Kota DM launches ‘Dinner with Collectors’ to ease stress of tutoring students

Kota District Magistrate Dr. Ravinder Goswami launched the weekly ‘Dinner with Collector’ program under the ‘Kamyab Kota’ campaign to ease the stress of coaching students in this coaching city. Goswami, himself a MBBS student and a former coaching student in the town, launched the program last month in view of the rising number of suicides among coaching students, mainly due to study pressure.

Under “Dinner with Collectors,” he has dinner with students every Friday in the dormitory, listening to their thoughts and hearts. On February 1, he interacted with students of a hostel in Indraprastha area. He sang Bollywood songs with the students, shared success mantras and motivated them. Notably, two coaching students and a 27-year-old BTech student committed suicide by hanging last month. Twenty-six coaching students allegedly committed suicide in Kota in 2023, the highest number of suicides in the city so far. More than 200,000 students come to Kota from all over the country every year to prepare for entrance exams to medical and engineering colleges.

There are approximately 4500 hostels and 40,000 PG accommodations available in the city for these coaching students. In the latest interaction, Goswami, an IAS officer of the 2016 batch, told the students, “Why create self-doubt?” He shared the concerns about studies and preparation for exams at the dinner and told everyone to find out their strengths and weaknesses and improve them Weaknesses. This is the second such program, the first being on January 26, the 75th Republic Day. In response to student Kripa’s question about pre-exam anxiety, Goswami said: “Self-doubt and limited anxiety are good because they activate your sympathetic nervous system, causing you to go into fight and flight mode. But don’t let the anxiety To the extreme. From flight mode, you go into combat mode.”

“Keep anxiety at a certain limit and take deep breaths when you feel your hands shaking,” advises the collector, referring to the conversation between Lord Krishna and Arjun in the Bhagavad Gita. Recalling his experience as a student in Kota many years ago, the collector said that during the two years he spent preparing for the medical college entrance examination in Kota, he never got a name and number in the series of exams. But he said he never worried, adding that he avoided self-doubt.

“God has opened several doors, so why create self-doubt?” he told the students. At the dinner, Goswami held a microphone and sang the old Hindi song “Aa chal ke tujhe, main le ke chalun ek aise gagan ke taley”. Tutoring students also sang with him. In the first event of ‘Dinner with Collectors’, Goswami dined with coaching students at a hotel in Landmark City area and gave tips for success. The Collector sang the same song with the coaching students and cut the cake on the occasion of Republic Day.

(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from associated news agency – PTI)