amu so farrrr

amu so far 2026-05-24 · 3 min read a not so brief update on second year, ICECI, and why aligarh has my whole heart so here we are... as of today, 24th of may, i just walked out of my last exam of second year. lab done, exams done, second year officially wrapped. and honestly? fourth semester has been by far the best semester i've ever had at AMU. not even close. i'll try and give a couple updates and what made this one so different. the thing about this semester is i finally felt comfortable. like actually comfortable — not just going through the motions of lectures and submissions but genuinely enjoying the place i'm in. i loved my classes, loved my teachers, and for the first time felt like AMU wasn't just a place i was attending but a place i actually belonged to. i know i've said before that i'm not always happy here, but there's a difference between happiness and gratitude — and right now i feel an enormous amount of the latter. the friends made it everything. Sadia Zafreen, Maariyah Anjum, Maria Ali — these people make the whole thing worth it. the random laughs, the late night gossips, the shared stress before exams and the shared relief after. college is just people, at the end of the day, and i got very lucky with mine. getting to know my seniors this semester was something i didn't expect to love as much as i did. Anushka, Faizah, Priyanshi — meeting people who are a few steps ahead and still so generous with their time and warmth, that does something to you. on the project side, a LOT happened. three or four hackathons this semester alone — AMU hackathon, Google Winter of Code, Vercera 5.0, and ICECI (which we hosted ourselves). genuinely one of the most project-dense semesters i've had, and i loved every second of it. the ICECI conference deserves its own section honestly. we ran it ourselves. showing up every single day for rehearsals, guiding friends on how to present, how to speak, how to carry themselves on stage. contributing to hospitality, reporting, logistics — all of it. there were moments of chaos and moments of magic and a lot of moments in between where it was just us figuring it out together. the valedictory ceremony hit different. when the Tarana played at the end, something just moved through me. a flood of every small memory from the past two years — all the effort, all the late nights, all the in-between moments that don't make it into the highlights reel but somehow end up being the thing you remember most. we took photos with everyone, so many people who poured themselves into making this a success. i'm so grateful for all of them. and now i'm about to enter third year, and my heart is already a little heavy about it. two years left. two years before i close this chapter. and somehow that makes every ordinary tuesday at AMU feel precious in a way it didn't before. aligarh will always be a part of me. this university, this community, these people — i'll carry all of it. can't wait to see what third year brings. let's hope some more cool things happen!!