2007 ~ 2012 |
A NEW CAMPUS AND THE BIRTH OF SASS
Static
Nadiah Ahmad
88
The rest
of the
constants
have been
a drag –
arbitrary,
saddening,
and stressful.
But these
guys, they
keep me still,
in an orbiting
world.
Taken during the Cultural
Night and Thank You
Dinner at ISO Chiang
Mai (2010). ▼
There is a cheesy line about change that is always
repeated in movies, something about change being the
only constant thing in life. That, death, and taxes. Since
my Honours year at Monash, these three things remain.
But I have another small, yet significant item to add to
that list – Paulista and Sze Jia. I count them as a unit,
but, if we’re being pedantic, I suppose it is two items.
Back in 2010, I serendipitously collided into communal
existence with these two souls. We were not ever
much alike. One was a Jakartan obsessed with the
poetics of life, and the other a Johorean who was
wonderfully earnest about the world we lived in. I
was not indoctrinated into the SASS Monash way
of thinking, coming from another university – so
when these two started talking about Foucault and
Baudrillard, I thought, damn it, what have I gotten
myself into? Must I now set up a private reading list,
to catch up with these girls and their discussions?
The three of us spent close to ten months in each
other’s company, watching each other cry, laugh,
falter, and prevail. We went on a study trip to Chiang
Mai that changed the perspectives on our positions of
privilege, and our general understanding of the world
as we knew it. One of us even fell in love – something
that doesn’t get taught in lectures, but is a necessary,
life-altering university experience nonetheless. There
were many meals eaten, days of staring into the abyss
and many more staring into blank screens. But what
I treasured most about my experience in that room,
with these two girls, were the incessant conversations
we had about life. We wondered what life meant, who
it was for, and what we were supposed to gain from
simply living.
Since graduating, we have seen and spoken much
less to each other than the times before. All of us
went, or are still going, through the necessary ebb and
flow – got jobs we hated, then loved, and met people
to love, then hated them right after. We physically
drifted away from each other, each residing in a
different country, figuring things out, figuring ourselves
out. But even as life happens, we have always made
it a point to meet up at least once a year, to speak
about our continued existential crises on life and
purpose. We check back about the reality we exist in
and whether it still makes sense. They have become
the constant in my life. The rest of the constants have
been a drag – arbitrary, saddening, and stressful. But
these guys, they keep me still, in an orbiting world.
So yes, fictional persons in movies: you are right,
change IS a constant in life. And with that knowledge,
some of us hope we can find anchors to keep us
grounded. Monash provided me with two anchors.
One, the ever-growing ability and space to learn more
and more about the stuff I don’t know. And two,
friends who will always help me rationalize the stuff I
thought I knew, but don’t, and tell me it’s okay anyway.
Thanks Monash.
Nadiah has a Bachelor of Arts in Political Studies (2009)
from the University of Otago, New Zealand. She also
holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in International Studies
(2010) from Monash University Malaysia and a Masters of
Arts in International Studies (2014) from Leiden University,
Netherlands. She is currently a PhD candidate in Global
Studies at Monash University Malaysia.
◀ Changing together.