It can be unnerving. Your first day back in GIK while all your peers get to stay at home in that air conditioned room. For our own reasons we, the writers of GIKI Blogpost, had to go through just that last year. One thing’s for certain, there’ll always be a summer semester and like it or not, people will be taking it. That’s the way it has always been, and it seems that’s the way it will always be for any foreseeable future. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing, heck, BlogPost wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the summer. So the summer semester, despite its cons, has a silver lining and we’re here just for that.
Heat Evasion
We’ll be the first to admit, the heat can get to you and you will have limited options to make do with but, with the right steps, you can make it bearable at least. For starters, keep a cooler around, it really helps save you the trouble of moving from your room frequently. Contest for the ground floor, it’s proven to be the cooler region of the dorm. Go swimming (Fewer people in the summer = more room in the pool). Bath good, bath often and try keeping the ventilation in your room as streamlined as possible; bathroom exhaust on, bathroom door open, window open and your main door too.
Pro Tip: You may do that at night too but keep your stuff under lock, you can’t be too careful! Also, cover your bulbs with a sheet of blue cellophane paper to bring out a cooler ambient environment for the night.
The Common Room AC is Basically Useless!
Very often you’ll come back from your classes to find the common room packed with sweaty bodies and stench all over the place. For some it’s a price worth paying for, to us, it was disgusting. Period. So we went around in search for better, more comfortable places to hang around and we came up with 4 different locations worth crashing at. One of the most obvious places is the library that is if you’re willing to make the journey there. Take your laptop and headphones, watch a movie, research something, study or meditate, it’ll get you by comfortably until 5 pm on weekdays. (Yup, just weekdays). For the other places, you can subscribe to us and we’ll send you an email about all those places, honest!
It’s A Great Time to Make Some New Friends
One of the most frustrating parts of Summer in GIK is the fact that your “squad” won’t be there, so no selfies with #SummerSquadGoals. And that’s not a bad thing. There’s always a chance that you’ll run into someone cool or inspirational at least, you never know. One such example is ourselves, we weren’t all that good of friends before, but the summer semester definitely changed that.
Night-Time is the Best Time If You Don’t Have Early Classes
So after you’ve made some new friends, there’ll be plenty of things to do when you’re not studying (honestly people, it’s the summer!) You can have some late hangouts, walks, sports, movie marathons, gaming sessions and what not. Us, on one hand, had Counter Strike and Blur sessions till 4 am almost every night followed by watching the sunrise in the morning while listening to Amjad Sabri’s Qawali(RIP). Just find a gig worth doing with people and we promise you’ll look back on those memories fondly.
Your Productivity Will Be At An All-Time High
The biggest advantage you’ll have over non-summer people is that you’ll be in a routine or a certain flow, rendering you capable of doing things other people at the time will be just too lazy to do. Take said opportunity and use it to your advantage to make up for lost ground. You can do that by learning some new skills like Photoshop or taking an online course, learning a new instrument, reading books, practicing your swimming or toning your muscles at the gym. The possibilities are endless. Subscribe to receive your “Ways to end your boredom at GIK” resource.
Freakin’ Pray You Have a DC Heavyweight Spending the Summer with You!
So this is one thing that kind of is out of your hands, but having a DC powerhouse at your disposal can make life very tolerable. You can get movies, series, games, and what not to help you through those slow days, We were thankful to have both, Sudo and Malik with us, those guys alone had collectively about 4.5TB worth of stash!
Note for Non-GIKians: DC is GIK’s privately owned shared network where we can get download speeds up to 20mbps through the LAN. Each PC is connected to each other through this network while file transferring works much like a torrent where people share their stash of movies, games, e-books. course material, softwares and whatever you can think of.
Keep a Lookout at the Night Sky for The ISS and Other Celestial Bodies
Quite nights and clear skies define GIK (sorry city dwellers). You can even make do without a telescope. GIK is one of the most perfect places for any city kid to look up at the night skies and truly admire the beauty of the universe in total darkness. And one of the most interesting things to do is to catch satellites passing through the sky in the middle of the night. We used to stay up till dawn hunting satellites like the International Space Station and boy was it worth it! As for the celestial bodies, the visibility is better than even some of the sky maps that you can find on the internet. We had memorized the entire northern hemisphere’s sky with all the constellations. Our favorite was Ursa major and minor.
You’ll Never Have More Fun Playing Football (Okay, We Lied, It Gets Better With Rain!)
The best part about football was that we had it regularly at night. Often students against TAs or both against the colony or just about any other combination you can think of and it was worth it. One of the most memorable moments from summer last year was the blackout in July during one of the wildest storms we’ve seen, but that didn’t stop us from having a midnight football session on the street in the freezing winds and hard rain. Granted some of us woke up sick the next day but, worth it!
An Excellent Chance to Redeem a Messed Up Grade
You’re in GIK for a reason, as much as summer can be made enjoyable, you shouldn’t forget the primary reason you’re spending it. Do yourself some good and actually study for a better grade, not just a passable one. It should be relatively easier for you to go all the way for an A. Someone’s gotta get it, might as well be you. And by the end of it all, people will be just saying that you were indeed very lucky to have spent a summer getting that A.
Explore GIKI, Topi and Beyond
Since you’ll have ample time up your hands, a bit of exploration wouldn’t be a bad idea. Explore ToGIK (Tomb of GIK) if you haven’t, watch the sunrise from the long abandoned BBQ Point, have a hangout session at the helipad at the break of dawn or just straight up rally people, get an application approved and go hiking on GIK’s very own hiking trail. Apart for GIK, there’ll be places worth discovering outside, Topi has surprised on multiple occasions and doesn’t seem to be running out anytime soon, even if that’s not enough, gather people to go on trips for the weekend since it’s unbearably hot and no ACs work except for the common room and we already mentioned how that’s not doing anyone any favours. Go to the North, Islamabad, Pindi or Khanpur if you haven’t already. Tag your friends along.
Get creative (We made BlogPost, What do you bring to the table?)
Never let the fact that you’re spending the summer weigh you down. Some of the most unexpected surprises can turn up. Keep a positive attitude and try working on some personal projects or long term ideas.
A GIKI BlogPost Original
This blog is taken from the GIKI BlogPost and all the credit goes to them. All thanks to GIKI Alumni Association and to the one and only Rayyan Zahid (Batch 24) – Vice President Marketing – GIKI Alumni Association.
Rayyan Zahid is serving a role that aims to grow and maintain one of the greatest collection of human capital in Pakistan. His responsibilities revolve around building a nexus of opportunities from a network consisting of 6000+ professionals from 70+ countries that are part of the alumni association. He also served as Assistant Manager E-Commerce for Reckitt Benckiser in the past and is currently settled as Climate Reality Leader in United States.