India. We launched our school program today at St Josephs Boys High School Bangalore. It was a wonderful event, that Naveen, our president, Manju Shreshta, Mak Pandit, our STC USA president Alan Houser and myself had the pleasure to introduce 96, 11th standard boys and girls studying both Commerce and Science to Technical communication.

It was a fun filled and informative one hour and to our surprise we found many potential technical writers in the audience. I gave a brief introduction and set the context, Alan gave them a brief of STC and its activities, Manju followed with what technical communication was all about, Mak shared some of his experiences as a writer, and the latest salary survey, and I conducted the writing competition. Naveen ran around in his usual quiet and efficient way, making sure that the snacks were ready, and all the gifts were on hand. They were a very well behaved audience indeed. And we all went home happy….

We gave them a small assignment, that is, to write a para on “Stapler and its use”… We found some great talent with potential writing skills… One candidate had illustrated the Stapler and its various parts and explained them one-by-one like we do in our technical documentation for a product. Another person was indeed very creative and rather philosophical or emotional… would like to give a mention of what was written – “Stapler is a thing which helps us to bind two sheets of paper with a bonding pin and even if you remove the bonding pin it leaves a mark of the bond they had and cannot be erased”. We were just spellbound and distributed the goodies and came back discussing about the writing talent in the generations to come…

My son Johann was part of the audience. In my excitement, I forgot to introduce him to Alan or any of our team. He too is reserved and watched me chattering away – one wondered who the child was. I had to mention to the whole audience and point to him saying – “That is my son Johann”, you know how moms are, and the whole lot burst out into peals of laughter, they found me very entertaining indeed. He just sat there smiling… After the program, one of his classmates came to him and said – (I love this part) “Was that your mom? She is soooo cute!! What happened to you!!!” Poor chap, what a thing for a 17 year old to hear from a pretty girl… I told him that she was blind and couldn’t see how handsome he is!! :-). Someone else also asked him – “Dude, does your mom also have an iphone, and he had to say no… I suddenly realized that I was the only one in the STC panel without an iPhone!!! Well, that is something I have to save up for and fix….

We hope to share this with more schools and colleges across several cities in India as we go along this year. Let’s hope that we manage to influence many many more students to embark on a career in technical communication…

By Michelle Cherian