BUILD A DOOR OR DON’T WAIT FOR A KNOCK – FOR ALL THE INTERNS

From roaming around the corridors hooting, shouting and planning for nothing else but picnics and parties, also with a plathora number of bunks to a full fledge professional life, I have learnt one thing: Every effort is interconnected, all you have to do is move forward with some planning.

I was, in my university, one of the most non-serious person as far as it was about attending the classes. In the first year I went on touring Pakistan twice, organised a number of picnics and parties. Which made me realise, “A person who can arrange a successful picnic can also arrange a professional event”. All the events are the same. There has to be some financial management, some marketing, some lectures and also a very lazy team to manage. That was the first very useful lesson my university taught me. Actually sometimes we underestimate our abilities because of the taunts of the people who can’t do that.

In third year, during the internship season, we heard that internship is the most useless thing in the world. It never helps you in your professional life. But luckily we went to a very good organization under the management of some very professional and experienced people. And believe me those lessons still help me in the professional life. Surprised to see a hooting and shouting lover taking internship seriously? So that was the second useful lesson I learnt. “There is a time for fun mostly, but in a very rare few moments, life wants you to be serious”.

And this is the problem with the most of the students, a non-serious fun loving person always stays the same way no matter what and where he is. And a nerd always stay nerd. There are many things which non-seriousness teaches you. A) Handling work load, B) Management, C) Submitting the work before the complete satisfaction of self-esteem etc. Also there are many things which nerdiness teaches you. A) Completeness in work, B) Following the routine, C) Being organized. All of this is necessary at random intervals of life.

In the final year, we heard that choose a teacher who can give you maximum marks in the FYP. It never helps you in your professional life. GPA is more important. And believe me just after my FYP, I had 03 job offers just because of my FYP. Because why will a person hire a fresh engineer he didn't know, rather than a person he is teaching since the last year. So I learnt, “plan everything, at least two years prior to the professional life”.

So my advice is:

·  From third year, this is the time to think, what is the most suitable discipline for you? (Transportation, structure, construction, water, soil etc.)

·  Decide and do the internship there, and for only a month or two, be serious.

·  When you finish your internship, make sure that every senior in that firm is your friend.

·  From 3.2 GPA to 3.8 GPA there is no difference, if you have learnt more than 04 GPA groups.

·  Irrespective of how many bunks are in your belt, your concepts should be very clear.

·  Office is not a venue for bunks, that time is now over.

The Illusion of Scope

The Illusion of Scope

We live in a society where too many rumours become facts, too many sounds become voices and too many likes become happiness. All you have to do is pitch anything wrong or right as many times as possible until it becomes a universal truth.

So I heard people saying that there is no scope of traffic engineering in Pakistan. Most of these people are my personal contacts, my juniors, my mates etc. When I ask them, “what is traffic engineering?” they often reply:

•         The counting of vehicles
•         Vehicular traffic study
•         Traffic impact studies
•         Vehicle congestion study etc.

Then after hearing all this with immense patience from these social media philosophers, I ask:

• Who will decide how many visitors a theme park should receive after its construction?
• Who will decide how many lifts a building should have for smooth operations?
• Who will decide the paths of pedestrians?
• Who will decide the cargo movement patterns?
• Who will finalize the operations of railways and airports? (number of trains, bogies, frequency)
• Who will decide the demand and supply of dry ports?
• Who will synchronize the city?
• Don’t you think that there is a requirement of capacity analysis of sea channels and corridors?

This gives their weak stomach a food for thought. Then with a pause, I say, every object that may move from one recognised origin to another recognised destination comes under the traffic engineer’s scope. Weather it is the traffic of containers in the container yard, traffic of visitors in the shopping mall lift, queue analysis of a roller coaster ticket holders, busyness of runways or the vehicular traffic engineering.

Then the argument expands with its extreme irrationality, they say no one wants to accept that, they design town cities without consulting a traffic engineer, there is nothing we can do. Then I conclude the argument with two points. One is, even you never knew all this, how can they know? And as a second point I tell them a story I like, once told by my teacher (Mr. Tahseen).

One day a shoe maker was transferred to a village, he resigned the next day with an argument that, company wants to sink my career because in this village “no one wear shoes”.

They accepted the resignation and send another shoe maker to that village, next day he ordered 100,000 shoe pairs with an argument that this is an amazing venue give me 100,000 shoe pairs immediately because here in this village “no one is wearing shoes”

Illusion of Scope or Massive Scope, assume again!