“Taking Flight: Rising from the Ashes”
It’s only after you’ve stepped outside your comfort zone that you begin to change, grow and transform.”
If I think about myself that how I was 3 months ago, I’ll be mostly described as a person who had low confidence, a lot of self-doubt and had trouble in decision making. The pandemic is the cherry on top. Because of being isolated, my mind usually went into that prohibited space which increased my anxiety and self-doubt. I was tired of the same old routine and confined in my home. Then a friend suggested me about Amal Academy and I applied it to escape from the monotonous routine but it became something so much more.
Whenever I saw posts of Amal on the Social Media sites, I often wondered that how do a class of complete strangers become a FAMILY in just 3 months? I was also in doubt that being from different cities, we won’t be able to make strong connections. But after 3 months, all my doubts were cleared.
Well, I had to summarize the last session in this blog but my mind cannot let go of the fact that Amal has been the silver lining that I luckily got to see during the tough times. Okay, enough talking, let me take you through the AMAZING last session.
The Beginning:
It was very hard to believe that this is going to be the last session. I’m a person who feels sad for days after finishing a TV series, this was a real connection with real people 😅. But I told myself that I’m going to enjoy every single moment today and not let anything ruin that.
So, Sir Ahmad started with one of the very first video project which made Batch-158 famous and it carries so many memories for me that I couldn’t stop smiling even after the video ended.
The Sickening Scavenger Hunt:
This was THE BEST part of the session. First, we were distributed into two teams and were sent into breakout rooms. Then we were given a “scroll” of riddles. They were household items (mostly 😄). We had to crack the riddle and take a selfie with the items found.
There was this one riddle, which was a compound of two words. We had misinterpreted it as we just solved the second part. When we were checking that if we had solved all the riddles, Sir Ahmad said, “We’ve done this one wrong. It’s made up of two words.” All of us immediately jumped to that and my level of excitement was so high that I said out loud “Balti”, “Balti” and ran to take a selfie 😂😂😂.
This was just one moment, we had several like these and the beauty of it was that if someone hadn’t got the chance to take a selfie, the other person gave up theirs and told the person to upload the picture of themselves. The Amal Principle of Progress, Ek aur Ek Gyara was in full action and it was so beautiful to see that this is how the last session is happening.
The Appreciation Posts:
Find me a Program Manager who will stay awake all night to make a super amazing presentation for her students just so their last session becomes memorable. I bet you won’t find any because our Ma’am Anum is irreplaceable and the cherry on top is Sir Ahmad with his humor and passion that made us emotional and full of tears (happy tears!) with their efforts and immeasurable amount of hard work.
I do not have words to explain how honorable I feel by being appreciated by my mentors. This is probably a once-in-a-lifetime thing for me. This is not only how they appreciated me, they said more in detail on the live session and I was like totally in awe of their kind words and praises. This journey has taken my confidence level from 30% to an 80% (yeah, I’m still a bit you know, under the bar 😅). This is a massive change which I never thought I will get in a matter of 3 months but my facilitators as well as fellows made it possible and I’ll always be thankful to them for this.
Farewell Video:
This is something me and Noor Ul Huda put up together for the whole batch. A parting gift from us. Before that, I want to add something for the brilliant Huda. She never ever back downs from doing something for the batch. Once, I felt a bit concerned about our PA and I texted Huda and she said “Yes, yes, I feel the exact same and let’s do something for him.” Then we decided to make a WELL-DESERVED badge for our beloved PA. For that, I collected the signatures from fellows and within a few minutes Huda made an extraordinary badge.
Okay, coming back to the farewell video, I gathered my courage to ask Huda to make a video and in spite of being sick, she made a video in under 2 hours 🤩. I’m honestly in awe of her and I’m being totally honest when I say that you are the elder sister, I never had ❤. A huge shout out to Noor Ul Huda!
Additional but really Important shout-outs:
Mega Project Group:
When you work your heart and soul on something for almost 2 months, totally online with no fellow around and when it’s time to present, it comes out as one of the best that you feel proud even during the presentation by your team member’s performance, is one of THE BEST feeling one could ever have!
I would like to thank Amjad Ali for his out of the box Graphic Skills, Haris Amin for being the PERFECT example of a Growth Mindset, to Maham Zubair for being my rock at the toughest times, to Muhammad Saad Siddiqui for being the perfect mentor and supporter, to Zain for making the best YouTube videos and to Huma for saving us during the questions of the assessor.
Whatever result comes out, know that I’m proud of Envirophile and every member ❤.
Surprise, Surprise!
My first PW group was the greatest gift I got at the very start of the fellowship and I’m so happy that I made such great friends. One of them, wrote down a whole blog for me. No one, literally no one ever did that for me and I don’t think I deserve that much love. No words can describe the amount of happiness and respect I felt and have for you. I am always inspired by people and I never knew that one day would come that I’ll be a source of inspiration for someone. This is just OUT OF THIS WORLD! I do not know how to Thankyou Sehar Alvi ❤🥺.
Okay, so umm this is it. The last blog for the very last PW. I’m terribly going to miss waking up early on the weekends, sometimes eating breakfast or sometimes absolutely not 😅 and being one of the first ones in the session to have a fun conversation before the start of the actual session. I’m going to miss writing blogs, thinking out of the box to make creative PWs, taking the online course, having fun in the session, learning a lot of new stuff, making silly mistakes, having debates, interacting with fellows of all the batches and the list goes on and on and on…..
Ladies and Gentlemen, the plane of a 3-month long journey (that’s metaphoric 😅) has landed. You are requested to check out at your respective terminals and get the exit-stamp as this is the end of a new beginning. In spite of the turbulence, this was a really beautiful ride and we aren’t going to forget even a single bit of it.
This is Noor Al Ain Tahir, signing off! 👋🏻
(I’m not crying, you are! 🥺)
