Alas! Here we witness the launch of a new semester at Szabist, luckily for people like me it's the seventh semester and the last year of BBA but for newcomers . . . Well, my dear friends, the cats are already there to welcome you at lunch, however, they are your guests not your hosts.

Seventh semester has charms and grievances of it's own, one of them is a symptom or rather a disease known as 'Zab Semesterosis' abbreviated as Zee's. Not only senior year students suffer from it's initial stages but all new semester entrants are it's prey. Recently, we are at the initial stages of this critical illness.

This is characterised by some obnoxious term projects and entire days spent in the campus. However, the butter churned out of us and the hypoglycemic nature of projects do reveal some outcome by semester end depending on whether we were group leeches or group workers . . . Yes exactly, in simple words it would mean whether we were those opportunists who capitalise on others' efforts and do nothing or those who shed all those extra pounds working like hell. The latter happens to be a co-branded feature of my sweet tooth which I do not find dragging me to potential negative effects of having cravings for just anything sweet.

'Leeches' has been the favourite word of our business communication teacher, Ms Taha Kazi which she provocatively used in order to describe those students who are reluctant to contribute anything in group projects and gleefully avail the hardwork of those who actually work, thereby, only gifting projects with their names as supposedly renowned brand names.

On the other hand, our brand management teacher went on to describe an entire scenario explaining the outcome achieved when there is a group of five people working on a report or project. According to him, there would always be a student who would be ready with a car and yes his only contribution would be his car (dad's car more precisely), another one would be willing to bring in cold drinks, the third one would watch television on behalf of the other group members, while only two would work. Given such a scenario, big groups emerge to become non contributing and obnoxious members of the society and hence our teacher like many others refrained us to form a group of more than four people. Well how thought provoking. At times individual assignments could put you more at ease.

Experienced teachers' most frequently occurring, taunting tagline is, "We have been through the same stage, we were students once just like you so we know everything that you can possibly do . . . "their course outlines, their students, those books they teach from and the jokes they crack become part of their 'Monolithic Branding'.

What makes the seventh semester unique from former semesters is the comparatively higher number of fourth time slot classes, that is, classes from 6:30 pm to 9:30 pm, at times three hours of agony and at time three hours of fun. Most importantly, the 'ELECTIVES' are here and there is an outrageous possibility of having regular elective classes on Sundays. zzzzzzzzzzzzzz. . .
God help us, even so if we are unwilling to help ourselves. Amen!

Say what you do, do what you say. However, this becomes contradicting when we actually experience some of our elective classes. Quite interestingly, a number of students deviate from the electives they chose in the previous semester, so here they are, with a feeling characterised by guilt and adventure, by laziness and excitement. I happened to be one of those who deviated and was having nightmares regarding electives, nightmares more excruciating than electricity load shedding and I would wake up in the morning with a dry throat and mind lubricated by the recent nightmare.

As per our Sales Management teacher, Mr. Colombo, "Electives are the courses that you have elected for yourselves and not those courses that are forced upon you." Still I felt blank when he asked me, "Why Sales Management?" To that question my lame reply was: "There was no particular reason of opting for this course, I just want to study it. . . but by the end of the semester I would definitely get to know why I chose this course." My intentions weren't rude, however, any teacher with a normal Karachi temperament would have loved to spare his shoe to aim at me and this is where I had deviated from my previously chosen electives, I had not selected this one but want to study it now. Part of my mind was lurking back at the time when I was working in a call center as a Sales Executive because of which I thought this course would be equally boring but surprisingly, my first class turned out to be pretty interesting and urged me to continue with this elective though on Sunday.

So the journey to Szabist begins every day which is rather excruciating, especially during the visiting hours of Jinnah hospital. My joyride, a public bus, is embellished with the target market of this hospital . .. the same (shuttle cock burqa and running nose children with lice) target market which I at times get to shout my lungs out at . They have a habit of stepping on my shoes, staying on my shoes and throwing their entire mass and bulk on me. Stepping on my Hush Puppy Shoes is like stepping on my uncontrollable nerves. Still I save my lungs and their bronchioles as they are already in use as a result of obnoxious passive smoking.

This is a part of a personal touch of the first stage of Zab Semesterosis or rather Zee's that I am suffering from and the stages would simply enhance. Same is the disease condition of the other Szabistians who are handling it their own way.

Services Marketing is a wonder of it's own kind especially with the teacher (Mr. Shah) who has consumed a number of marketing books in his explicit and sound memory and expects good interaction from our side too. Here occurs a test of our prior reading for the class. Oh yes. . . we should be equipped with text books in Services class, bringing books is not just refined to school going children. Those who annoy him are branded 'BUFFOONS' which eventually all of us do after forgetting what our demanding teacher taught us in the past. Therefore, we are all his pet 'buffoons' :) at times he, though a wonderful teacher becomes a source of terror for us, all other teachers who didn't ever know him have finally got to be indirectly acquainted to him as most ly and in between classes Mr. Shah and his projects are a center of discussion, the centrifugal force.

Then come the elaboration of those Services Marketing's tremendous and mighty projects! If we die, we are heading straight to heaven. . .

One of the greatest symptoms of the disease, 'Zee's' is the bombardment of projects by teachers that they do while endorsing their first strike position at us and we are the students catching up this disease and trying our best to refrain from potential doomsday that they keep scaring us from. It's always easy to get a 'D' and its easier to get an 'F'. Lets brace up ourselves to find a cure from Zab Semesterosis :) . . . Happy studying for good grades ! Well this is the cure.