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The Changing Role of College Festivals - A Tool for Practical Learning

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With over two decades of experience, Dr. Adya is an avid researcher who brings with her rich practical experience from the corporate world.

Changing Education
Educational changes are often associated with how teachers approach the learning process, the content that they teach or maybe even the disciplinary side of teaching. But education is not just limited to these aspects and educational institutes are going beyond classroom teaching and are incorporating fun methods to teach real life skills.

Today, educational institutes undertake a lot of activities outside classrooms as a part of shifting the education from theoretical to practical learning. One of these activities are college fests which are organised with a lot of grandeur and allow students to have fun and also develop their soft skills.

College Fests
These cultural events are organised by the student groups multiple times in an academic year on different themes and with different motives. Professional performing artists are also invited, and it could also include a number of competitions for students. The events held could range from Literary events, Cultural events to Gaming events. The fests provide a much needed break to students, allow them to showcase their talent on or off stage and also helps bring life to an otherwise monotonous college life.

However, apart from just being competitive events, these fests have turned into real-world teaching events for students. There are important skills that students learn through these fests which prove to be essential when they enter the corporate world. Here are a few lessons that college fests have started to manifest in the students:

Today, educational institutes undertake a lot of activities outside classrooms as a part of shifting the education from theoretical to practical learning


Significance of Teamwork
Organizing a college fest is not an easy task and requires a lot of team work. While preparing for the events, your team becomes your extended family. The discussion, the arguments, the bonding and the last minute hurdles and hustling is just a glimpse of how their work life scenarios could be in the coming future. College fest imbibe in them a sense of teamwork that will help them grow ahead in life.

The Modern Talent of Multitasking
During the preparation, there will be thousands of things going on simultaneously. The banners would need finalizing, there will be infinite sponsorship meetings, the staging needs to be done, the finances have to be managed and at the same time college submissions are going on as per usual. All this would surely define a crazy time for any student, but once they go through all this successfully, by the end of it they would know how to manage multiple tasks together and how to ace every one of them.

The Deadlines
Time bound activities from everywhere are thrown at students while working at a fest. Students pull all-nighters, work for hours non-stop, deal with a lot of vendors, sponsors and meet their demands, sacrificing their normal lives for the success of the fest. This obviously helps them manage working on a tight deadline which is another lesson which will definitely help in the real world.

Failure & Success
An event could be a grand success or a failure as well. It could have the desired response or it might turn out to be a total mess. The lighting system could glitch, the music system could give up at the last minute, the judges and invitees may arrive late and many more things could go wrong. Or everything could go right and it could be a grand success! However, once all of this is over and when people are applauding the organizer’s efforts, it will all seem worth it to the students. This ride will teach them the highs and lows of success.

College fests are great places to learn how to coordinate, interact, work, and manage together as a team aiming to achieve a common goal. They serve as a great platform to showcase your leadership and organization skills. College fests have thus evolved as a modern teaching method for college students that will help them hone their soft skills and help them thrive in the corporate world.