Experience at Anant Fellowship - Journey from the start

Lokesh Ghiya
Mar 29, 2021
3 min read

Hello Amazing Reader,

I’m writing here to share my fellowship experiences, but before that allow me to introduce. I hail from the pink city of Rajasthan known as Jaipur. Having completed engineering in 2018, I wanted to explore different sectors. Not to generalize but I guess most of the engineering graduates would probably want to do it. My exploration took me to Noida to work for an RPO and then to Dehradun to intern with an architect.

It was a pleasant morning in the city of Dehradun. I was working at my office and simultaneously looking out for a different alternative educational programme. During one of the conversations I had with my colleague, he suggested that I should explore the Anant fellowship programme. At that hour, I was clueless about what this programme is about but to my surprise, it was the sort of the course that I was looking forward to rather than any degree programme. Anant Fellowship is a multidisciplinary course offering me to explore everything under one roof. It completely blew my mind! I was skeptical though and questioned, is it really possible? The fascinating videos at the website spoke a lot about the programme and some testimonials as well but the other side of me also thought these may be all part of a marketing strategy to fool a humble person like me :-p. I didn’t believe it until my colleague connected me to his friend, an ex-fellow of Anant. I spoke to him about why he joined it, what happens there, what’s the guiding path, what experience he gained and many other questions to clear my doubts.

Did I stop my inquiry then and there? Obviously not, it’s then I got connected to another ex-fellow from the university itself. It was a good experience talking with her as she was of the same educational background as mine (Civil Engineering). I informed how I wished to work in learning about Sustainable development and wasn’t oriented in the normal infrastructural developments. She briefed me about the need for this fellowship and how this fellowship had diversified her approach towards various aspects. She shared how joining Anant fellowship made her think about the built environment not only from the perspective of an engineer but through the lens of a journalist, policymakers, artist and other disciplines as well.

Therefore after having exercised my brain with some research with various people, I started with the application process. The process asked for a Statement of purpose (SOP) and a Sample of work. This was a tough thing for me as I was just out of college in 2018 and had not generated a substantial amount of work that I could discuss. Forging and putting in some work was not my cup of tea. So I tried consolidating the work I had done during my college days from academics to non-academics. The portfolio included visuals of volunteering activities, and street artworks and some sample works of mine. The common points that I considered for the SOP with the help of my friend cum writer.

What’s my story?
Why am I applying for the programme?
How will it benefit me?
How will I take it forward?
Explaining about my past volunteering projects that I worked on

After having successfully compiled all these, I submitted the form before the deadline(for the first phase). To grab a seat it’s better to apply at the earliest. I was quite skeptical about clearing the application process but within a few days, I received the information for having qualified the parameters of the application process. I was told that I would soon receive a call for the technical interview round. I was elated as it was my first time applying for such programs and clearing the first step was a victory for me. The result made me realize that it’s always the quality over the quantity of work that needs to be produced.

Did you know what the interview process was like? How did it go? Stay connected for the next post about it.

I would love to know what fellowship you look forward to. Happy to connect over your application process as well.