My ACM experience

Okay. So I asked this person (I’m not disclosing names!) about different societies of NUST on Ask.fm. This was almost a week before joining date.  We specifically talked about ACM and IEEE. IEEE? Sounds “more professional” with all those “Es..” as in engineering, but he told me that ACM performed way better than most of the societies and that they got more grants as well.  So, I made up my mind that ACM will be the one I’ll join. We talked about different societies too. SGA, SLS, NAC, etc.

Kher, I’ll share my experience…

At first, obviously, I became a general member of ACM. I did join other societies as well, but the catch was that ACM had arranged an orientation cum fun activity meeting along with a food party (If I’m not wrong there was a cake as well :P ) . So they do care about their members, right? To be honest, they were the only ones who did actually made a first good impression. And then I decided I should try my luck at the Executive council thing.

In a parallel universe, I was sitting in my hostel room when a person X came to rag me. I won’t go into the ragging details but in the end I found out that Mr. x was the President of ACM,  well Former President as of now.  I told him I could design stuff in Adobe Photoshop and I wanted to be on the executive list of members. He said sure man, u’re in! And that’s how it happened…no? Yea none of that happened actually :P I was called in for an interview the next day and after a lot of discussion about what I’ll be doing and will I be able to do it, I was selected. Selection was totally on merit I must tell you, jaisay Shahbaz Sharif k laptops merit pe miltay han :P  I competed for the post. Let’s cut it short there was no one else who had applied for that post so I was selected anyways. Never mind :P

ACM has given me a lot of exposure related to managing tight schedules I’d say. Sometimes we had a day or two to plan and execute a whole event. I’m proud to say that within first six months, I was Alhamdulillah made the head of IT team. It might sound a bit pretentious but I really liked it when someone appreciated my work. Well that’s a natural thing I guess! There were a lot of fun events. Especially Robo-Wars which was related to making robots and competing with your rivals.There was this team who came from some other college of NUST. They used to call us sir, third years, not knowing that we were Freshmen :P There were workshops, seminars and a charity event which was a really good experience.

I have spent some really good time in this society I would say. Though there wasn’t much interaction at first, I didn’t even know about more than half of the council :P. But honestly speaking the people were really good. Taking time out of your busy schedule is very difficult, but this council was able to do it and I salute you guys for that!

I’d like to end with a quote which I just Googled and I don’t know why am I putting it here or if it is even relatable… haha here you go :D

“Learning is an ornament in prosperity, a refuge in adversity, and a provision in old age.” 

― Aristotle

Written By:

Moazzam Ali Khan,

Head IT Team, ACM-SEECS Chapter,

Council of 2013 – 14.