“The Engineer Bro” is the current trending page on facebook which brings forth the life of an engineering student in the most sarcastic and satirical way possible. The page is headed by Manish Jalan who himself is pursuing engineering from a reputed college, the CV Raman College of Engineering, Odisha and currently, is in the final year. Manish is well aware of the actual life of the engineering students as he himself goes through one and portrays the same in the frame of the character The Engineer Bro itself.
1. In this era of the high-end competitive exam where everyone is running in the race to get hold of the best possible college in the nation. How much do you think stress has affected a student?
A lot to be honest! Today’s education system, on a broader aspect, demands students to just get the passing marks somehow and keep going rather than focussing on the actual knowledge that they gain in the process. We all have one favorite teacher among the whole lot whose teaching methods impressed us and who wholeheartedly focused on giving knowledge rather than pushing towards the finish line.
2. There are different factors as well as people who act as stress enhancer for a student. Who are they according to you?
There is stress from society to subpar Sharmaji’s child, from your teachers to keep their reputation, and in the end from yourself to prevent from the guilt trip. And in this whole process, the exam is no more about knowledge, it remains a mere check of how one can handle stress well.
3. Are you trying to troll engineering or just provide relaxation to the students? What exactly do you wish to propagate through your page?
In recent past, the no of engineering students graduating in this country has increased a lot compared to those who actually become successful engineers. The aim of this page is neither to troll engineering, nor to provide relaxation to students exactly, but to show the unspoken truth to the outside world. And in the process relive some of the moments any engineering student would have faced in his/her journey of 4 years.
4. Why did you create the character the engineer bro? What was the idea behind the character in particular?
We tried to make a character ‘The Engineer Bro‘ with whom fellow engineers could relate in terms of what one undergoes during engineering. Not only show what an engineer does inside a class but also what he is capable of doing outside of class. Through this, we have at times provided motivation to people who are disheartened and also shown the direction to the misguided.
5. What gave you the idea of creating “The Engineer Bro“?
At one time, I used to run many fan pages but then I wanted to build up a character which is loved by everyone, people can relate to and is funny, I really wanted to make a character which could reflect any random engineer‘s life. That’s when I decided to build a character “Engineer Babu” but later changed it to “The Engineer Bro” due to some reason. I wanted to show that what we do or what happens as such inside the college is nowhere near to what our friends or relative imagine it to be. So we felt the necessity of showing that to people outside the college and sharing memories with the student community as a whole. And also every other page were just trolling engineers, so we somehow balanced the equation.
6. How has this page changed your life? Has it had some after effects personally?
Yes, this page has brought about some major changes in my life. First of all, when we started this it was not a community this big, we just had the determination of reaching out to the students out there and connecting with them. Least did we know that we will be impacting thousands of people daily with the content that we create? Our inbox is flooded daily with messages saying our content helps them in unimaginable ways and that they want us to keep going. Such messages at the end of the day drive our whole team to work so as to create amazing content for our audience.
7. We can see a lot of people following your page but which section of the society follow you the most?
A lot of our audience is students who are currently about to enter into graduate studies, so we frequently get enquired about different career options and the alternatives. This on a personal level inspires and drives us to make sure that we help them take the right direction. We feel more responsible now as we have the potential to impact a large number of students directly through our page and at the same time feel loved with so many positive messages from fans.
Engineer Bro’s Facebook Page.