The Punishment
By Hira, age 23, Pakistan
Hmmm ... university life, what a beautiful life. I have recently completed a Bachelor's of Business Administration at my local university. There is just so much to tell about my uni life, but I would like to share one very funny incident.It was the 24th February of 2009. In my diary the title of this incident was "My Most Embarrassing Day," but now when I am going through my stuff I just cannot stop laughing.
I was in 6th semester when we received "punishment" from our instructor Mr. Farhan. We received punishment because we had some serious unity problems in class. We had to give a farewell party to our seniors, but most of my classmates started causing problems. In other words, a fight about politics started, and all of us were punished for that, quite literally.
So what was the punishment? It was cleaning the whole department, and we had to do it even better than the paid workers who swept the department!! We hated the idea, but we had to do it. We wore white ribbons with names on them and we went around the department, in and out - twice. Everybody was looking at us with amazement, and we were looking like goofs (he he).
Later, we went to the classroom and were told not only must we had to clean our room, but also dust the windows in the corridor!! O my god, I felt like I would faint!
Well, continuing the story, we cleaned our room, the girls cleaning the chairs while the boys cleaned the AC, windows, and fans. We girls cleaned windows too. Then we were ordered to clean up the juniors' room as well. We protested, but it didn't work.
The next task was to clean the gardens. There were a total of four in all - two inside and two outside. We were feeling embarrassment because outside there were people from other departments just passing through and laughing at us. One of the boys came to me and asked, "Hi, what are you doing?"
I wanted to reply, "Are you blind - can't you see?" but I said quite plainly said that "I'm cleaning the garden." He laughed and said, "Please come to my department too after you are free and clean up our garden too."
I seriously wanted to kill him, but I didn't say a word and continued my work. After cleaning we went to class. Our instructor brought a plant. Every student from my class participated in watering it. Our instructor told us that if this plant ever wilted during the whole semester, the punishment would be repeated. At that time we were so angry, but as he was our teacher we had to give him respect.
Recently we gave a party for our seniors and it went really well. Now, whenever I think about the incident I just laugh. We cared about that plant more than anything on earth. Every day we used to ask each other, "Did you water the plant?" If not, then we rushed to water it.
Mr. Farhan taught us for the next two semesters and we never dared to fight again.
