Life Journal

Thursday, October 11, 2018

It's a wrap!

It’s a wrap!

We’re done with 14 weeks of lectures, assignments, presentations, quizzes and tests. Funnily enough, those aren’t the things that are going through my mind right now. The ones that stick are the personalities and the memories of the wonderful lecturers we’ve had, the things we were expected to learn outside of the classroom. But, with kind of a packed schedule and running all around the place, we only had times to see and bond with them in the classroom. And somehow, that was enough. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I still remember sitting in the car feeling super anxious of coming to the university. I knew I have a lot of friends from high school here but they’re not in the same course. I didn’t even know what to expect from my own course. So, I blasted High Hopes repeatedly in the car for the sake of trying to keep myself calm.

Now, more than 14 weeks from that day, I find myself with a thousand emotions running in my veins. I am happy to have finished this semester (even though I haven’t gone through the finals yet) and I am happy with the people I met along the way, my friends and my lecturers. Let me start with the story of two lecturers that I felt we 'bonded' with.

+++++

Miss Afiqah

You can’t find another her in this world, honestly. The ‘ilm that she shared with us, and how she shared it, my God, those are irreplaceable. The first class we had with her was intense, or for me at least it was, and I was excited and nervous all at the same time. She gave us these questions for us to find the answers. She told us that at this age, we have to develop our brain. Take everything that we thought we know and think again, question everything. Don’t be ignorant. But she didn’t leave us hanging with the HOTS questions, she asked us to share our answers and she’d ask further to check our understanding. She’d ask us further so we could think again on what we thought we know. And she opened our minds with the explicit explanation of the religion, of our religion that we took for granted.

My, the number of times we cried in her class? A lot. But it wasn’t out of fear, it was never out of fear. It was our Imaan sobbing over the reminder and zikr that it had missed for so long. It was our sinful selves sobbing over our carelessness with ourselves, letting our limbs commit sins. What she said came from the heart and it was so genuine that even our hearts could feel it crying. Her classes were a roller coaster of emotions, and I couldn’t have asked for anything else.

I would definitely miss her ‘babe’, ‘chocolate’, ‘come on, Shakespeare!’, ‘is it?’ and those funny faces she made in class. She’s so pure and so herself that you can’t help but love her. She made us see the world in a much bigger picture, she let us see the future much clearly and she even painted us some pictures of the hereafter (metaphorically).

Our last class with her was just perfect, even though unexpected. Needless to say, we cried. And we cried a lot reminiscing all the good times we could have had if it wasn’t for the separation. What made it all even more saddening was the fact that Miss Afiqah cried first and it showed how much she appreciates us too. Then we got to the photo session which was all the way fun because of our happening classmates. But after that, we went to hug her and thank her for everything and cried again. We were not ready to let her go.

Then, as if God had answered our prayer, we were stuck in the building as all the doors were locked. Talk about panic at KOS1, though. Anyways, someone came to open the door and we did manage to get out and Miss Afiqah gave the five of us a ride. In the car we were giggling non-stop for such an odd day of crying, laughing and even panicking. Well, I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect ending.

+++++

Sir Rauyani

Because I’m being pretty honest here, I’m gonna go ahead and say my first impression of Sir Rauyani was ‘asal comel sangat lecturer aku ni?’. Well, he’s 30, married and has two kids, so.

And to be honest, at first I was a bit bummed that I didn’t get to learn with Sir Nazriq because I’ve heard a lot about him from my Along and he sounded very cool and funny. Well Sir Rauyani is too in his own way. He’s soft, if I may say so, and he's very careful in threading his words but his face? Gosh. The facial expressions he made sometimes are subtle but enough. He threw some shades too from time to time. In simple words, he’s a bit unpredictable. In the first class we had with him, he told us that he doesn’t have a lot of social media platforms as he doesn’t like to share about his private life. Even with us he only dropped a few information here and there. Nothing much.

But I do have two stories to tell about him.

One is when I had been ‘sinking’ for a couple of days and it all started when we were doing our project presentation. I could feel my heart getting heavier and my brain was sort of shutting down and I really didn’t give my best for that presentation. For that, I apologize to my group members and very close friends if you guys are reading this. Anyways, back to the story. I felt horrible during those two days and when I thought about it over and over, it always brought me back to Sir Rauyani, like I did something wrong to him. So on Thursday morning I texted him apologizing if I had done anything wrong and telling him that I’d been feeling uneasy after the class because of the guilt. After that I went to take a shower to sort of distract myself from that and when I got back I saw that he read the text but there was no reply. Now if you know me, you’ll know I don’t like being left on read, I don’t like getting blueticked because I’d feel like I said something wrong.

I went on about my day and did some other things when I finally heard that sacred ‘ding!’. He finally replied. Now, between my text and his there was about one hour and half of delay and in that period I had thought of every possible reply I could get, the good and the bad. But it wasn’t anything that I expected it to be.

He told me that he believed the feeling of guilt is a sign of Imaan and I should be grateful for it and zikr to remember Allah and put my mind at ease. Allahu, in that moment, hati rasa terduduk. I started realizing how lacking my ibadah was that week and it felt like a message from God that was sent through him.

The second story is what happened yesterday. On Wednesday, I texted Sir Rauyani and asked if I could meet him after class to ask him about the Kuliyah since I felt so lost when thinking about my future. After the class about 12 of us stayed back to take pictures with him and I was a bit worried if he had forgotten about it but also too nervous to remind him. But, after taking the pictures he called my name and my friends and I went back inside to talk. I told him about my situation and of course he couldn’t have helped much in deciding what I should do for my degree but what he actually did was way beyond that.

He started telling his story on how he switched from BioScience to English because his teacher (?) told him he had a flair for English and most importantly on how sometimes he had regrets doing so. He had a lot of “what if’s” and “maybe’s” in finishing his bachelor and even his master’s degree. And even now, he’s still looking for his passion and has his good days and bad days in teachings. He still hasn’t stopped questioning but above all of that, he’s grateful for what he had done, regardless of the regrets he felt along the way because there were blessings laced in between every step of the way. He told us to accept the nature of life that everything has its ups and downs and all we have to do is trust the journey Allah has prepared for us.

I gotta be honest, we were so close to tears. Because at that moment I realized how harsh I had been to myself, setting high goals I can’t achieve and drawing my future that I can’t even paint for myself. I forgot to forgive myself for all the mistakes and flaws that I have. Somewhere along the way of trying to reach that 4.0, I lost something that I spent months or maybe even years teaching myself; that it’s okay to be human, that it’s okay to live only day by day and leave the rest to Allah. I forgot to depend on Him, and not only on my so-called free will as a human being. And being in that class with the friends who helped me through my first semester and listening to Sir Rauyani opening up about something I found very personal, it really reminded me of that again. And it was really touching that he opened up about himself and a bit of his personal life and the struggles because it showed how he stripped down his ego and pride as a teacher and put himself at the same level with us. It was a new side of him that we were so glad to see even for a brief hour.

He also said that he noticed how close the four of us are and how our marks are always in the same range because we always help each other with our studies. And it is true. We spend almost 24/7 together especially this last couple of weeks because there were a lot of group project that we had to finish. He told us to appreciate the friends that we have because they are our support and shoulders to rely on and I couldn’t have agreed more.

+++++

Well, that’s enough entry for a single post. I’ll end this one with “The people you meet will inspire you in ways you can never imagine. All you need to do is listen.”

-Nik.