Richa Mitra is one of our most sincere and honest scholars till date and we are fortunate to now have her as a contributor for our scholarship program. She has also promised to mentor our current scholars. Life comes a full circle! We are extremely proud to share her success story in her own words.
My name is Richa Mitra. In the year 2011-2013, I was awarded a 100% scholarship by
Chinmaya Smiles Back. Before narrating my career path, I would like to tell you the story of me and my family. I have a beautiful family with 6 siblings. We used to all live together. We are 5 sisters and 1 brother who is elder to me. I am the youngest child of my family and I draw inspiration, motivation and guidance from all these elder sisters and brother. My parents were facing immense financial problem to raise and educate us. Due to financial crunch, my parents were unable to provide quality education to all. However they were concerned about our education and sent all of my sisters including me to government schools. According to them studying in a government school was far better than sitting at home. I had a deep rooted desire to study in an English medium school but looking at the financial problem, I knew that my dream to study in the school of my choice was no possible.
In class VII my life was waiting to take a new turn that I was unaware of. One day my father’s friend who was a doctor came to my house and asked many questions related to mathematics and I was able to answer all of them. He was so impressed with me that he decided get me enrolled in an English medium school. He paid the admission fees and also paid up my tuition fee for one year. He promised my dad that he would take care of my fees till std 10th but he wasn’t able to do that due to personal problems. It was a very hard time for us because we were living with very limited income. However, the principal of Crescent Public School was very kind. He understood my father’s condition and awarded me 50% scholarship up till 10th class. I passed class Xth with 10 CGPA and also cracked Jharkhand Polytechnic Exam with rank 27. I was about to take admission in polytechnic college but my dad had already taken education loan for my brother’s studies when I was in class 9. In this critical situation, my brother came from college and told me that I might crack IITJEE because he thought I had performed well. He went to Chinmaya Vidyalaya and talked to Vyjayanthi Ma’am regarding my admission in Chinmaya Vidyalaya. She provided all the details about the Chinmaya Smiles Back scholarship program and finally I enrolled in one of the best schools of Bokaro Steel City.
Throughout class XIth my family underwent immense problems as one of my sisters was in line to get married. My parents were forced to sell their home. My mother was suffering from deep psychological problems due to two big losses- home and separation from her child. . My mother and father are strong pillars of my family. Even though, they never studied even up to 1st class in government school, they made sure that we were educated. My mother always told me to fight out a situation like Jhanshi Ki Rani and keep my spirits high. She went for treatment and stayed in Dhanbad for 5 long months. In these 5 months, I was shattered and depressed as I had to take care of the entire household chores before going to school and after coming from school. I was unable to give my 100% to my studies and performed extremely poor in class XIth. Gradually
everything was getting better and my mother came back and I started putting in my efforts in class XIIth. I passed my XIIth board exams with 75% marks and was unable to secure good rank in IITJEE Exam. Hence, IIT and NIT doors were closed for me.
I was hopeless and depressed because of my poor performance in board exams and at the same time I wasn’t able to enroll myself in private engineering college because we were still paying off the loan taken in 2009. I was spending sleepless nights and was in between two seas whether to pursue engineering by taking loan or opt for a plain graduation degree for the time being. Again my brother came and shared his experiences of engineering colleges and advised me to take other subjects for graduation. After giving so much thought, I selected Economics as my subject. Keeping all the guilt and failure of getting low marks aside, I started studying with full devotion and started preparation for government job along with my graduation. With blessing of God I cleared SSC group C exam in the year 2014. I was called for an interview in the month of January 2014 but the interview panel told me that they cannot allow me for the interview as I was underage (less than 18 years) and blessed me with success and happiness. After that I started devoting more and more time to understand ‘Economics’ . I was loaded with lots and lots of doubt and unable to clear my doubt in my college. Then, I realized that there is a huge demand of good teachers and professors all over India and I made up my mind to become a professor. My entire journey of graduation was wonderful and I found a genuine reason to serve my country by becoming a professor and keeping the curiosity of children alive. I moved to Kolkata after graduation to pursue master’s degree. Kolkata was a new place for me and my sister who lives in Kolkata helped me a lot in every possible way. With her help, I took admission in Rabindra Bharati University. My sister is very supportive. She helped me financially as well as emotionally throughout my journey of getting a Master’s Degree. All the professors of our University were extremely kind to me and encouraged me to write UGCNET exam. With their constant guidance and support I was able to crack UGC NET exam in the year 2019 June.
Finally, in January 2020 I was selected as Research Assistant in Rabindra Bharati University. Currently I am doing research in ‘Development of new Index in Economics’. At this stage of life, I am feeling quite satisfied. Our family is completely out of the financial crunch not because of me but with the support of all my sisters and brother. In every critical situation we all stood by each other which helped us realize our hidden potential.