Twenty-three year old Rahul Keerthi attends Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. So what is it like there? Rahul says....” I say lively. I say active. I say challenging in the sense that it challenges the way I think because of all these thoughts I have around,” he says.
“It is also challenging in that it really pushes me, it is really frustrated me at times being here, but that is how I grow you know when you are challenged, when you are really pushed to your boundaries and you are really forced to sit down and question say ‘why am I doing this,’ or ‘what does this mean’ that is the kind of environment you want to be in and I just think that really what Brown is. It’s lively and it is such a warm place despite the weather here at times it is a very warm place,” he says. “I love about all things the people. The people that I have met here at Brown, they are just wonderful, wonderful people.”
The third year junior is majoring in Commerce, organizations and entrepreneurial ship (or COE), which is a relatively new track at Brown University. Rahul says his specific field is organizational behavior. Exactly what that entails, he tells us. “Organizational Behavior is interesting in that its kind of a business perspective, but because Brown is a liberal arts university and intends for all of its students all of us to have a very broad base understanding of all of our subjects, what COE does is that it gives us a view of organizations from all sort of perspectives,” he says.
“So I have taken courses not just in Sociology where I look at like groups in organizations or how managers and leaders run their organizations, but I have also taken courses in Engineering to understand how technology impacts companies or courses in Psychology and Economics to understand the basis of which firms make decisions and things like that,” he says.
“So because of the nature of the university, COE is actually a unique program here and it is really enjoyable for me to take it because I don’t feel like I am being constrained to just one way of thinking about business.”
Rahul says hearing about Brown University and the open exchange of thoughts one can experience when receiving an education in the U.S., he says he looked forward to leaving home and coming here. “I was born in 1984 in Madras, India and I barely lived there actually, my family stayed there for about six months before we moved to Germany and then I lived there for about five years and then from there we moved on to Singapore where I lived ever since,” he says.
“So I was pretty much raised and brought up in Singapore. Educated there all my life and I am pretty much a Singaporean now and the reason why I came to the United States is actually I heard a lot about the universities here in the U-S and the nature of the curriculum and the nature of the education here that there is always an open exchange of ideas, or thoughts and that you have the best and the brightest minds that congregate here especially in the northeast where I am I have heard so many wonderful things about this place and I just had to experience it for myself,” he says. “So when the chance came up to apply to a university here I jumped at it.”
Attending Brown University has been very rewarding for Rahul and he says he is proud to be an international student on that campus. “I’m very proud that I bring an international perspective to the university. That I come here as an international student not just to take the education that the university provides, but also to give back and so I do feel like an international student and I do have that feeling because I am proud to be one and I want everyone to know that I am one,” he says. “That I come from Singapore and that I have grown up in these countries and I have experienced a few things and I can share it with them and I also want to learn where they are from and what they have to give to our society, to our community, to our university.”
Graduation is only two years away and Rahul wants to work in the consulting field. “I’m planning to graduate in two thousand and nine. I actually have no idea what I am going to do when in graduate, but I would love to start working for a company that really involves itself in business,” he says.
“So when I graduate I’m actually hoping to try my hand at consultancy because I feel like it is very interesting and a growing field. There’s so many different perspective that come out every year about how businesses should be run, how people should grow their businesses for the people who work for them and for the people that they serve and that is something that I want to commit and dedicate myself to.”
