Beyond High School - March Edition [Final]
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For High
Schoolers
A monthly magazine for educators, parents, and high schoolers.
Designed to inspire & prepare high schoolers for life beyond.
ISSUE 8 | MARCH 2024
How to talk to AI
Give persona to AI and lead
with the right words
The Future of Work
Equip yourself with tools for a
bright future. Harness the
power of being a digital native
and think out of the box
Fostering Careers out
of Passions
Discover your first steps to convert
interests into careers. Embrace a
multitude of passions to become one
of a kind
Dear readers,
Life must have been abuzz around you as you navigate through the stressful times of
exams and think about your college applications and career ambitions. After our last issue,
we left you with some time to focus on acing those exams. But, with this issue, we are back
to make your road to the future smoother.
Your exams are now fossilising into ancient history, but something’s been keeping you
awake all night. We notice the stress of your future may be catching up to you. This is
because you are finally standing at the threshold of times where you make decisions that
will impact your professional journey for life. Remember, it is only natural for students to
feel a mix of excitement and anxiety when making decisions about their future. Make this
flurry of emotions your guiding light and use them as your roadmap to make intuitive calls
on where your best interests lie. As you figure your ambitions and interests, we back you
with this issue to address some questions about your college applications and career
ambitions that are keeping you up all night.
In this issue, our spotlight is on lived-experiences of choosing your passion and applying to
colleges. And an infectious story that may convert you into becoming an archaeologist. If
that’s not all, we bring you the latest takes from experts from the Career Development
Office at Ashoka University. If you’re hoping to alleviate all this stress, we also take you on
some interesting museum-tours to find you some cosy comfort spaces.
We wish you a smooth foray into your future adventures and hope for you to embrace
your unfolding success as you traverse through the pages of our monthly.
With warmest wishes,
Smridhi Chadha
Office of High School Programmes
FROM THE EDITOR
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ASHOKA UNIVERSITY CAMPUS
Additionally, building soft-skills will become crucial as one will wish to grow in
diverse and newer atmospheres. Being a collaborator and an individual interested
in public-speaking will surely help you high schoolers assimilate in any groups
faster and also stand out with your unique opinions.
As you are guided by your interests and intuition, consider incorporating crucial and
realistic findings in your career journey. In our previous issue we discussed how the
workplace has evolved for Gen-Z. This month we look inwards and discuss how the
workforce, that may include YOU in future, is expected to evolve. Let’s flip through
McKinsey’s Report on the Future of Work that highlights some key areas that one can
develop on to stay afloat in the tides of the times.
The report suggests that the future is bright and blossoming with opportunities. It is time
to bear the fruit of your relaxed interest in the digital world, and utilise it as a harness to
step ahead. Equip yourself with relevant tools like working with ChatGPT or understanding
Google Analytics that will keep you abreast with digital literacy and understand how digital
data is read. Understanding data and being digitally literate are key skills of our times.
They will help you to not just navigate our data-driven world, enabling informed decision-
making, innovative problem-solving, but also allow meaningful participation in society.
Immersing yourself in the world of interdisciplinary education might also be a useful skill
that can empower you all your life. Engaging through conversing threads that run along
the various disciplines will allow you to become an effective problem-solver with the right
critical thinking skills that the future of work will demand.
The report also indicates that Green Jobs will be on the rise - it makes sense, then, to learn
about our planet and sustainability further. This will be relevant to us not just
professionally, but also as a species to make the world a better place.
RESEARCH IN FOCUS
YOUR FUTURE @ WORK!
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We are sure that by now you must have interacted
with GPT, LLAMA2 or Claude. And by interacting we
mean you must have talked to them, asked for their
assistance, and maybe gotten amused at their not-so-
useful responses occasionally. It is rather amusing and
sometimes downright frustrating to chat with these
large language models and get them to do what we
really need them to do. But are there some points to
keep in mind as we continue to work with generative AI
and as AI continues to change the way we work and
think about work? Here, we discuss some good practices
to follow while prompting the Gen AI of your choice-
TECH & DATA OF INTEREST
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Do you have your own tips on how to work with AI in an effective way? We want to
know! Write to us at hspmagazine@ashoka.edu.in and we will share it on our
Instagram page!
PROMPT ENGINEERING OR HOW TO
TALK TO THE AI OF YOUR CHOICE
Naincy Catherine
Office of High
School Programmes
There are no magic words, seriously!- There's no consistently effective "magic word" for
improving AI responses. You may have heard of strategies like promising rewards or
simulating empathy but they work sporadically and vary by AI. Max Woolf's extensive,
informal study on GPT-4 showed that outcomes from using threats or rewards were
inconclusive and situation-dependent. While these tactics can occasionally enhance AI
performance,
their
effectiveness
is
unpredictable
and
can
sometimes
be
counterproductive. It suggests that relying heavily on such approaches isn't necessary.
1.
Give it a persona- Tell the AI who they are, are they a marketer, an aspiring graphic
novelist or a haiku writer. This will help the AI build a context for the output you are
asking for. You can also mention who is the audience for the output and what should
be the format of the output (text, table, image).
2.
Give it examples- If you have samples of the output you want, do share it with the AI.
It's best to help the AI know which aspects of the sample are important, say the writing
style in a magazine essay, asking AI to follow those aspects.
3.
Ever feel like your stress levels have peaked? Or felt like it's time you hit the mental
gym? Get those creative juices flowing and allow your mind to have a deep breather. This
month, for our Chilling is Fulfilling section, we want to build on upcoming research that
suggests that being enamoured by art & culture may just be what you need to turn a dull
day into great.
In this spirit, it's time for you to hit your mental playground and discover some museums
around you. In this issue, however, we will take you on a virtual trip to digital repositories
that may inspire you with fresh ideas!
If you’ve always been a nature-baby, then traversing through the various virtual tours
offered by the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History is your perfect match -
discover the heights of our universe, or the depth of our grounds. Learn more about dinos
that dotted our landscape or find out what remained written in bone for posterity.
If you’re a foodie and pray to get your hands on a time-machine, then do peruse the
collections of the British Museums. We are sure you would love to walk through Ancient
Rome to find out what meals and drinks are in vogue. If you are mighty inspired - you
might as well try out the recipe for a bread, as recommended by the curators!
Or, if you’ve always been a lover of high culture, then hopping virtually to the Louvre may
also be a great idea. Discover how art can also be political in this tour.
We hope you stumble upon some thought-provoking pieces from these tours and prioritise
your mental well-being through some fulfilling chilling :)
CHILLIN’ IS FULFILLIN’
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YOUR WELLBEING JOURNEY THROUGH THE VIRTUAL
WORLD
“Where you live for the next four years is an extremely
important, oftentimes, an underrated choice!”
One of the best and the busiest times in my life was
when I was applying for undergraduate programmes. I
was clear I wanted to apply within India exclusively, for a
multitude of reasons; but I was also clear that I did not
want to restrict myself to one discipline that early on in
my life. For instance, I had a fair idea that I wanted to
study Political Science, but didn’t realise that I also loved
International Relations till I arrived at Ashoka. There are
things that everyone thinks you should figure out —
which between you and me, aren’t that important — and
something you should definitely know beforehand.
I won’t go into what other people find important (I’m sure you already know!) but one
question that you should definitely ask yourself is about what environment can make you
feel excited and intellectually stimulated.
It’s convenient to get swayed by your peers applying for specific, fancy sounding
programmes to highfalutin colleges but you must sit and research each of your options.
For instance, I only applied to four universities in India including Ashoka; but researched
three or four things which were the most important to me: the faculty, the environment on
campus, the extracurriculars and the placements. In fact, the excellence of the faculty was
my primary motivator for choosing Ashoka. Further, because I was based out of India,
visiting campuses during my break was easier. Where you live for the next four years is an
extremely important, oftentimes, an underrated choice! I even discarded one of my
applications because I felt like the campus wasn’t for me.
Lastly, make sure you pursue a program that you know you will benefit from; especially
something that caters to your interests and feels closest to you. Everyone has different
needs, behaviours and expectations — your choices are completely your own. Don’t feel
compelled to do something everyone is doing: if it’s not for you, don’t do it. And not
everyone has a dream college! I only realised Ashoka was the perfect choice for me when I
actually started attending university. Finally; if I could go back in time, I’d definitely try to be
less harsh on myself. Yes, boards and admissions are important — trust me, I get it — but
don’t overwork yourself.
FROM AN ASHOKAN
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Ritikaa Kaila
4th Year, Political Science,
Ashoka University
As the world is becoming increasingly complex, the need for passionate individuals who
can drive innovation and impact has increased. Over the years, there has been massive
student interest in ESG (Environment, Social, and Governance) and AI roles. The
preparation for such high growth and relatively newer roles require hands-on experience
from the school days. Work backward for this from young days by getting involved through
clubs/societies in schools and exploring beyond the curriculum.
Ensure that you are on your way to master independent thinking and academic rigour.
This, alongside hardwork and dedication will lead to pathways of possibilities and enable
each one you to find a meaningful life and career ahead.
INNOVATING YOUR FUTURE
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“What happens in college and what are my career
plans?”— these are big questions, but the answers are
never clear-cut for anyone. Each student is unique and
has their own set of interests and skill sets.
A way of dealing with this question is to stay on the left
side of the question mark. Be curious, be a dreamer, and
discover more (as all students do) without losing sight of
developing some skills of strategic importance to the
organisations.
In
our
experience,
at
the
Career
Development Office, with placements and internships, we
see that organisations are looking for flexible and dynamic
individuals, with excellent leadership qualities, who can
articulate well, and are good at problem-solving by
thinking
about
issues
from
multiple
perspectives.
Essentially, the interdisciplinary approach to education is
being recognized more and more by recruiters.
Shalvi Rastogi
Career Development Office,
Ashoka University
At the onset, we need to realise that the past was as complex as the present is. Therefore,
whatever skills and perspectives that we need to study the present, be it based in the
natural sciences, social sciences, humanities or the arts, we can employ the same to study
the past.
An archaeologist, at the root of it all, dabbles in everything possible to reconstruct past
human behaviours and lifestyles. So, whatever your interests: how we became human;
how did art and music develop; when and how did we start speaking and writing; or how
did we end up in even the most remote of islands, you can pursue them with archaeology.
An archaeologist, thus, has to be adaptable. They need to be willing to travel to the most
obscure of places, be willing to live in difficult and trying settings, mingle with many
different people, be open-minded and most of all, patient! After all, it took Howard Carter
over 10 years of hard work to finally discover King Tut’s tomb! Being an archaeologist also
requires a lot of library and archival work - most of our time is spent with books, maps,
images and reports, with the field being only a small component.
So, if you do want to be an archaeologist, go for it! Bring in your set of skills, and ‘dig’ up
some fun aspects of our past. However, always remember, as Indiana Jones himself says,
‘Archaeology is the search for fact, not truth. If it’s truth you're interested in, [the]
Philosophy class is right down the hall. So, forget any ideas you’ve got about lost cities,
exotic travel, and digging up the world. We do not follow maps to buried treasure, and “X”
never, ever marks the spot. 70% of all archaeology is done in the library. Researching.
Reading. We cannot afford to take mythology at face value.’
PHONE CALL TO PROFESSOR
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“Hello! Am I speaking to Dr Akash? I was hoping you could
let me know if watching Indiana Jones is enough to start
my journey as an Archaeologist?”
Hi! Yes of course, one may often wonder what it takes to
be Nathan Drake in this reality. What are the skills I need
to develop to become a real- world time-traveller? Well, as
Warwick Bray, a Latin American archaeologist stated in
1981, ‘…there are two kinds of archaeology: archaeology
as perceived by archaeologists, and archaeology as
perceived by [a person] on the street. Each of these
archaeologies has its own history…’. So, if you do want to
be an archaeologist, what does it take?!
Akash Srinivas
Postdoctoral Fellow, Centre for
Interdisciplinary Archaeological
Research, Ashoka University.
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The story of recovery is not just an individual’s journey - as academics from all over the
world gather at Babel, for their various passions - they face a larger consequence that
their translations are set to produce. Britain was at the peak of its Colonial Empire
during the 1800s and these translations could help aid the British colonial agendas.
These young translators are now conflicted between choosing an overall social good by
refusing to perform any translations or choosing a fairly comfortable career in
academia for themselves by keeping up with the tradition of translation at Babel.
What is the choice these young academics make? What are their compelling reasons to
choose either? Discover the answers to these questions as you flip through Babel. While
you are at it, it is reasonable to stop and wonder about your position as well. What
impact is your career ambition generating today?
BOOK NOOK
Ever wondered how your ambitions today may have the possibility of generating
an impact on thousands tomorrow? Let’s learn from examples as we flip through our
book recommendation for the month - Babel, by R. F. Kuang.
Set in the nineteenth century English town of Oxford, Babel takes one to contemplate the
question of language, individuality, and community. As the world crumbles into chaos,
linguists of diverse languages assemble at the tower of knowledge - Babel. It is a magico-
fantasy fiction that focuses on what is lost in translation. The plot, then, is about what can
be recovered.
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