An Interesting Story of Manpreet Singh Sodhi As you enter the building of Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering of IIT Roorkee, you will find three huge display boards in the reception room. These boards provide the list of toppers of the department for each year. For the year 1980, the topper’s name is mentioned as Manpreet Singh Sodhi whose story is very interesting. Everybody can learn a valuable lesson from his story. In 1976, Manpreet Singh Sodhi was sitting in the Entrance Examination of University of Roorkee (presently known as IIT Roorkee) at the Dehradun centre which was his native place. He was an ordinary student. Two minutes after receiving the question paper he concluded that he did not know the correct answers and would not be able to get sufficient marks to get selected. Hence he went to the invigilator and gave his blank answer sheet to him. The invigilator refused to accept the answer sheet and said that according to the rules he could not leave the examination before one hour. Manpreet was very upset but had no option but to come back to his seat. Just to pass time he started writing whatever he knew. After the completion of one hour he thought of handing over his answer sheet to the invigilator and leaving the examination hall. Just then he saw through a window that it was raining outside. He thought that if he left the examination hall, he would have to stand outside in the verandah as he would not be able to go home in the rain. He decided not to leave the examination hall as he was comfortably sitting in a chair. Again he continued writing whatever he knew. He sat for the entire duration of the examination. Later the result of the Entrance Examination was declared and to the surprise of Manpreet Singh Sodhi , his name was found to be among the successful candidates. He joined the B. E. (Mechanical Engineering) programme at the University of Roorkee. When in the year 1980 Manpreet completed his degree programme, he was declared as the topper (Gold Medalist) of his batch. His project was declared the best project among all branches of engineering in the entire university. He became not only the topper of his department but also topper of all the departments and was awarded Thomasonian Gold Medal which was awarded to only one student of the university every year. He became a star and was immediately offered a job in a reputed company in Mumbai. Later he became C. E. O. of BSS Software Pvt. Ltd. Mumbai and Singapore. Lessons to be learnt: -Many times when we accept defeat and give up, we are wrong. We need to continue our struggle for more time and success would be ours. -Patience pays. You may like to have a look at my lecture (How to be successful in academic life) at the following link (I have one slide in this lecture about this great man) : gsrandhawa.in/My_Lectures.html (Picture of the boards clicked by me at Mechanical Engineering Department, IIT Roorkee on 3.06.2014)
Posted on: Tue, 03 Jun 2014 18:23:22 +0000
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