The job market in Pakistan has always been a devastating experience for most fresh graduates. And now, with the pandemic still raging on, university graduates are battling with the unpredictable catastrophe. In the midst of this crisis, students are trying to find their place in the world after graduation and are hoping to create some form of change. One such individual, now an alumni of Habib University, shares her academic journey, the decisions she made along the way and the adjustments she adopted to make sure the pandemic didn’t diminish her valuable learning experiences. Umrat Khan, an SDP student from the batch of 2019, reflects on her journey with Habib, what followed and how she is trying to use her skills to stay strong in the wake of Covid-19.
“I took a gap year before I decided to join Habib. I was supposed to join university in 2014, I even got selected to study in a university in Turkey but due to financial constraints I ended up taking a gap year. I really wanted to think about what I wanted to do during my gap year and I ended up working as an admission officer at Cedar College. I got to learn a lot about the education sector during my time with Cedar. Since it was just starting out when I joined, I got to learn a lot about how students are shortlisted, how to manage the website, create the training manuals and talk to parents. It was an interesting time to be part of an institution that was just about to start. During that time I realized that I’ll have to put a lot of faith and trust in Habib University. I already had few friends enrolled at Habib and I got to witness first-hand the wonderful professors and the liberal arts curriculum. The more I understood the academic philosophy of Habib, the more I felt like it was a place I could fit in.”
“I was already interested in the education sector and I had worked with several NGOs, so I thought SDP was a good fit for me. 75 percent of Pakistani population is not literate and I kept that in mind when choosing SDP because I want to do something about that. I really do think that taking a risk with Habib was definitely worth it because I felt like I could pave my own path. I feel like my interactions with the professors were really fruitful. Being surrounded in that small academic environment pushed me to do better. In my second year I started exploring new opportunities and started taking other types of courses like Art history and photography.”
The university also allowed her to continue with other job opportunities, ones which provided her with a unique set of skills.
“After I joined Habib, I left Cedar to focus full time on my studies. But Habib gives you the opportunity to work on campus and so I became a TA for a core course and that was an amazing experience as well. I learned how to properly work with LMS and organize assignments.”
“I ended up applying for the summer abroad program and went to Berkeley in 2017 for two and a half month. It was an immensely rewarding experience, I learned a lot more about photography and how to use editing software. This opportunity also allowed me to take a course about stress and coping and trying to formulate a healthier relationship with myself. I also took a ballet course and I didn’t think that I could learn ballet but the instructor was amazing, she made all sorts of connections between math and ballet and the golden ratio. It was inspiring and I was motivated to continue ballet when I came back to Pakistan but I was only able to do that for 2 years.”
“I am currently working on two projects. I am a project consultant for experimental classrooms at Kiran Foundation, it is a donor funded program and we are trying to test different methodology to teach English to disadvantaged communities. It involves research that we are conducting with children ranging from the ages of 2.5 to 10 years. The second project that I am working on is a public speaking module called Speak Up and I work as an academic consultant. I consult with lesson planning and achieving milestones for children and I evaluate and monitor their progress. The lessons I create are used at Haq academy and used by the British council and Kiran Foundation as well.”
“In my last year of Habib I was volunteering at a school in Korangi and I ended up getting a job there as an academic director. I was overseeing lesson planning and teacher milestones and training. Other than that, I was always working on a research project regarding professional development for teachers in Baluchistan. I analyzed the progress being made by the teachers based on certain metrics. I also elaborated on methodology and tested conclusions. This project was by UNICEF and it was funded by the EU.”
“Since I was part of the second batch of Habib, they did the best they could, in regards to introducing us to the job market and equipping us with essential skills. An important skill I learned from Habib was the ability to critique. I learned how to seek out problems, how to coordinate and collaborate and how to make a framework. I was the one of the founding members of the Tehzib journal and we created a unique framework for the journal and all of these experiences made me learn the importance of having consistency and making an idea sustainable.”
Umrat also offers some advice and insight for the current students and what they can learn from their experience at Habib and how they can strive to get the most from their degree.
“I would have liked more solution oriented courses and I would have liked some courses on business. When I entered the job market I needed to think about how business woks and I needed to have a business oriented mind and needed to understand and use business terminology. Courses introduced about finance and business can go a long way, and can provide an element of practicality. I would suggests that if students have the opportunity, they should also take the design research courses and they should talk to some professors and suggest them to bring in people to teach business and entrepreneur skills. You need to learn about business models, you need to keep in track of revenue and I learned all of these skills in the field and it would have been nice to learn this earlier in my academic career. It up to you and how you construct your degree at Habib.”
“I was fortunate that when Covid started I was already associated with three projects and I was still working but the classes associated with those projects had come to a halt and I had to spend a month and a half creating lessons for online models and acquiring students for those models. But once we adapted to the online platforms it was interesting because the online learning experience opened up to other cities like Dubai, Islamabad, Humza, Kashmir, Lahore, Multan and Hyderabad. Our social media reach went from 300 to 3000 followers and there have been a lot of potential collaborations and proposals. It was a difficult adjustment but the hard work paid off.”
Umrat’s experiences are not only relatable but also admirable. Her strive to turn every situation into a meaningful learning outcome is an excellent attitude to have, especially in the given situation.
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