From working as waiters to getting oneself a life partner, alumni from the University of Strathclyde had a lot to share with the prospective candidates of the University of Glasgow and Strathclyde during the Alumni meet and pre departure event organised by Strathclyde Alumni Association of South India.
The senior most Alumnus at the meet, Ashok Anantram, described how he first arrived at Glasgow in 1973 on a cold evening with no guarantee of an accommodation. “‘Come and take Chance’ was the cryptic message that I received from the Warden. Those days you never had internet or mobile phones. Everything was through postal mails and the foreign exchange was so strict that you could carry a maximum of just 20 pounds,” he says.
For many of the youngsters, years of such uncertainty are far behind. But they do have new difficulties to narrate. “Stop flaunting your phones and your gold bangles. There are attacks and one has to be safe.” “Within a couple of years most of you would want to start your own independent firms. You can gain the international experience, the network and contacts for this during your stay rather than looking at the UK job,” said one of the alumni.
Focusing on the tendency to keep within the Indian circle, Nithi one of the Alumni, said,“You don’t go all the way there to know more Indians. Gain the best of the different cultures while you are there.”Agencies in charge of university recruitments added that the student applications have gone down from anywhere between 20-40 percent, thanks to the touch emigration norms, the falling rupee value and the clamp down on jobs in the UK.