Once again advising time have come. Although it sounds like simple thing but in fact it consists info collecting, planning and then finally selecting the courses. You see, it seems like full of excitement but actually it is full of anxiety.
Last few hours I was busy in asking others about the courses they are planning to take and answering their questions about the courses I’m taking. In the early period this was our process of selecting courses. But now looks like it have become our habit. Even though we know our courses won’t match, we keep asking others the same question again and again. Almost similar thing happens after the advising. Only difference is we ask about what courses others took and with which faculty. We keep asking and answering these questions till the middle of semester.
If you have read my earlier posts in this blog, then you may already know why we, NSUers,are always tensed about advising. In case you don’t know, let me explain it to you. Let say I’m planning to take 4 courses and I have 7 courses as options before you enter in the advising room. And when you get out of the advising room, you have only 2 courses. It’s because all sections have filled up or new sections clashes with other courses. So when you have only two courses, you have to go for re-advising. This is the most painful part of advising process.
So when we say advising time has come, in fact means re-advising time have come. And re-advising time means fun time is over. Congrats to those who have done with advising and good luck to others who are yet to do advising like I do.
NSU Boy's Lounge. Photo by: Rajiv Ashrafi from Flickr
North South University have changed its advising system. For the first time in NSU history I saw the most lengthy advising process. My slot came after 9 days, advising have started. I was little bit scared about the advising as other NSUers. But bad time doesn’t stay forever. So my advising time have come and it was today.
I was in NSU by 10:15am. I went earlier to observe the advising process. But I was too busy chatting with Mobashra, Sazid, Sifat, Rezwan, Tahmid & my other friends that I forgot why I came earlier 😛 . I tried to find if any of my friends are taking course with me. But sadly Apart from Reaz I found no other friends are taking the major courses with me. Though Sifat & Rezwan promised to take Psychology with me.
Before 30 min of my advising Rezwan, Sifat & I went to advising room. For the very first time my advising room was different from my gang ( Prottoy, Rezwan, & Sifat). Anyway, before 15 min. of my advising time, someone asked us to step in the Open space at 5th floor right after showing our IDs. We made a queue for each rooms. And once again we got our IDs checked. Latter they called us to enter in the advising room. I saw Asif Abdullah, Reaz, Rusab and tanveer were also in my room. It was little bit relieved thinking that I have someone to discuss with.
We got 15 min to observe the status of sections of different course. I have 11 courses left for graduating and I selected 6 courses from which I will take 4 courses for Fall semester. But unfortunately all of my desired sections are filled up. After doing a brief analysis, I selected some sections for advising. When advising time was started I hurried to take the courses. I clicked on some courses but before I click on the save button, it says this section is full. It happened 2/3 times. For a fractions of seconds I missed several sections.
Apart from Psychology, sections for all other courses were full. Some TBAs were still left due to odd timing. So I took the Psy101 as promised with Sifat & Rezwan. I also took FIN435 (Investment Theory) with TfH sir even though I want to take FIN340 (Working Capital Management) with MtA sir. I took TBA for MKT460 & ECO244. TBA for MKT460 is basically because of reaz. We both took the section because ZTK ma’am may take the section. And Economics department didn’t give us option to think about faculty as they put TBA in all economics courses. I’m happy with the courses I got as I got a good class timing. But still I have to go for re-advising as I need to add one more course which I’ll retake.
Like any other semester advising I faced the problem with getting desired course and section. I had to be happy with the class timing. NSU changed the advising process but it didn’t pay off. We are still having the same old experience regarding advising.
P.S. I heard some rumor that re-advising wont take place or money will be required for re-advising. Today I tried to verify these rumors but didn’t get this from authentic sources. What I found was re-advising will start from 18th September and money is not required for re-advising.
It’s 12.15am in my watch. Only 12 hours left before the 15 min battle. Yeah!, I’m talking about the advising. It’s a terrible experience for every NSUers. Moreover this advising is the most lengthy advising in NSU history. We also heard about some change in the system. So everyone is anxious about for this advising.
I’m planning to take MKT465, FIN340/435, BUS401/ECO244, POL101/PSY101. but I’m having a great problem. Almost every sections which I want to take for theses courses are in MW and in between 9:40-11:20. so I have figure out the alternatives. It appears I’ve to sacrifice faculty for class time. Don’t know what will do tomorrow. None of my friends are taking the courses I’m taking. May be I’ll be alone this semester. I hope to see some of my links and familiar faces in my classes. Pray for me guys. I’ll tell my advising experience tomorrow.
So this is the second part of my blog. If you missed first part click here to read it.
I had no plan to take MKT 337 in this semester. But when I saw IJS ma’am is taking the course, I couldn’t help myself. I influenced Turza to take the course with me and latter Raihan joined us. my performance in this course is not satisfactory but I’m very much happy to do our projcet. For the projcet We formed the group with Anika, Mishu & Zabid whom Turza knew earlier. Though the group was almost divided into two and need some integration, it was a great group. We did our first project on Apollo Hispital, Dhaka. And second project on Daily Kaler Kantho. In out first project, we were required to analyze three marketing communication tool of Apollo hospital. It was mostly done by Anika and her friends. And in the second project we were required to analyze the current IMC tool and suggest new IMC tool for Daily Kaler Kantho. We also needed to make a TVC for it. This is the projcet I liked very much. We all worked hard for the paper and the TVC. Anika generated idea for TVC and we did little editing in it. But we were having problem with finding Model. Again Anika came to the rescue. She called 3 of her friends and used them as model. Also we used Turza and Mishu as model. Our TVC wasn’t a video but was a slide show of pictures. At first Anika made the TVC with Powerpoint and it was good. but I thought it would be better if we can convert it in a video. So after little bit of modification of Anika’s concept, I made a video slide show using windows movie maker. Raihan and Mishu helped me providing necessary files. And finally we made our TVC for Daily Kaler Kantho. I’ve posted the TVC at the bottom of this blog. Making TVC was exciting, but it was even more exciting when I found that everyone in the class liked it.
Now let me talk about my last course Operation Management. I didn’t get my desired faculty in my advising. All sections of good reputed faculties are filled up. All sections for which faculty is not announced yet is empty except one. I noticed that 25 of 35 student have already enrolled in that section. Prottoy and I was doing advising together. We decided to take that section thinking that may be one reputed faculty will take that section. Also I know Mobashra was taking the same section. Abid’s advising time slot was after me. So I informed him about that section and told him to take it. Latter in that night I came to know that Sazid, Amin, Tuhin and Rabbi also took that course. I was happy because I got some good friends in that section. For this reason I didn’t change the section in re-advising but I was worried about the faculty.
In the very first day of OM class, I found out that I know almost 90% if the students. Sadia, Tonni, Antar, Amin and others. Sorry can’t recall everyone’s name…:( Anyway, we all was waiting for the faculty. And finally he showed up. At first I thought he was a student like us. He was very young and a new faculty in NSU. He introduced himself to the class. His name was Ishfaque Hossain and his initial was IqH. He did his undergrad and grad. in USA. But one the interesting thing came out when students were introducing themselves. Whenever a student names his school from dhaka, IqH sir told that he use to be a student of that school too. Then he explained that he studied in almost all reputed school in Dhaka apart from VNS&C, Holy Cross and other girls schools 😛 😛 .He also told use that he completed one semester in NSU too. From the vary first class I believed that he is a legendary person. And through out the whole semester I found it’s true.
Most of the time, when he was giving lecture, he use to give us example from his personal life in USA. It would start with “When I was in Huston…” or “When I was in Texas….”. Apart from his examples, his lecture was boring as hell. Most of the time I saw students are not concentrating to his lectures. To pass the boring time in class, Mobashra, Sazid & I used to do offline chatting in my note-book. I forgot to mention that This was my third course with Mobashra. Also it was second course that Sazid, Mobashra & I did together. We did eco134 together with AAR who is another legendary faculty. but that was totally different story…
So, in every class we came to know more about legendary IqH sir. Also we came to know his father and his priority banking in SCB. But after the night Argentina lost to Germany, we came to know about the greatest fact of IqH sir. He the name of 5-6 celebrity from whom he took autograph and picture. Unfortunately I can recall the names. But most of them were from football star and rest were movie star. I was thinking if he would show those pictures to us. But he didn’t. May be forgot. 😛
Classes with IqH sir was great (except his lectures). One problem was that be couldn’t make us understand the maths. or our brains wasn’t accelerated enough to capture his lectures. While the semester was almost finished he told us to do presentation. I can bet that OM presentation is life time experience to everyone. Apart from first 1 or 2 hour, I was present in whole presentation time. It took him more than 8 hours to complete the presentation. (see my blog about presentation here ).
Through out the whole semester we had wonderful experience with IqH sir. But final was the best. Specially the syllabus. He gave us notes for 3 chapters as the syllabus. And the total pages of notes ware 3 and a half. He gave MCQ from the notes and 5 of 6 maths from those 3 chapters. This is the easiest syllabus for final exam I’ve ever seen. And most importantly we got our grade for OM course on the vary next day. Sir did it because he was leaving Bangladesh in 3 days. He was going to Canada. He told me that he is going to do his PHD but others says he is going to see someone from Pakistan.
I don’t know what are you thinking about him. May be a bad teacher, may be a good teacher. But believe me, you can’t judge him unless you take a course with him. But one thing is sure. He is the most easy-going faculty I’ve ever seen. Also he made our semester easy. But unfortunately we were the last batch of his students. With the end of Summer’10 semester, he also ended his teaching career. But He made us proud when he told us that we are the best students he taught. I’m sure all of his students will miss him. or at least remember him…
I don’t know if the semester was legendary for you but surely it was for me. Thanks for reading the whole blog. And As promised I’ve added the TVC that we made for MKT 337 projcet. Let me know how do you like it. 🙂
Beginning of a new semester in NSU means it’s time for war. A war of Advising. Every students of NSU has to fight this advising war. Those who are involved with NSU, you know how painful is this war. And those who don’t know about this war, let me give you a snap of this war. Not in picture but in words. Because here picture doesn’t talks much.
Anyway, Suppose a new semester is coming. So you have to take some courses. Suppose you want to take 4 courses. So you choose at least 8 courses to have options. And when you come out from advising room, you got 1 course or may be not even 1. Why? because all sections are full, you didn’t get desired faculty, or the time of the class is not good one, or the time clashes with another course. See, this is why you don’t get any course.
So you think this is the war? not really. This is the starting of the war. Real war begins when you go for re-advising. You won’t get any BBA student who have never done re-advising. It’s a must war that you have to fight in your NSU life.
Talking about re-advising, I remember my first semester in NSU. One faculty gave me a course of different department. So I went to BBA office to drop the course. I had to stand 3 days in line to go inside the BBA director’s office. and eventually i did. There are many other memories related to advising I can share here. But I think all NSU students have the same memories. If you are not an NSU student, just ask one. The memory that I shared here was back in January 2008. As the number of student increased from that period, It is becoming more and more impossible to do the re-advising.
I have done my advising in 12th may. And as usual I didn’t got any courses. So I went to re-advise my courses yesterday. I went to NSU at 9 ‘o clock. What I saw was around 150 students standing in the line for re-advising. And the number kept increasing as time passed. When I left NSU at 10 pm, I saw around 100 students waiting for re-advising.
By 10 PM. I was done with re-advising. After fighting morning to night, I won the advising war. Got LAW200. (AMU), MKT337.4 (IJS), MKT460.2 (TBA), MGT314.7 (TBA). Happy with this courses, timing, faculty. Thanks to Juthika, Rumman vai for helping me out. Also thanks to Szm sir for giving me the chance to add LAW200.2 & MKT337.4 just in time.
So I’m done with advising war. I can take rest until 17th may. All classes will start from 18th may. From 18th may, we, NSU students, have to start a new journey . A journey that will last for around 4 months.
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