UTAR Alumni

JUNE 2018

Fond Memories of a Graduate

Hira Nasir

BACHELOR OF SOCIAL SCIENCE (HONS) PSYCHOLOGY

Batch of march 2018

Condensing 3 long years into one short essay could do no justice to the valuable time spent and memories created. Like every other student, I am filled with both fond and not-so-fond memories of my university experience. Having lived in Malaysia for the better part of my schooling years, I was confident that although I was an international student I would fit right in? boy was I wrong. Being the only international student in your batch is sure to make you pop out, that in itself had its pros and cons. The good thing was that most of my peers knew me, which broke down the ice for me. At that time the bad thing seemed to be that the lecturers knew me by name as well. Having freshly left school, it makes you think that that would entail you being called upon to answer questions and the like, which did happen although not quite at the frequency as I was expecting. Nevertheless, in the long run, it wasn?t such a bad thing after all, being acquainted with your lecturers paved the way for more interesting discussions and friendly debates, giving me a chance to further expand my knowledge.

Making friends when you?re quite literally the odd one out is rather intimidating? you don?t know who you would ?click? with or who you would feel comfortable enough to be yourself with and vice versa. My main concern when I first stepped in was that it felt like there was a language barrier. English was spoken in class, albeit most students rarely spoke in class at the beginning, everybody seemed to converse in either Mandarin or Tamil outside of class. That can?t be true of course, but coming out from an environment where the only spoken language was English, it was rather terrifying. In all honestly, it actually took one semester for me to adjust, and for my group of friends to find each other. Our very first semester in UTAR was a short one, so we were fighting with time to make a group, complete assignments, meet deadlines, get in pace with the ongoings of the university life and make long lasting friendships too? Too much work to be done in mere 7 weeks, it?s suffice to say that we only managed to handle our educational aspect of university at that time. Having experimented with the dynamics of creating the perfect group, we realised that our groups weren?t so perfect after all. However, presentation sessions came in and a light bulb lit somewhere, this was when we could figure out who complemented us when working together and who didn?t. Come semester two and somehow, we unanimously found each other to create what we would come to call ?The Flock of Birds?.

And so began our journey of planning timetables together, completing assignments together, sharing exam notes together, freaking out together, cosplaying together, giving lecturers a great big headache together and basically just doing most things together. We were all quite different from each other, as most people are, but we complemented each other very well, we started off as the reserved individuals but together we turned into a rather notorious bunch, notorious in a good sense of course. One?s weakness could be the other?s strength, but we were willing to learn from each other and we weren?t afraid to give each other a piece of our mind. But indubitably, there must have been a reason why we worked so well together, we were creatures of similar habits. That?s all nice and good one would think, but when it came to procrastinating? well, our group cohesion was so strong that if one procrastinates, we all would, much to our lecturer?s despair. Funnily enough, the work that we did closest to deadlines somehow turned out to be the best of our works, talk about some positive reinforcement.

We had a ritual, after every semesters? final exams we would have either lunch or dinner, followed by a movie session at my house. Since I lived with my family, that meant a nice Pakistani home cooked meal. When the Samyang Spicy Korean Noodles craze kicked in, we added onto our list of rituals. Every Tuesday after class, we would gather at 4059, the hostel that they all shared, and we would try whatever new flavours were released, or just have some anyway. Probably the best tears I shed were then, surrounded by my friends, being the dunderheads we were, pushing our limits to greater heights, forcing ourselves to swallow down the 2x spicy noodles, without water. I like to believe that we achieved a great many things together, our FYP teams were both selected to represent the psychology department in the FYP conference and both our teams managed to come out on top, a feat that had yet to be achieved by our department. Despite our shenanigans and inquisitive nature, we came a long way, and if there is one thing that I truly don?t regret throughout my university experience, it?s having met my fellow flock of birds.

Graduation Picture