I was arranging the flash cards for my workshop when the student representative seated in front of the car turned to me and said, "Here you'll find a lot of people besides engineers. We have artists, filmmakers, dancers, athletes..." The list was almost as long as the scenic road to the NIT Rourkela campus, where I was a guest speaker at the annual fest this January. I spoke about my experience of having a book of poetry published at 21. A few months down the line, I was watching a short film made by students of that institute on YouTube. There was already an uproar on social media, and talk of sending it to student film festivals.

Last month I was a at a festival hosted by the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) in Calcutta. Here, too, I was expected to talk about my journey as a poet. I told the auditorium, which was full of literary enthusiasts, how alike our lives were - here was I, a postgraduate student of Computer Science, discussing poetry with a bunch of future scientists.

That was when it dawned on me. It wasn't just me, or this batch of IISER scholars. A big chunk of our generation believes in the revolutionary concept of parallelly pursuing our passion and a profession.

This year, my college, St. Xavier's in Calcutta, felicitated four students for their work in their field of passion - sitar prodigy Kalyan Majumdar who spends a major part of the year playing at international concerts, national-level cyclist Rishabh Tiwari, Garima Poddar who won the IIHM Young Chef India Schools 2014, and I. Three of us belong to the department of Computer Science.

While it is an honour to be thought of as extraordinary, the idea of balancing academics with a passion is slowly graduating from unusual to normal. That was also the take-home message from our college event that was named Out of the Box by out vice-principal.

It is easy to take the first step in exploring your skills in writing, music, art, dance or filmmaking because you don't need a degree to launch your first book, music album or film. You only need to create: write your manuscript, record your songs, express an idea on reel. Then comes the difficult part - finding a publisher, marketing your music, getting funds and resources for your film. Once you start on this journey, there is little to stop you from reaching the summit.

That is one of the things I discuss during the workshops I conduct in association with the Bangalore-based "The Climber - My Captain Program", in which I mentor people of all ages, from all over the world, who want to take a step into the field of creative writing. I tell them that once you push past the fear of the unknown, you will realise you are slowly building up your dream with the pieces that you already have.

So, where does that leave academics and our profession? Here's the twist: they aren't being left behind. They shape us just as much as our passions do. Just because we are exploring the idea of breaking out of our linear 9-to-5 lives doesn't mean we want to be caged by the notion of "rebels who defied the rules". We can do both things at once - and, more importantly, a lot of people want to do both things at once. At my workshops I have had engineers, lawyers, doctors and management students who want to explore the writer in them.

As for me, I take courses and attend lectures at every opportunity so that I can hone my skills and become a successful computer scientist one day.

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I- I took the one less traveled by," said Robert Frost. But some of us take both.

The writer is pursuing MSc in Computer Science and has written a book of poems