Classroom Sessions @ ILP

Back to college days? Ohh yes. ILP is a mixture of fun@college and professionalism@work. Well, as I've mentioned in the comments to my previous posts, the classroom sessions are from 9am to 5.45pm. The schedule is as follows,

9am to 11am : First Session
11am to 11.30am : Tea/Coffee Break
11.30am to 1.15pm : Second Session
1.15pm to 2.00pm : Lunch Break
2.00pm to 3.30pm : Third Session
3.30pm to 4.00pm : Tea/Coffee Break
4.00pm to 5.45pm : Fourth Session


The bus comes at 7.30am sharp. You need to get up early in the morning, get ready and wait for the bus. The bus takes you to the training centre. There you have time for breakfast. The sessions start at 9am sharp.

The sessions can be divided into three broad categories - technical sessions, life skills sessions and foreign language sessions. Amongst these, life skills sessions are the most cheerful and enjoyable. In these sessions, they teach you about professional grooming, dining etiquette, listening skills, communication skills, group activities and many more things. You have a lot of case studies and role plays. Role plays are the most enjoyable part. They form the groups dynamically. Each group is assigned a subject/theme. Based on that, you need to perform in front of rest of the class. Dynamic group forming is done as follows - The process starts from the first person sitting in the first (or last) row in the corner. First person will say the number "1". The next person sitting to him/her will say "2", the next "3" and so on. The maximum number you say depends on the number of groups that need to be formed. For example, if 4 groups are required, then the number calling goes like this - 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1… and so on. Next, all 1's are made to sit together; same thing happens with all 2's, 3's and 4's. Now, the groups are formed, you are ready for the group activities.

Technical sessions are the most boring part of the ILP. But you have to attend all the sessions and can’t bunk any of them. If you miss 2 sessions, you are directly out of the ILP. It's that strict. As a computer science batch, we were expected to know the technical topics and hence all the topics were not taught to us in detail, but the sessions were interactive and we made to contribute our knowledge during these sessions. Non-comps students are not expected to know these subjects, so need not worry. They teach you C++, Java, UNIX, DMBS, Software Engineering, Testing Techniques etc. All the material will be provided in the ILP. For software engineering, the book they give you is "Jalote" (This is the author name). For other subjects, they have their own course material that is sufficient for passing the final test.

Foreign language sessions are equally entertaining as that of the life skills sessions. Learning a new language is too much fun. They also show you some videos/movies in that language. You have assignments, mock tests, conversations, presentations and lot more things. The foreign language for our batch was German. Our faculty was very good, her name was Shivani; very beautiful lady indeed. Since our batch was very small, she used to pay attention to each and every candidate in the class. Few of us were from Kolkata and had accent problem. We always noticed their Bengali accent while speaking German. But, Shivani ma'am made them change the way they spoke. We also had basic conversations from the German handout that was given to us. "Darf ich herein kommen?" well, this is the German for “May I come in?”. Whenever anyone used to come late for the German session, he/she had to ask this before coming in. I think this is one line we remembered the most. In these sessions, they also teach you the grammar of the foreign language, sentence formation and pronunciation. Fun filled sessions indeed.

During classroom sessions, nobody is allowed to wander outside (except CR of course ;-) ). You are supposed to keep the cell phones off during the sessions. Everyone needs to sign the attendance sheet for every session. After end of the session, you'll be given feedback forms that everyone has to fill promptly and return them to the CR.

Well, if you are just out of the college and joining TCS ILP, it wouldn't be much difficult for you. The only difference is, in ILP the things are stricter and you are expected to behave more responsibly and professionally. After all, we are going to be IT professionals and this is just the beginning, right?