Water trouble

By Shumaila Rais 

 I want to share a an interesting experience of mine with you.

One day our chair person, Rafia Taj, came and asked me, “Shumaila department mai Pani araha hai k nai?”  I was very surprised to find out that the chair person knew my name. I was confused. “Ji ma’am araha hai”, I answered in total bewilderment. 

 Actually this “pani scene” was a big fat joke amongst us friends. I could not understand how the chair person got to know about a joke that we shared, and to come out and ask me about it!. Let me share the pani scene with you guys.

There was shortage of water in the department and weather was very hot as well. We could not buy water bottles everyday because it gets expensive. We were thirsty, frustrated, and angry. So we went and nagged the "chamcha" of Rafia Taj, as we like to call him. Initially I went and told him that there was no water and he should something about it. I went again. He listened patiently. Then afterwards one by one every one of my friends went up and told the same thing till thhe man started shouting, "Mujhay pata hay pani nahi aaraha hay! Humayn bhi paani chahiyay hota hay! Nahi pata kab ayega pani! Mayn koi pani wala thori hoon!". There was still no water but we had managed to state our case, get rid of our frustration, and make that man go crazy which was the most pleasurable thing out of the whole situation which made us laugh till our stomachs hurt.

After a few days when the water problem was solved, the spoon-man came and said, “ab app ye nai bataeyay ga k aj pani araha hai”. 

Portrait of a writer as a writer

By Atiya Abbas

I am staring at the blank page before me and I am thinking about what to write. And then it hits me. Yes! A stream-of-consciousness piece would be a great idea. Of course, I cannot liken myself to the great stream-of-consciousness masters, James Joyce or Virginia Woolf but hey, it is worth a shot.

I once did this exercise for literature; trying to write freely about the senses with sustained attention for 10 minutes. I wrote everything about the fan and people coming and going to see how the action of the mind works and now, I am suddenly thinking as to why I didn’t take literature as a major or even a minor. I tell everyone that I wanted to keep a passion a passion, but shouldn’t one make a career out of what they love? That’s what most self help books say. I love literature…whoops there I go again staring into space, playing with my hair thinking about what to say because all this is starting to sound very clichéd. Think, think, think Atiya, what more can I say? Why not write about the blogging experience (now, there is something we have heard of before)? Nah…but I was telling Ayesha today that I don’t want this last piece to be about goodbye and all that because this is something that could materialize into something new if we try.

Wow, re-reading it again it does seem like a muddle of thoughts. I can just picture my fellow bloggers going through this, crossing out and fixing sentences, seeing how it is shaping it up. Sometimes there is a method behind the madness, but in writing there is no method, there is that ‘Eureka!” moment and sometimes it is “the sound and fury signifying nothing”…Oh way to go Atiya, literary references, that will make you sound so smart, NOT…and now I pause again thinking if that is too self-absorbed and weather my tone is coming off as sarcastic just like I want…don’t know if this will stay in the blog piece or not. Maybe by the time it goes up it will be completely changed. So there you have it, thoughts in their all their raw nature…I think that line in my brain just went straight now.

There's always a Price to pay...

Ayesha Ahmad

Our mentors, teachers, seniors, counsellors, and employers have always advised us to get involved in extra curricular activities and attend as many workshops as possible. As more the certificates, the finer your resume`. Therefore, when there was this workshop on investigative journalism, organized by the department, we were all too eager to become a part of it. The enthusiasm was not only due to the new tactics of journalism that we were going to learn but also because of the attainment of the much desired certificate without paying even a single penny in the name of the registration fee!

So, when the clock struck eleven on Thursday two weeks back, I bunked my dreadful History class and, with a lot of fervour and zeal, headed towards the auditorium with two of my other friends who were nearly as excited about this event as me. Upon entering the cool, air conditioned room, we soon realized that we were late, and in order to get room in the front we ended up cramming ourselves on a two-seater. After all the hustle and bustle, when we looked around, we saw people with neat blue folders, ball point pens, writing pads and other accessories like dandy bookmarks and brochures to name a few. That bit got us agitated but after going through some oddities, even we managed to get our hands on those 'captivating' supplements.

Once we settled down and felt that we were ready to get the knack of this amusing branch of journalism, droopy eyes and discreet whispers made us conscious of the tediousness revolving around the whole space. This interesting yet idiotic realization was followed by the hideous photo session via cell phones and incessant laughter over the wierdest matters. So much so, even the guest speaker took notice of this and shook his head while looking at us for a wakeup call. However, as stubborn as we are, we kept ourselves occupied with our crazy nitty gritties without paying any heed to whatever was going on around us.

The refreshment box given at the end of the event indeed made all the boredom worthwhile!  

 

Foreing students discuss their concerns with KU's Media Officer

Aden Dahir Salad
Karachi, October 27, 2010: Foreign student representatives from various disciplines of Karachi University met with the uninversty's Media Representative Officer to discuss their problems.

Meeting was held at the Administraion building Media Representative Officer of KU, Farheen Zehra, presided over the meeting. Other issues discussed included academics and envioronment.

Ms. Zehra sympathised with the concerns of the students and promised to forward them to the student advisor of the varsity.                       

The representatives highlighted their major problems of language barrier and lack of basic facilities in the hostels of both boys and girls. 

My blogging experience

Whoopee! As soon as I’m going to hit the send button this blog assignment will be over. Nothing can make me more content and euphoric than this thought! Not that I hate this virtual world of blog but it still gave me creeps because its purpose was purely academic. 

Eager, as  I am to get rid of this assignment,I’m not really sure how it would feel like not be part of a very strong and supportive team. How would it feel not to have a bossy team leader who has imposed hard and fast rules for meeting deadlines and making you work on time unlike the way you have done your assignments previously? How would it feel not to wait for the bittersweet, encouraging feedback on your posts? I wonder what it would be like. And my instinct says I will miss it. 

This blogging business turned out to be a whole new experience for me. At the beginning I had difficulty coping with it. It was not just writing and submitting your posts, it was more about being logical and creative about your writing, being aware of the readers’ interests, especially being patient with the weird, illogical comments of anonymous users. Still I’m grateful to all of them who commented whether to criticize or encourage. As I got to learn a lot from the feedback I received.

 All in all, it was a bittersweet experience. I feel obliged to thank our course in charge to have given us this opportunity to articulate our thoughts openly without any restrictions. One thing I’m sure about is everyone who had done this assignment is going to feel nostalgic about it someday.

Eyes on the Prize

By Atiya Abbas

A couple weeks back, there was an interesting debate raised in the “Media and Modern World” class. Of course, being in that class it always means that there will be some interesting nugget which will provide food for thought.

Miss Sadia Mehmood said that once you fashion your lives around long-term goals it will be easy to bypass any small obstacles in your path in the present. In that journey one has to be selfish in order to achieve something. One class fellow piped up that why should we be selfish? That is not the correct way. We should be helping all those who need our help and take everyone along.

Pondering on it, I feel that once we don’t define our goals, we will be left blaming present-day hurdles for all our problems. Nowhere can this lesson be more aptly learnt than in KU where every effort to do something good has to pass through a series of “red-tape” in order to get somewhere. One has to get this signed, get that application, some attestation, some stamp, some letter in order to take one infinitesimal step to getting somewhere. It this journey that truly teaches us the importance of long term goals and remembering that to get through this, whether “this” be a compulsory class, or walking for miles to one department to get facts for a report or visiting sponsors for a seminar is all adding up to the master goal one has set out for themselves. To illustrate I can give the example of two of our class fellows. If they had thrown in the towel thinking (like I was guilty of) “Fine, that teacher is not available for the recommendation I wouldn’t bother applying for the scholarship” they wouldn’t be in the U.S today gaining new experiences. If at that moment they thought “I don’t want to wait till two! It’ll take forever!” they wouldn’t be looking at the bigger picture. That “big picture” is what Miss Sadia taught us to define for ourselves in class that day.

However, if in reaching that master goal, emotions get in the way it can spell trouble. And they will, there is no doubt about that. We are all human and to not feel would make us lesser beings. But remember that sometimes a cry for help from an esteemed one is just a plea from them to listen. Be that listening support and everything will take care of itself. People know what they have to do, you just have to be there to listen and let everything take care of itself.

If one truly wants to learn what goals are and how to achieve them, a semester at KU is enough for teaching them that. It is a crash course in personal development and you won’t even have to read all those self-help books in order to attain that sense of achievement!

Your Plan-B is my Plan-A!

By Tehmina Qureshi

 I felt a surge of anger as the girl, sitting beside me in a workshop, described her saddest moment when asked by the moderator. She said that not being able to get admission in a medical college on merit. So, she came to Mass Communication instead! Journalism, which has not the remotest connection to medicine, was her second choice. It was her plan-B.

 Same is the case with about 60% of the people who come to study Mass Communication. In my batch, out of 40 people, more than 30 are girls. No offence to anyone, but approximately 25 of them did not intend to study Mass Communication at all. For many of them this was their second choice, after medicine or any other field. There is another girl who took admission and studied for a whole year. A year later she sat for the test for medicine again, and left. Apparently she wanted a place to spend her "farigh" days and she did that at the cost of someone else's place on merit for admission in Mass Communication.

In the workshop I talked about earlier, almost all fell down to social sciences after their merit fell short for medicine. Almost every girl's saddest moment was not being able to study medicine. All I wanted to do was jump from my chair and ask them why in the world didn't they try again? If they were doing it because of family pressure then shouldn't they be glad that they were saved by fate from studying something that they did  not want to for the rest of their lives?

  For these girls, journalism maybe just another subject to study to have a degree. For me it is something I want to do for the rest of my life. My plan-A, is their plan-B.