Societies @ KEMU !!

When the dark times of the prof are over, there comes a time in KEMU when the nerds rejoice! Yes, it is the time before summer vacation, when the extra-curricular activities reach at an all-time dangerously high ! 

This post is meant to educate the freshmen at KE about how they can unleash their creative potential.

Why should I join societies you say ?

The thing is that life at KEMU is tough! Everyone needs a creative outlet to keep them sane ! You explore the fun side of Uni-Life. Moreover, each one of this society will groom you to a multitude of new experiences which will help you later on in life. How? Extra-curricular activities are an eye-catching part of your Resume/CV. Exposure to different kinds of activity will make you more confident and of course you will get to know your fellow kemcolians better and make new friends. Networking, You will get to work closely with both your seniors and juniors, and this is a great opportunity to socialize.

Members Vs Post-holders:

This applies to almost all the societies. You can either become just a member by filling up the form and submitting a nominal fee or you can later also interview for a post in the society. Post-holders are the people who make each event a success. They work hard each year; Putting up flyers, inviting professors, arranging venues and even DJing during the event to keep the audiences entertained ! The reward : Each post-holder get certificates for the services rendered for each event. The post-holders are invited to the annual dinner of each society which are held each year at good hangouts (unless austerity is being observed!)

So without further to do ! I bring to you .....

1-     King Edward Debating Society (KEDS)

2-     King Edward Arts & Photographic Society (KAPS)

3-     Kemcol

4-     Student-patients Welfare Society (SPWS)

5-     King Edward Dramatics Society (KDS)

6-     International Federation of Medical Students Association (IFMSA)

7-     King Edward Literary Society

King Edward Debating Society (KEDS)

In my view, this is the society that will help you the most throughout your life. A person’s communication skills if good will always get him more than he asks for, in all the oppurtunities in life ! and if a person cannot speak well, then he will never be able to impress his interviewers, colleagues and whoever he talks with. But fear not. KEDS is here to help !

So KEDS launches a membership drive at the beginning of each new session. Everyones invited. Those who have never spoken in any debate before are also welcomed with open arms. Debating camps are held where they are taught the basics of debating and then allowed to take the floor and speak till they become confident enough to speak in front of a wider audience. KEDS has groomed many such people with no or minimal past experience of speaking into seasoned debaters.

So KEDS holds two events each year in KEMU

1)      Annual Interclass Debates

2)      All-Pakistan inter-collegiate debates

Besides this KEDS offers training in two styles of debating

1)      Declamation (The more conventional style of debating in which the topic is given beforehand, the participant gets more than a week of preparation time and speaks without paper reading. This is where style matters more )

2)      Parliamentary Debating (The extempore style of debating, meaning the topics are announced 20 minutes before the start of debate. Comprises of a team consisting of 2 or sometimes 3 people each having a particular role to fulfil in his speech. So it can be a 3 on 3 match or university style 4on4. This style of debating doesnot demand rhetoric or perfect body language rather the content of the speech matters the most)

Each year KEDS get invites and participates in the events (both parliamentary and declamation) in the following institutions

GCU

UET

LSE

LUMS

FC

GIKI

UCL

FJMC

CMH

and many more

These events are not all about debating. After the debating round is over, the host colleges have social events at night, gigs and great food to leave the guests with good memories.

King Edward Arts and Photographic Society (KAPS)

This is where the most talented people of KEMU showcase their talent. Last year it was divided into four sections

Photography

Video/Film making

Music

Apparel

Kaps holds the Annual arts and crafts exhibition each year with colleges participating from all over Pakistan.

KAPS video competition comprises of the work of the finest film-makers of KEMU! Short-films upto 10mins are premiered in the KE Auditorium.

Kaps also takes on the daunting task of photography during sports-week and displays these photos for purchase later on.

Kaps Stitches section comes out with a cool T-shirt and a hoodie each year which are always a must-have for all proud kemcolians.

Kaps also has great musical talent, giving great musical performances at Video competition and Annual Arts exhibition.

Kaps also holds sketching and drawing workshops.

KEMCOL – The University Magazine

Kemcol is the annual magazine. This has many aspiring and talented writers. Kemcol comes around February each year and the soon-to-out issue will be the 150^th edition and is bound to be extra-special !

Kemcol launches a membership drive and later asks for writings from all the students at KE. Anyone can write, submit interesting photos and drawings.

To be continued !

Kemcol has four sections

English

Urdu

Punjabi

Pictorial

You can apply for a post in any one of these. But any kemcolian can write for the magazine whether he/she has a post or not.

         Students-Patient Welfare Society (SPWS)

Established in 1988 with the noble purpose of enhancing the patient experience at Mayo hospital and taking radical steps for improving the general health, which the meager budget of Mayo hospital does not allow.

SPWS is a charity organization that is run by ardent volunteers of KE. It takes steps to address the most common problems faced by patients who come to Mayo. It also conducts medical camps throughout Pakistan. SPWS recently contributed to the flood relief efforts by setting up medical camps in affected areas.

In KEMU SPWS held the Cardiac First Responder (CFR) course in collaboration with a firm from Ireland. It also hold seminars on health education like asthma conference.

SPWS volunteers visit different places for collecting donations, go to medical camps to see and facilitate health efforts and also visit the SPWS office in Outdoor Patients section to oversee the distribution of Free medicines to patients. SPWS recently took the cool initiative of organizing a bake-sale in the campus which always has yummy-licious food and the proceedings from this go to a different charity each year.

         Kemcolians Dramatics Society (KDS)

KDS annual play is one of the major events each year at KEMU! After a month of rehearsal the talented thespians entertain their audience with a great show. The plays have been always most enjoyable.

KDS hold auditions for aspiring actor/actresses and also backstage crew. If you cannot get a role, then a backstage job is a great idea which will get you acquainted with the amazing world of theatre. KDS play is attended by a large crowd and it is difficult to get hands on the tickets, which are sold like hot-cakes.

In the end KDS crew is invited to an annual dinner in the library hall besides getting many bravos from both teachers and their fellow students.

         International Federation Of Medical Students Association (IFMSA)

IFMSA is an international organization. The Lahore chapter is headed by KEMU. Other member colleges are Allama Iqbal MC, CMH and SIMS.

IFMSA Lahore holds many cool events in KEMU. A USMLE guidance seminar is conducted each year with an eminent veteran of USMLE explaining the whole process. There is also a useful Q&A session. A walk is conducted on World No Tobacco day. The doctors visit Lady Wellington Hospital and educate mothers about the basics on Maternal Child Health Awareness Program(MCHP).

The most useful is the Basic Life Support (BLS) seminar in which the Rescue 1122 itself holds training sessions on CPR, airway obstruction and life-saving techniques in disaster management. They bring dummies to practice on and in the end, after passing their evaluation, each participant gets a certificate that is valid for 2 years.

         King Edward Literary Society (KELS)

KELS conducts a short-story writing competition each year and the last years winners were published in the weekly US magazine that comes with “The News” newspaper.

KELS also launched its own blog at http://kemkellogs.blogspot.com

 MindQuest is a quiz competition first held at inter-class level, and the winners of that get to participate in the Inter-collegiate competition that KELS conducts later.