::: Star Campus :::

Life in Campus

The real taste of campus…

Irtiza A. Farooq

Ah! Finally at TARC!

Whenever my parents or any other parents talked about our universities, they always say one thing…."You kids would not believe how cool campus life was! We would do anything to go back to those couple of years." This is the point when we in fact get jealous of our parents. For all the private universities in Dhaka the word campus means three or four buildings scattered in an area. The only taste of "campus life" that these students get is when they are walking from one building to another or when they are sitting in the café talking to each other. But in reality campus means so much more than a couple of buildings. It means sharing, making new friends, group studies, unity, a way to get along with other people, bonding, punctuality and many more. You actually have to leave the campus life to see how it is. BRAC University has provided its students with something closer to a "campus life". BRAC University has this place in Savar where all the students must attend a residential semester for four months. It's called TARC (Training And Resource Center) and it is in TARC, where I realized how cool a university student's life can be. I will admit that before going to TARC I was pretty nervous. I had no idea about how my room would be, how good the food is, how clean the bathrooms are or who my roommate will be. The only thing I knew about TARC was that it's in the middle of nowhere. I knew everyone in the bus was thinking the same thing because it felt as if you could touch the tension in the atmosphere. However, when I entered TARC for the first time I thought that I had entered a picture. It was bright and intriguing!

For others the idea of living in TARC might seem strange but for the students of BRAC University, IT SIMPLY ROCKS!! Though the "rock"word is sometimes taken literally TARC, to simply state, puts us between a rock and a hard place with assignments, quizzes, cultural programs, debates, sports and many more. The hawkish, people of the administration breathing down our necks gave us an aura of guilt, as if we just robbed the Bangladesh Bank and were afraid of getting caught red handed. Although after some time we realized that it was for our own good. The funniest part is that we actually enjoyed the pressure. To me, life at TARC meant missing breakfast as I can't wake up early, going to classes, bunking classes, making friends, playing soccer in the evening and badminton at night, playing pranks and the all night PARTIES!!! Earlier I have mentioned that I was nervous about my roommate, but later I rea ized that it didn't matter who my roommate was because every one of us became such great friends. In Dhaka campus we were like batch mates but later in TARC it felt as if we are one big happy family. There were 140 of us staying and all of us would do anything to help another. One day, one of my friend's mother brought a two-pound cake for her birthday. Later that night my friend actually cut it in 140 pieces and shared it with all of us. Although the pieces were minuscule, but it's the thought that counts and to us it was bigger than the Himalayas. I was about to flunk my math mid term. So the night before my exam, all 39 of my dorm mates stayed up the whole night and taught me math. This is what "campus life" does to people. It makes us better people. In the long run, where CGPA might not be of much help, this is what will help us go through the real obstacles of life. Backtracking to a lighter aspect, I can gladly say that my friends and me just LOVED living in TARC. We would literally do anything to go back to TARC again. I thank the administrators of BRAC University for making TARC such a great place to live and study. And the best part is that now we can tell everyone with pride, "Yes I know what real CAMPUS LIFE is like and I have LIVED it!!!