There is a building in NTU that many of us are well-acquainted with, especially those of us in the humanities/social sciences and business faculties. Some of us frequent this building for classes, some gather here for co-curricular activities, while some are drawn to this facility for its rustic appearance that fits seamlessly in their Instagram aesthetic. Tour groups that descend from 40-seater coaches are a common sight, with a guide in tow, waving a flag to usher a gawking audience. For me, this building had always been a constant in my NTU narrative, a silent witness to the peaks and crests of my undergraduate experience. It was there for me through the days I spent in solitude, having lunch with overdue readings on the side. It unwaveringly housed me and my friend circle as we waited for class and dinner. And who could forget the grilled chicken carbonara that is the crowd’s favourite? (Although I personally prefer the seafood pasta despite not being such a huge fan of seafood.) I would go as far as to say that the Hive was a loyal character in my four years here, despite all the mornings the elevator skipped my level when I was already running late for class.
In the exact moment this picture was taken, I remember fighting back tears that threatened to spill over after one of the most defining appointments in my life. It sounds dramatic in writing, but sometimes you cannot put a name to misery, or assemble the right sequence of words to expound matters of the heart. I had just walked out of the pastoral care office, after the most pointless yet pivotal fifteen minutes of my life. If you are a fellow student reading this with plans to get in touch with the pastoral care due to an academic existential crisis, I am sorry to disappoint you, but you are half as likely to find enlightenment behind those doors as you are curled up in a fetal position in the comfort of your room. Or at least, I did not find what I had sought for, but they say sometimes the answers you long to hear are not what you need. Maybe your source of comfort and relief is not what you pin it to. They have a term for that in Psychology: affective forecasting. Conversely, we tend to overestimate what something means for our happiness. Once the object of our desires finally falls into our hands, we soon realize it is not giving us as much satisfaction as we initially thought it would.
I showed up at the office that morning hopeful that I could get directions on how to transfer out of the course I was doing, into one that was closer to what I studied in the polytechnic. Instead, I was greeted with more evidence that I was glued to where I was; the doors I wanted open sealed shut. The pastoral care officer, well-meaning as she was, sat me through my options before the topic of a Leave of Absence (LOA) came up. On one hand, I was ready to smash the ‘submit’ button on the StudentLink portal for a semester of LOA; on the other, she was trying to convince me that it would be something that I might regret when I see friends from my cohort graduate before me. I did not have the heart to tell her that the prospect of falling behind on a timeline I wasn’t even completely sure of dimmed in significance to my quarter-life crisis.
After what felt like a depressing morning, I discovered myself at a booth at Coffee Bean, drowning my sorrows in New York cheesecake. A friend swung by and towered over me as I burst into tears, resigned to fate as I began accepting my place at the university. It became increasingly clear that I had to live with this Plan B, with Plan A many degrees out of my reach. And that was the narrative my mind tormented me with: “You are not good enough for your Plan A, what a loser!” Little did I know that I was still hashing out the specifics of my Plan B, that I was very much still the author of my own story. In my desperation to escape my course, I had forgotten how I had prayed hard for my admission into the university, deciding to appeal for the programme when I was only offered my third choice, English. In my fixation on what could have been, there was hardly any room for gratitude.
While the first one-and-a-half years of school featured me trying to get out of my course, the second half of my undergraduate life took a positive turn, as I met friends I instantly knew were for life. I accepted leadership roles in the NTU Muslim Society, which kept my hands full through each half of the academic year and helped me re-establish my purpose in life to be an asset to my community. I declared Psychology as a second major, to make up for the lack of challenge I experienced in my first year. A dear friend from polytechnic once shared that she studied Psychology to understand herself better – and only in university did I begin to relate to this, as I was confronted with the realities that undergird some of my persistent behaviours. When I desisted resisting Allah’s plans for me, things fell into place and NTU started to grow on me (and it helped tremendously that I traded my MRT commute to Pioneer for a more comfortable self-operated ride along the Pan Island Expressway). Before long, I was even looking forward to school, because I truly enjoyed learning and discovering perspectives which kept the cogs in my mind whirring.
They say time flies when you’re having fun, and so the last two years of school were a blur of laughter and carbonara-stained late nights in school. That is not to say that all my days were easy, that I went on with life without a care in the world. My final year kept my hands full and my shoulders laden with the weight of life’s tribulations. In the first semester, I discovered that I had a stalker who knew my place of residence and exactly where I parked my bike on campus, effectively violating my sense of security and privacy. Coincidentally, that was the semester I was taking a course in Forensic Psychology, which lent itself perfectly to my plight, and for the assignment, of course, I appropriately wrote about stalkers and how they would stop at nothing to gain possession and control over their victims. The course helped me understand my situation with acuity and maturity, helping me recover the security and privacy I had lost. It empowered me to take action and turn him to the authorities.
At the start of my final semester, I ended a toxic friendship I had outgrown a long time ago, relinquishing an important source of support at a time I could use it the most. And again, when I let go of this person who had accompanied me through most of my university life, I found myself buoying to the surface, feeling as lightweight as ever. There were hardly moments I felt lonely, because most of my days were filled with raucous laughter over the silliest and simplest things with friends. I am never one to disclose much about my problems, but they compensated for the pillar of support I’d lost with their outpouring of love and constant positive reminders. If you are reading this, I appreciate you for being present in my life at a time I desperately needed to get away from myself.
Now, looking back at the four years I have fully and unstintingly lived, I am still in disbelief that my university days are behind me. When I throw on my graduation robe and pore over the courses I have completed on my transcript, I do not see just another notch in my belt. I see a year of war with myself, a year of acceptance, years of storm and turbulence that threatened to sweep me off my feet. But through it all, I also see the friends who made my days in university significantly less lonely, taking me in when I was at my lowest, who made me throw my head back in laughter, and provided me with a safe space both physically and metaphorically. I see faces of the professors who inspired me to be bigger than how I felt about myself, whose passion for their respective fields was contagious, and the other staff who made life at NTU comfortable – too comfortable in fact, that there was a stolen night we overstayed our welcome at Hive, past the stroke of midnight.
The first-year undergraduate in me would have been beside herself with disbelief to learn that I made it to the finishing line, beating the odds. It did not make any sense at that time – the path ahead with its twists and turns, but all I had to do was trust that Allah had my best interests taken care of. Sometimes, Plan B is the improved version of Plan A after all, as promised in the Qur’an,
Perhaps you dislike something which is good for you and like something which is bad for you. Allah knows and you do not know.
(Surah Al Baqarah: 216)
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in the articles on The Ocean’s Ink are the authors’ own, written in their personal capacity. They may not reflect the view of The Ocean’s Ink or IMSGP as an organisation.