Monsoon Semester 01: The Lamp and the Bridge
English

Every July, the rains arrive.
And so do they.
Three hundred new faces.
Three hundred stories
nobody has heard yet.
Priya.
Aditya.
And you, at the back.
By the window?
Kabir, ma'am.
Kabir. Welcome.
Three hundred names, Kamala ma'am?
Isn't this the counsellor's department?
I have a course to run and two papers due.
You think this is about the names.
Isn't it?
In my first year of
college, I nearly went home.
I had stopped eating properly.
Stopped talking to anyone.
One teacher stopped me after class
and asked me a single question.
Kamala, how are you, really?
That was all. One question.
It kept me here. And all these
years later, I'm still here.
On every campus, there
are people who notice.
Freshers, this way!
Welcome!
A senior who still remembers
her own first week.
A counsellor with a waiting list.
New cycle. Somebody new.
A lab assistant who knows
every student by their bicycle.
And teachers, who see more
students, more often, than almost
anyone else.
A survey of about thirty thousand
graduates in the United States asked what
they remembered about college.
Three things stood out.
A professor who cared
about them as a person.
One who made them excited about learning.
And a mentor who encouraged their dreams.
Graduates who had all three had more than
double the odds of being engaged in their
work, and of thriving in their lives.
Only fourteen percent had all three.
The name of this platform holds the idea.
Guru: one who dispels darkness.
Setu: a bridge.
You don't need to be a
counsellor to help a student.
You can be a lamp, the one who notices.
And a bridge, to the people who can help.
Rohan. Meera. Imran.
Sneha. ... Kabir.
Try this week: learn ten new names,
starting with the students who sit at the
back.
And here is a phrase to keep.
I'm glad you're in this class.
Support details and sources
are below this video.
See you in week two.