It was a long struggle for this part-time welder

For E. Manimaran, a school dropout and part-time welder who secured the second rank among Plus Two students from the city corporation schools, it has been a long struggle to achieve his academic ambitions.

“I had to drop out of school in Class VIII to work in a welding workshop since my family was struggling to make ends meet,” says the 21 year old. His father works with a confectionary factory as a delivery man and his mother is a housewife.

Determined to complete his studies, Manimaran enrolled himself in a tutorial college and registered to write SSLC exams in 2012. Despite scoring 348 marks, he found himself staring at another roadblock.

“No school was willing to admit me since I had written the exams as a private candidate through a tutorial college. A teacher at Bharathidasan Corporation Higher Secondary School saw that I was eager to study and helped me secure admission,” he says.

Even after he joined the school, Manimaran continued to work as a welder in a workshop at Sunday Market. “I used to work after school till 8 p.m. every day and then get back home to catch up with my studies with little time to spare,” he states.

Managing to focus on his studies despite having a packed day at school and sweating it out at the workshop, the achiever has made his family and school proud with his score of 1129.

“He was an extremely hard working student who was not only determined to perform, but also had immense interest in Science and what he was studying,” says C. Saravanan, his Science teacher.

Manimaran hopes to pursue an engineering degree in Computer Science, a subject in which he has scored 195 marks, and states that it is his favourite field of study.

“So many students crib about studies when there are people like me who find it tough to get an opportunity to study. Every student should be interested in what they are studying in school which will automatically motivate them to perform well,” he adds.