Written by Megha Dharnidharka, LEC 2017, Alumni
The LEC course is truly unique and I feel incredibly privileged to have been part of such a thoughtful and reflective course. Each contact period was an immersive experience and I came away changed every single time. Imagine my delight when I learnt that I would have the opportunity to go back, to take in one more contact, one more soul-searching journey, this time with a new cohort at a new location.
I showed up full of enthusiasm and eagerness and wasn’t disappointed in the least. As is the bookworm way, there is no resting on past laurels or rolling out of standardised curriculum. The course goes through constant review and iterations and so it didn’t feel like revisiting my third contact but experiencing my fourth.
Often when you re read a book you are struck by some nuance that you had missed before or something suddenly makes sense. My experience this contact was something like this. Though the core of the course may have remained the same I had not. I had grown as an educator, since my first engagement with the course and that made me respond to the sessions and discussions quite differently. Having had time to mull over my learning from the previous year and put into practice I was able to appreciate the learning from this contact period in a very different way, revisiting some ideas and opening my mind to completely new ones.
The chance to go back to Goa, to another contact period was the gift that kept on giving. I met some incredibly diverse people from across the country who were all passionate about spreading the joy of reading far and wide. They each worked in such unique contexts and faced a myriad of challenges. Learning about how they overcame them was inspiring.
While I was meeting and conversing with each person, my brain was on hyperdrive, desperately trying to store away everything the person was saying, all that I wanted to ask them and learn from them. The wealth of experience in that room was humbling and also extremely comforting. I felt that I had an ever-expanding network of Library people who I could reach out to, no matter my question or challenge, and find exactly what I was looking for.
Since all the participants present their Field Project experiences and learning in the last contact, I felt I got to know many of the Library educators and their work quite intimately. As I sat there listening to each presentation, greatly relieved that I was a listener and not a presenter, my mind was overflowing with ideas. When Terence shared his book browsing strategies and Lakshmi shared how she used books to help children understand and process different emotions I couldn’t wait to go back to work and explore these areas in my work. When Ruchi and Dharamjeet shared how they were taking the joy of reading to some of the remotest corners of India, I felt as if I had been touched by a live wire, and in that moment, I knew that I had to do more.
The LEC contact period has always felt like a slice out of time where my personal and professional life just melt away. This bubble of intense reading and discourse around Libraries has often triggered equally intense reflection and introspection. This held true for this contact as well. All the sessions by the faculty, field project presentations, and discussions over tea and pakoras helped me better understand myself and my professional aspirations. This contact period invite couldn’t have come at a more opportune moment. Though I had decided that it was time to make some changes professionally, I was feeling lost and uncertain. This experience of 4 days was clarifying and I left with a clear vision for my future and the confidence of having the skills and the support to make my vision a reality.