You are from a village and your parents are agricultural coolie workers. You join a government school nearby. You study everything in Tamil for 12 years. You study really well and manage to achieve school 1st, the highest score at the school. You dream of becoming a doctor, but you have a centuries-old gate in the name of NEET stopping you. You look for other opportunities related to medicine. The Government of Tamil Nadu opens a door with a 7.5 reservation for government school students with a full-fee scholarship. You are thankful and you choose Biomedical Engineering at PSG Tech, Coimbatore.

You join the college in 2021. You are one of 56 students in the class, and you are the only one who has had the entire schooling in Tamil. You experience a shock, obviously. Not because all other students have had their schooling in English, but because you feel you are all alone like you are thrown out of a boat in the middle of an ocean, and you don’t know how to swim. You try. And you fail all the subjects in the first internal, except for English. The irony!

But you don’t give up. You try again and again. And again. You slowly learn the ropes. You study hard, harder than before. You have got it now. Good CGPA and a lead club member of Tamil Mandram.

Then comes the final year. Endless project reviews and presentations. Soon interviews too. You have managed to do everything so far. You have done really well. You should be proud of yourself. But, there is always a but, what is the point, if you don’t express what you know?

You realise you need to work on your language skills. You look for ways to improve. You try to take help from friends. You watch videos on YouTube. You try to read grammar books. You try to do everything that you can think of. They help you to an extent in their own way. But something is missing. You feel it’s not enough. You are not going to stop now. You have come this far. You will leave no stone unturned.

You don’t give up. You look for other ways you may have missed. You stumble upon Mozhi Academy. You talk to them and decide to join their Communicative English training programme. Your friends tell you, “Why do you need a course to improve your English? It’s not necessary. Don’t join.” But you stand firm in your decision and join Mozhi Academy in May 2024. You will thank yourself in a few months that you don’t listen to your friends now.

At Mozhi, they give you pre-training assessment test. They first teach you essential grammar concepts. They ask you to write on different topics in the second stage of the training. They tell you you are going to have your whole life written in your notebook as part of the writing. You smile. You make mistakes at the beginning. Of course, you should make mistakes. This is how you write in the beginning.

Then they teach you how to write a grammatically correct sentence, idea generation techniques and essay structures. They teach you whatever they think can help you improve your English. You keep writing. They correct each and every mistake that you make. You understand them and you correct them. The more you write, the more confident you feel. If someone told you that it is writing that has the power to change one’s language skills, you would have laughed at them. But not anymore. You have realised it now. They have made you realise it. Here is a piece of writing that you are proud of:

And they say that you are ready for speaking sessions. The third stage of the training. You start speaking. You don’t hold the words back like before. You let them out. In fact, it’s like words have freed themselves. You realise you are speaking which you found very difficult before. Not just you, your friends tell you you speak better now.

Three months end. You wonder how to continue the speaking practice now because you have job interviews coming up in the following months. But they tell you, “You are sincere and hard-working. We help you with your language skills till you get placed.” So you continue the speaking practice. You are grateful to them. You tell them you are grateful. You write your thoughts on their training. They tell you this is also a writing practice. You smile. ‘Okay. Let me write an essay, then’, you say.

You attend three interviews. You get rejected. But you feel happy and you have done your part well. You have always thought that English would be the main problem in your job interviews. You are surprised it is not anymore.

Then comes the fourth interview in February 2025. A core company of your interest. 5 rounds. You clear all of them. You get placed. You cry over the phone when the recruiter is giving you the news about your recruitment. You call your mom and cry. Your mom says, “This is happy news. Why are you crying?”

Then you call Mozhi Academy and inform the same. They ask you if you can come to the academy and have a conversation about your journey on camera. They don’t forget to tell you that this is going to be another speaking session like they always say whenever you speak to them. You smile.