THE ONE WHERE THEY SAY GOODYE
Dear Amal,
Never thought that this journey would become a “once upon a time “ and we’ll have to say goodbye so quickly . I still remember how it all began, It was the last week of February and I had my final exams in 4 days when I got a call from Amal. The lady on the call told me that the registrations for the upcoming batch were soon to be closed. I am not going to lie, I was only joining Amal because my sister and my Abba had told me to join it. I remember feeling a bit annoyed at the fact that I had been studying for months without any break and now that I was finally getting free, I was being told to join a 3-month commitment — I put aside my books and opened the application form of Amal. When I came to the open-ended questions, I got so invested into it that I spent about 2 hours answering them in detail. I realized that I was actually enjoying writing these thoughtful and creative answers. And that was when I got a feeling that this journey is going to be something different.
Fast forward to the present, when we depart ways. Today I will be talking about the ending. Last week, we had our last ever session, and I feel nothing but pride to call myself an Amal Alumnus. But this goodbye was certainly not like any other goodbye. The last session was filled with wholesomeness, sense of connection and so many emotions.
Unlike any other session, this session was not about anything related to the online courses. This session was solely focused on “just talking and connecting ❤”
We started the session with some very thoughtful questions from Ma’am Iqra and Sir Zaki. Some of my favourite questions were;
“Share something that you truly believe in and would like your fellows to know about”
“What is something that you will never tell yourself after this fellowship?”
“What is something that you would like to apologize to yourself for?”
Having done this wholesome activity I can definitely vouch for the statement; “Beautiful questions lead to beautiful answers!”
After this we got to do one of the most fun activities, “The scavenger hunt!”. The whole batch was divided into two teams. Team Iqra and Team Zaki. And we were given 50 riddles, that we were supposed to find out the answers and post selfies with these items.
UNFORTUNATELY, our team could not win- although I am still a bit skeptical about some kinda cheating going on in Team Zaki- but okay 🤡👀👀
After this hyped up game session, we had our last activity. The Thankyou’s!
Everyone shared their reflections of the Amal journey, and expressed gratitude to each other. We took a virtual selfie with our graduation hats as well.
Everyone got a bit emotional towards the end of the session. We talked about the ways we can stay connected to each other. The highest ranked ideas included, sharing snaps on Snapchat , a physical meet-up soon and sending memes in our WhatsApp group!
Lastly, Dear Amal, You have taught me so many things that are forever going to stay by my side. Every day leadership, being more accepting of failure, expressing gratitude and giving back to the society every now and then by donating; are some of the things that I intend to continue to implement right away. I promise myself not to dwell on negativity, and to actively recall the secrets of happiness that Amal taught me. I promise to take all opportunities of self growth and learning, and to continue to work on developing a growth mindset.
And I promise to try my best to stay in contact with my Amal Fam. ❤
Signing off,
With tears in eyes and positivity in heart,
Sijal
