The Pioneer Batch: A Backward Glance
Wong Li Li
Graduation Day! (2003) ▶
But anyway, for whatever it’s worth, here goes: the
ramblings of a student who, some say, belonged to
the pioneer batch .
“Pioneer” means … No precedent, right? So at that
time, you couldn’t really seek out older students to
ask them what they thought of the course, or what
happens to them after they graduate. And here’s
the thing about the ARTS that a student with a
background that was almost exclusively Science
subjects had to get used to: it’s all fuzzy words.
How much sense can you make out of subjects
that sound like “Media, Communities, Practices”
or “Communications, Industries, Practices”?
It practically meant everything and nothing, at the
same time. You can’t actually hold the course book
in front of the course coordinator and say, “Sir, based
on today’s discussion, I think that we’re twenty-five
per cent out-of-topic and I think you have neglected
to cover this area!” The course coordinators tried their
best to assure me that it was all good. They said a
bunch of words and concepts that went over my
head – I don’t remember anything they said then.
So it was with great faith and trepidation that I leapt
into this course.
I had a feeling that it might actually be fun not to get
tied down by definitions for once. Boy, was I in for
a ride!
The part where I felt that I had to radically change was
in accepting the “boundary-less” nature of the course.
In my first year, there were times I walked into classes
and tutorials and came out …dazed. Not because
my head felt heavier with knowledge, but it felt
unfortunately more airy due to the lack of information.
These were classes where I wondered, “what on
earth did I learn just now? What – we just spent the
whole one hour talking? What was the point of the
whole meandering conversation?” Actually, come to
think about it, I just wanted to know which part of the
conversation was going into my examinations. I was
so stressed about it that I snuck into a few engineering
classes with a friend to decompress. I had to see
numbers, stuff my head with “real” facts and numbers.
In the second semester of my first year, things started
slowly clicking into place. It started with an idea or
two, a few new concepts, a few more lively tutorials.
It wasn’t till the second year that I realized that the
course was not about stuffing myself with facts.
The lecturers and the course itself were seeding me
with ideas all along, questioning me about my beliefs,
destabilizing my own meanings, and nudging me
towards being aware about my own bias and
truth systems.
19
We may not
have had
the answers
or solutions,
but we came
out knowing
that we make
our own
meanings,
and we
are also
responsible in
perpetuating
the myths
that solidify
our identities.
So, when Dr Yeoh, my old mentor, asked me to
write a small piece of recollection regarding my years
at Monash as a communications student, I was
stumped. What is there to write about? Who would
bother about the memories from a random student?
The Monash campus, or should I say the Monash-
Sunway campus, that I knew does not exist anymore,
and I’m not even sure if anyone, apart from myself
and a few others, would remember those days.