Helping Gifted Minds: Challenges and Opportunities

Jyotirgamaya and Telecommand Software and Services in collaboration with the Office of the Dean of Student's Affair, Counseling Services and the Office of Dean, Resource Generation and Planning at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur  invite you to attend a workshop entitled "Helping Gifted Minds: Challenges and Opportunities" on Sunday the 29th of October at IIT, Kanpur.

As a student at IIT, Kanpur, you may be facing a broad range of stress causing factors. When students start their life at IITK as an undergraduate student, you left behind friends, family, and the security of all that. You are not a fresher, you may be struggling to find a balance between academic load and your personal life. JEE or GATE turn out to be mere warm-up for the tremendous academic pressure that follows.

If you are feeling stressed, you are not alone. In a 2004 survey students (conducted by the Graduate Assembly though the Office of Student Research at UC Berkeley), 45% of graduate students reported having an emotional or stress-related problem that affected their well-being. 58% of students knew of another student who had struggled with stress in the past year. A variety of factors were correlated with student distress including: competitiveness within one’s program, sometimes lack of financial support, gender (females struggled more).

Unfortunately stress or mental health is not a widely discussed topic in India at this time. While, the reality is that the competitive pressure and academic load at the best universities in the US are pale comparison to what a typical student faces at a place like IITK.

This workshop intends to bring awareness about the negative impact of stress and teach students the coping strategies. The long term goal of this initiative is to create a setup at IITK along the lines of the one that exists at UC Berkeley.

When a person is going through unmanageable level of stress, it is very important that people around him or her identify and encourage that person to seek help. With little training, friends, family members or faculty members can make a tremendous difference in the life of those who are suffering. Detection of problem is the biggest challenge in being able to help those who need it the most. In this lecture, Dr. Jefferey Prince will share his experience at U C Berkeley in setting up a mechanism that provides the first line of defense in the battle against stress and depression at a high stress academic environment.

Peer harassment is a scourge that each individual has faced it at some point in life. Peer harassment can be in several forms, ranging from teasing or bullying, sexual in nature to physical violence. Peer harassment can be perpetrated by an individual or by a group. Peer harassment is very traumatic to any individual and can do more than just hurt their feelings. Peer harassment doesn’t just make a person know that he or she is “uncool”, it can make that person feel like they are worthless as human beings. It can cause emotional damage that can cause permanent, life long problems with self esteem and socialization. The responsibility to prevent it lies with the bystanders, the bully and the victim.

In this presentation Ravi Verma and Neha Anand will talk about how to find out if you and or somebody else is being a victim of peer harassment. The speakers will also talk about the techniques an individual can use to protect himself or herself and a fellow human being.

There are several sources of stress for students at a place like IIT, Kanpur like interpersonal, intra personal, academic, and environmental. Students at an institute like IIT, Kanpur are bound to experience more stress than other engineering colleges because of the very high academic standards and competition. The stress is even more for new students because , in addition to all of the above, they have to deal with a life away from home.

Stress is not necessarily a bad thing. A manageable level of stress for an individual motivates the students to work hard and remain focused on their goal.

But if the stress crosses the threshold of manageability, the students to employ certain coping strategies to not let stress cause damage to their mental well being. In the absence of a basic training, stress can indeed cause lasting damage to a person, unable to perform well at IITK may be one of them.

In his talk, Professor Girishwar Mishra will help the audience to recognize when stress crosses the threshold of from being healthy to unhealthy. He will also talk about steps a stressed student can take to help himself or herself.

Stress that is not addressed properly could lead to low self esteem, depression snd suicide. It is imprtant to recognize the signals of depression in self and in others around you. If this low feeling is not handled properly, it could lead to suicidal ideation and ultimately to suicide. What are the facts and myths surrounding suicide? What is suicide - is it a desire to end ones life? How does one identify the suicidal intent in a person? And what do you do when you recognize that someone around you or you yourself is feeling low, depressed or suicidal. At such times, it is important to support that person. How does one provide the right kind of support? What is the dynamics of this whole thing? One way to handle the stress is to look for support outside ultimately leading to gathering enough strength to be able to manage it by yourself. This outside support (friends, faculty members, family, counselor...) is very crucial at times. However, ultimately each one of us need to deal with ourselves - how do we do that? Is life all about being an IITian and earning a good CPI? What happens to those who do not earn a good CPI? What happens when good is not good enough? How important is it to add more dimensions to our lives and how do we do that? Life is all about holistic living and once we recognize that, the pressures automatically ease out. Can we change the way we look at life while studying at IIT and being a faculty member at IIT?

It is very rewarding to be mentally gifted. Beating the odds at JEE and getting admission at a place like IIT, Kanpur is one of them. Like everything else in life, there two sides to everything. There are certain category of psychological challenges that mother nature has reserved for people who are exceptionally intelligent. Certain gifted people are able to manage those challenges and achieve success and happiness in life that they deserve. Unfortunately, those who are not able to develop techniques to overcome those challenges, suffer and not reach the heights of success that was due to them.

In his talk Prof Arvind Mishra will provide an overview of the psychological challenges that afflict mainly gifted people. He will also provide a proven road map to overcome those challenges and even better, to use them to one's advantage.

One-on-one Counseling

One-on-one Counseling