My heart goes out to all the sophomore students having the experiences of freshmen this year. We only just started breaking the ice with Main Campus. Being the unfortunate Corona Batch, no doubt, the institute knew little about how to handle us. We were denied an orientation, and it is ridiculous how some of us still hallucinate about an O’ week. We still gaze at the ceiling when it is our turn to speak and do not know how to handle our fellows with GPA syndrome. The list of our stumbling blocks to survive another semester is never-ending. And, if you’re struggling, here are Top 5 things you should know!
Navigating New Territory as a Sophomore
A sophomore has to suffer the walk of shame into the class on regular basis. Because your first 10 minutes are wasted searching for the classroom due to fresh experiences at Main Campus. Sometimes your class is in some MCC room in Aman CED and you are looking for MAV in Adamjee block. Then running those miles between two blocks, with the energy of an ancient turtle, gets you late to the class.
Class Participation Feels Like ‘Mout’ to You
You are not always fortunate enough to escape your teacher’s eye. And when the teacher points out to you, speaking with a local accent among those ‘andae wala burger’ fellows is a nightmare. You knock your confidence to participate but all new faces staring at you make you more nervous. And next thing that happens is a disaster: your words get lost on the way to your mouth and you know a mute does not speak.
Other times you scratch your memory to come up with a point only to save your ‘CP’ marks. If your ‘layiq’ sophomores share the same point before you, then all that is left for you is to revise the lecture in the next class for saving your CP. Trust me I have saved my class participation grade last semester the same way. Because History of Ideas used to fly over my head with no ideas in my brain to share during the class. Revising the last class’s lecture before the next class was my saving grace.
Teachers Catching You Sleeping During the Lecture
My condolences are with you if you are among the ones getting caught while completing your sleep during the lecture. When the instructor bombs you with a question in the middle of a dream, you wake up as surprised as a vampire waking up to a garlic clove. By the time you compose yourself, your instructor leaves a remark and moves to the next person. And after the insult, you now decide to reset your genome by turning on genes that were previously sleeping.
Your GPA Philic Sophomores
Every class has those resilient nerds; possessing a historic affinity for teacher’s attention as well as GPA. In case you are phobic to such things, you will feel chemical repulsion towards those fellows.
Sophomores with a 4. O GPA syndrome are especially hard to handle. You have got no beef with them but their activities in class make you naturally dislike them. Simply because they always remind the instructor of a quiz or an assignment deadline. Moreover, they are big fans of class participation and share every single point you could think of before you. When it comes to class participation they are just like heroin addicts in need of a fix.
Nightmares Dressed Like Daydreams: Hourlies
IBA introduced two curveballs this semester, which took everyone by surprise: open-air classes and hourlies. However, open-air classes in tents did not survive a week. Meanwhile, hourlies are fixed throughout the semester. When we first got the email on outlook about hourlies and no exams, it actually made us happy. Only later we figured out that hourlies were just another name for the ‘balah’ exams.
For an average sophomore, hourlies is that big fat truth on your table eating your meals and getting fat. It holds you hostage and its thought never lets you rest until you are in control of exam anxiety.
Conclusion
The Corona Batch of 2024 was fortunate enough to escape IBA’s entry exam and win the lucky draw in round two. But it has sacrificed a lot of freshmen experiences and activities at the campus. The batch barely had any campus life. Social interaction was equal to being nothing and they are meeting their fellows now in their sophomore year. And they are just learning to survive on-campus semesters this fall.
