Ravindu Athapaththu
4th Year

Hello, I am Ravindu Athapaththu from Sri Lanka. I had joined KIIT University as an international student in the year 2020 through an SII scholarship. When I joined KIIT, our classes were being held in online mode because of the Covid 19 pandemic. Even though everything was being held in online mode, from classes to assignments, KIIT never failed to extend its hands out to their foreign students. Soon after, we received an email regarding the reopening of our college. My happiness knew no bounds.

I clearly remember that day. It was February 14, 2022. I left my home and country and started the journey to KIIT. I, along with 6 other Sri Lankan students reached KIIT together at around midnight. It was such an overwhelming feeling for me. I had never stayed in a hostel before, that too in another country!

I started my college life with lots of enthusiasm and excitement. Although initially, I felt the language barrier was posing a big hindrance to my growth in college, gladly, within a short period I was able to understand Hindi in a good manner and I am happy to say that now I can speak Hindi in a quite good manner. In addition to that, I can now understand Odia to some extent and I am quite interested in improving my skills of learning new languages always.

Now let’s talk about my experience in academics and extracurricular activities in college. I am pursuing B.Tech in Electrical Engineering and currently, I am in my final year. Since we spent 1.5 years of our college education in online mode, KIIT made sure that we were provided the chance to cover all the laboratory practical experiments which we had already done in online mode again in the physical mode. This process inspired me to learn a quite intriguing and vast field of engineering in a better way. In addition to the daily classes, joining as a research scholar directed my life in new direction. Presently, I am working in the area of Switched Capacitor Multilevel Inverterin the field of Power Electronics and Drives. I am enrolled in organizations such as NSS, YRC and many more. Teaching my college juniors as a Flip Educator always helps me to learn new things through them.

When it comes to extracurricular activities, I would like to first mention KIIT Student Activity Centre (KSAC) as the pioneer in providing me the golden opportunities, including my role as Coordinator in the KIIT International Student Society which has honed by leadership and organizational skills. One of my most memorable experiences was working as a student organizer at the KIIT Silver Carnival.The International food festival and the poster exhibition were two of the wonderful events that I have been successfully able to organize.

Talking about my hostel life, well, in one word, it is amazing. The international hostels are a different marvel including attached washrooms, air-conditioned rooms, reading rooms, and a huge dining hall providing us a satisfied hostel life throughout our period of stay. Though I have been engaged in many extracurricular activities, I am able to maintain my CGPA at a higher level throughout all the semesters and that is the balance of life which you learn at KIIT. Making a proper plan and scheduling every day to take the maximum usage of the time is what create a balance.

I would like to present a heartfelt gratitude to the peers that made this possible including all notable Faculties, staffs, University authorities and above all our beloved Founder Sir Dr. Achyuta Samanta.