Apparently I Talk About Pizza Too Much: Notes From Ranchi

This is the first post in a five-part series. Over the course of this exam season, I travelled to five states to personally conduct final exams for the digital marketing batches I’d been teaching online. It was a great experience sitting in the same room as students I’d only ever interacted through a Google Meet grid, watching them finish a course they’d signed up for months earlier. Ranchi was my very first stop. It was also the first exam I’d ever conducted in person since I started teaching. Although I had been visited this institute once more earlier just after one month of the starting of this Digital Marketing course.

My flight to Ranchi came with a long layover in Kolkata. It was technically my first time there, though most of what I actually saw was the inside of the airport terminal. I kept meaning to step out and explore the city, but the layover timing didn’t really allow it, so it remained just a place I passed through rather than truly visited.

The Ranchi batch had been taught almost entirely online through Google Meet, in partnership with Mary Vandana Computer Institute on Old HB Road in Kokar. Mr. James Nayan Toppo runs the center there, and he completely took care of the visit end to end. From picking me up to making sure the room and the students were perfectly ready, he made a long travel day so much easier than it could have been.

The exam was set for 11 AM, but students started arriving as early as 9. That gave us close to two hours before anything official began, and I spent most of it just talking to them in the room. It was amazing finally meeting them in person after months of only seeing faces on a screen. There was nothing structured, just casual conversation while people trickled in. Some asked about the certification and what it could do for their careers, while a few just wanted to know what it’s actually like doing digital marketing full time.

Then, one of them brought up something I hadn’t even noticed about my own teaching until he said it out loud: “Do you like pizza so much? Because you always give the example of pizza while teaching.” I genuinely hadn’t realized I did that until that exact moment. Apparently, it had come up in enough classes to become a running joke among them before I’d even landed in Ranchi!

The exam itself consisted of two written sections and one practical. In the gap between finishing the written sections and starting the practical, one student caught me off guard by telling me, “Your voice is so cute.” I really didn’t have much of a reply for that one, so we just smiled and moved straight into the practical portion.

Once all three parts were done, everyone sat around waiting on their results. That’s when a different student mentioned he’d looked up my YouTube channel. He said he felt personally connected to the classes even though they were fully online and wanted to see more content. I had to tell him I didn’t actually have a channel yet, but I promised I’d let him know the second I made one.

The results came back surprisingly fast, within about an hour. We pulled this off mostly because a couple of the institute’s own teachers generously pitched in to help check papers alongside me.

Out of the 77 students who had registered for the batch, 33 successfully passed. We ran the certificate ceremony that same day right after the results were finalized. I had the privilege of handing each certificate to the students myself, calling them up one name at a time.

By the time the ceremony wrapped up, it was late afternoon and time for me to move on. Mr. James dropped me at the bus stand himself before I left for the next state, which felt like its own kind of special send-off after such a fulfilling day. Four more stops to go. More on the next one soon!