Introducing myself as Kavita Pankaj Shirsat often makes me reminisce the meaning of the word, Kavita -a 'poem'. Indeed, the name itself is special as it was the gift of my father’s poetic leanings. I had a good student life in a girl's convent school at Andheri, Mumbai. Later, we relocated to Ichalkaranji a small place in Kolhapur district where in addition to my studies, I recall having shouldered a unique responsibility comforting my siblings to adapt to new environment.

The passion for pursuing a career in teaching first initiated when I was a student of Walchand College of Engineering. Despite having a lot of opportunities to go abroad and pursue my career, I joined the prestigious Tata brand at Pune. After working for some time in the industry, I decided to pursue my passion for teaching and kept my foot in the Vidyalankar Institute of Technology in 2001. Thereafter, I completed my master’s from Mumbai University and at present doing research from VJTI, Mumbai.

VIT has been facilitating me foster my continuous encouragement in technical endeavors and I strive to instill the same in the students to develop remarkable projects. I also received the CSI award for the Best Guide of students' project in 2020. The well-furnished computer labs with modern equipped terminals and loaded with high-end software pertaining to the curriculum at VIT has aided tremendously in the faculty ensuring appropriate application of the theory by the students. The mindset prevailing in the campus has aided not only the students but also myself in a continuous search for doing something new in the field of computer science.

Besides academics, I acquired proficiency in sports like Kho Kho and represented the team as the captain twice at the national and zonal levels. I was also passionate about singing and acting. Acting at college level was nevertheless, a very creative lens to see the world from the different perspectives.

The experiences of my childhood molded me to who I am today. Today is the present. Since tomorrow will be the future and different from today, the onus is on teachers like me to design and construct the today so that tomorrow inculcates the same attitude that we adopted to build our foundation and the feeling of accomplishment seeing students grow in knowledge, confidence, and skills.