Is financial success the new measure of character in modern society?
- English
- 22 Learners
- Society & Culture
- Ethics
“No one listens to a man whose pocket is empty.”
Shared by Huda
TUF INTERNATIONALS · The University of Faisalabad
A space to think.
A place to speak.And the patience to listen.
Soch Baithak is a student-led intellectual community at The University of Faisalabad where curiosity is welcomed, difficult questions are explored, and every thoughtful voice deserves a place at the table.
- Every
- Thursday
- At
- 12:30 PM
- In
- Room 401
- At
- TUF International Programme
What is Soch Baithak?
Two words, and the whole idea.
Soch means thought. Baithak means a gathering. Put them together and Soch Baithak becomes something simple: people coming together to think.
University life gives students plenty of places to attend lectures, submit assignments, and prepare for exams. There is a room for almost everything — except, often, for the questions that follow us out of the lecture hall and stay with us on the walk home.
Where does a student go to ask:
- 01Why do we measure success the way we do?
- 02What makes someone a good person?
- 03Is humour a coping mechanism?
- 04What does time mean to us?
- 05Are social expectations shaping who we become?
- 06What does global ethics actually mean?
- 07What are we afraid to say out loud?
Not in an exam. Not in a group chat that moves on in four minutes. Somewhere with chairs, a Thursday afternoon, and people willing to stay in the question a while longer.
That is where Soch Baithak exists.
The Soch Baithak way
Six habits we practise
in the room.
Not rules, exactly. More like the manners of a good conversation — the things that keep a difficult subject from turning into a difficult afternoon.
- 01
Question Freely
No question is too simple, too strange, too uncomfortable or too unconventional to deserve consideration. If it has been sitting with you, it is worth putting on the table.
- 02
Speak Honestly
Say what you actually think, not what you assume the room wants to hear. A borrowed opinion helps nobody — least of all the person holding it.
- 03
Listen Deeply
Listening is not waiting for your turn. Intellectual growth depends on hearing the perspective you did not expect, from the person you did not expect it from.
- 04
Disagree Without Disrespect
Disagreement is the point. Take the argument apart as carefully as you like; leave the person holding it intact.
- 05
Leave Room for Uncertainty
You do not have to arrive with an answer. Sometimes the most valuable thing a conversation produces is a better question than the one it began with.
- 06
Think Beyond the Obvious
The first answer is usually the one everybody already has. Soch Baithak exists for the subjects that are ignored, misread, or left unexplored.
Our discussion philosophy
We don’t debate to win.
We converse to understand.
A debate asks
Who is right?
Debate is a real skill and a worthy one. It sharpens an argument, tests a claim, and teaches you to defend a position under pressure. It is simply not what we are doing on a Thursday afternoon.
Soch Baithak asks
What are we missing?
Nobody is keeping score. There is no motion to carry, no side to be assigned to, and no one declared the winner at 1:30. There is a question, a room, and however far the group can carry it together.
- Exploration
- Reflection
- Perspective
- Critical thinking
- Empathy
- Curiosity
- Meaningful conversation
The record so far
Every figure below is drawn from the Fall 2025 activity report of TUF Internationals. Nothing here is rounded up for effect.
- 0
- Sessions held
- 0
- Learner attendances
- 0.0
- Average attendance
- 0
- Our fullest room
November – December 2025
Recorded across the five sessions
Learners in the room on a given Thursday
Is humor our way out of stress?
Conversations were held in English, Urdu, Bilingual. Whichever language a thought arrives in is the language it is welcome in.
From the Baithak
Our conversations
so far.
Five Thursdays between November and December 2025. These are the questions we sat with, and the line from each afternoon that the room kept returning to.
Language
Theme
Showing 5 of 5 conversations.
Waqt ke baghair duniya kaisay dikhti?
- Urdu
- 12 Learners
- Philosophy
“Agar waqt na hota to hum aaj bhi bhatkay huay hotay.”
Shared by Umer Masood
Women are architects, not objects.
- Bilingual
- 20 Learners
- Society & Culture
“Bachay ki pehli darsgah maa ki god hoti hai.”
Shared by Ahmad Virk
Is humor our way out of stress?
- English
- 25 Learners
- Everyday Life
- Philosophy
“Sir, zindagi hi mazaak hai!”
Shared by Siddiqui
Rising together for a collective global ethical shift
- Bilingual
- 8 Learners
- Ethics
- Society & Culture
“Before even thinking about global ethical shift, we must understand what global ethics truly means.”
Shared by Hanan Iftikhar
Activity report · November – December 2025 · TUF Internationals
Founder & President
Ahmad Virk
“Some of the most important conversations are the ones we rarely make time for.”
Soch Baithak began with a small observation: the most interesting thing a student says all week is usually said outside the classroom, half in passing, to nobody in particular.
The idea was to build the room that such a thought deserves. A fixed afternoon. A question worth staying with. And an understanding, agreed before anyone speaks, that you do not have to be certain to be worth listening to.
What happens in that room is not a performance. Learners question assumptions they have carried for years, listen to perspectives they would not have sought out, and discover that changing your mind out loud — in front of other people — is a harder and more valuable skill than winning an argument.
You do not need a position to belong here. A question is enough.
Ahmad Virk
Founder & President, Soch Baithak
TUF Internationals · The University of Faisalabad
What you can expect
How an afternoon
usually goes.
No slides. No prepared speeches. No one keeping score. An hour of people thinking in the same room, out loud.
A question
Every session opens with one thing worth thinking about. Sometimes it is philosophical. Sometimes it is uncomfortably ordinary.
A conversation
Learners bring what they actually think — shaped by where they grew up, what they study, and what they have not said out loud before.
A difference of opinion
Nobody is expected to agree. The moment the room splits is usually the moment it gets interesting.
A deeper understanding
You leave seeing the subject a little differently — not necessarily convinced, but no longer able to hold your first position quite so casually.
Another question
Meaningful thinking rarely ends with an answer. Most Thursdays end with a better question than the one we walked in with.
Who is it for?
For the student who has too many questions.
For the person who finds small talk exhausting.
For anyone who wants to understand a perspective that isn't their own.
For the quiet observer who has something to say.
For the person unafraid to say, “I don't know”.
For anyone curious enough to sit down and think.
There is no application, no audition, and no membership test. If you can find Room 401 on a Thursday, you are already qualified.
A judgment-free space
You don’t need the right answer
to belong here.
Soch Baithak is built on intellectual safety. You should be able to offer a half-formed idea — one you are still working out, one you might abandon by the end of the hour — without anyone laughing at you for it. Most people arrive with thoughts still under construction. That is the normal state of thinking.
Judgment-free does not mean agreement-free.
What is always open
- Ideas can be challenged.
- Arguments can be taken apart.
- Assumptions can be questioned — including your own.
- Anyone may ask you what you actually mean.
What is never on the table
- People are not attacked for holding a view.
- Nobody is mocked for thinking out loud.
- No one is asked to represent their whole background.
- What is said in the room is treated with care.
The distinction matters. A room where nothing can be questioned is not safe — it is just quiet. We are aiming for the other thing: a room where the hardest question can be asked, because everyone trusts how it will be received.
The weekly baithak
The Baithak happens
every Thursday.
- Day
- Every Thursday
- Time
- 12:30 PM
- Room
- Room 401
- Venue
- TUF International Programme
Every Thursday brings a new question. Join the WhatsApp community to discover the topic, stay updated, and be part of the next conversation.
Next Thursday
A new question
is waiting
This week’s topic is shared with the community a few days before we meet — so there is time to think about it before anyone says a word.
Get the topicOne last question
What have you been
thinking about lately?
Bring the question. Bring the curiosity. Bring the perspective nobody in the room has heard yet. Thursday, 12:30, Room 401 — the chairs are already arranged.