By Maheen Haider<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I think occasionally of the ritual of a commute. In my first year at CUHK, the journey from my apartment building in TST to the turnstiles at University Station was a meditative thing. I see: a still of myself seated always in the same corner at the end of the train; mine\u2019s was the first stop, and the steadfast movement of the train brought with it a steadfast sprinkling of people to whom I did the favour of watching but not seeing and who, in their eternal graciousness, returned that favour even though that one morning I spilled coffee all over my jeans between Kowloon Tong and Tai Wai.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I remember, in that moment thinking, \u201cam I really a university student?\u201d and shortly thereafter, \u201cwould drinking the dredges from this squashed coffee cup be a faux pas?\u201d What truly struck me then however \u2014 while I sat in uncomfortably damp jeans with the scent of distinctly burned coffee beans souring the air and the peach-scented tissue packet of my kindly neighbour clutched in my hand \u2014 was the consciousness of my reality as a material and tangible thing. I hadn\u2019t opted to stay in the dorms at campus and that meant my transition into university from high school was marked not by the tradition of student orientation but rather by a mental orientation of how much more time I would need to get to the university from my home; the \u2018end of the day\u2019 was not marked by entering the dorms but the train, my roommates were the ephemeral crowd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What had me rooted in that incident was not the embarrassment of spilling coffee but rather that I held in my hands the broken symbol of an expectation I\u2019d held of \u2018university life\u2019. The stories I\u2019d absorbed of initiation ceremonies, late-night snacks at the dorms and drunken partying came to mind, ever distant to me as the media I\u2019d consumed to subsume them. They stay, even now, as vague myths; slippery like coffee through one\u2019s fingertips. I see: a still of myself seated always in the same corner at the end of the train. I am presented with a crystal-cut sliver of my reality: the discomfiting awareness of coffee steeping in denim, a crowd drifting on stage without lines, and the ceaseless roar of that locomotive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I realised in that moment that the commute was the face behind the myth of university life. Between the stations and the announcer\u2019s voice, I found myself in the body of a CUHK student, a cell of the CUHK student body. It was submission and transition. Joseph Campbell, an American professor of literature, said: \u201cA ritual is the enactment of a myth. And, by participating in the ritual, you are participating in the myth.\u201d My commute became a sacrosanct ritual, if not physically then at least emotionally with the firm companionship of noise-cancelling headphones. I wanted, even within that 45-minute journey, to build my own narrative for my \u201cunique\u201d student experience; to both fight and fit the myth of university life. After taking an English course, I realised I\u2019d misinterpreted the quote, and during an average commute back home on an average day, recognised I\u2019d in turn misinterpreted the chasm between expectations and reality. It had felt wrong, to be presented with a reality that didn\u2019t fit expectation, and my instinct had been to erase the distance in that chasm until the space between expectation and my manufactured reality was gone. But it didn\u2019t work! It didn\u2019t work because reality has a peremptory nature that draws your eyes to the image of coffee spilling on your jeans, the moment imprinting like a hairline fracture upon the artifice where pallid expectation contends with its vivid opposite. When I say ritual, I mean the patterns we create to comfort ourselves when expectations break and reality refuses to serve us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Into the latter half of my first year, I grew. I grew both in height \u2014 much to the shock of the doctor who\u2019d claimed I\u2019d stop growing at sixteen \u2014 and in experience. I formed more rituals: with friends, classmates, professors, strangers and even for a halcyon of a month, a cat. I carved my own space within the chasm, a crow\u2019s nest from which I could find a happy medium. The campus became more than just a destination on the commute. It became a gallery of memories where I could walk from one end to the other (or rather, take the bus from one end to the other) and feel like I\u2019d experienced \u2018university life\u2019. There was contentment in my routine, and I entered my second year expecting smooth sailing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2026Obviously, I hadn\u2019t quite absorbed the lesson of the falsehood of expectation. My second year \u2014 this year \u2014 was much like everyone else\u2019s: a smorgasbord of incidents spread across a buffet table one after the other that found their way onto the plate without my deliberate awareness of having picked up anything. The eventual aftermath had me waking up at 8:25 a.m. for an 8:30 a.m. class on Zoom, all my grandiose and rituals broken in face of a situation bigger and scarier than the myth of \u2018university life\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I thought then, of the ritual of a commute. My beloved crow\u2019s nest that I had crafted with mindfulness and selective memory was lost, and in place was once again the chasm between what I thought should be and what actually was. It is an incredibly selfish thing to be sad about doing online presentations for tutorials when there is so much devastation and grief in the world, but the nature of humanity is such that we often need to have our little tantrums before getting up to rearrange the knocked down building blocks. Once I\u2019d had my tantrum, I realised that there was nothing to do but organise a Zoom meeting with my classmates to discuss who was going to cover which part in the presentation. On a deeper level, I began to comprehend the necessity for re-building \u2013 as a strategy for survival more than a tool for betterment. So! Stuff happened, and then kept happening, and when everyone thought it had stopped happening, stuff came back with a vengeance and just kept on happening. But! That doesn\u2019t excuse anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There came another moment. A Zoom call for a lecture I had logged on to after only remembering its existence about two minutes prior. Absolutely no recollection of the reading and mind still on the tomato pasta I had been eating, I took a perfunctory glance at the cams. One of my classmates sat there \u2014 someone I\u2019d seen around but would hesitate to even call \u201cacquaintance\u201d \u2014 and in their background was a poster of a band I loved. I see: a still of myself sitting at my desk, eyes fixed on a familiar poster accompanying a not-as-familiar face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We had never spoken beyond small talk, elevator talk \u2014 and on one memorable occasion \u2014 the we-both-got-here-reallyearly talk. I didn\u2019t really know them, and shared music taste isn\u2019t a determining factor for a decent friendship. But that wasn\u2019t really the lesson (the actual class was on social stratification). I am presented with a crystal-cut sliver of another person\u2019s reality. I hadn\u2019t ever comprehended that all my classmates \u2014 faces I walked past every day, and who walked beside me both as audience and protagonists \u2014 existed beyond the rituals of my university days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The consequence of online classes is such that our masks slip. Whether heartwarming or humiliating, there will be a moment where you will falter and the expectation of who you are at university will be fragmented by the reality of yourself at home. I see: a professor\u2019s child slipping in to gleefully announce their class\u2019s termination, a student\u2019s mother fastidiously organising his bookshelves behind him (by colour, for those curious), a TA\u2019s book collection revealing their affinity for the Game of Thrones novels, and their lack of appreciation for the TV adaptation. When these masks slip, we face a new form of exposure. The line between our private and public selves blurring. A space with no fixed expectations, merely the suggestion of one (i.e. mute yourself when the professor is speaking).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In this liminal space, I recalled the coffee incident, and after the obligatory shades of embarrassment, recalled what that moment had brought recognition of. Submission and transition; the two three-syllable words like a cheerleader\u2019s anthem. Submission: to the potential within reality, the failures of expectation. Transition: to a headspace where the submission brings contentment and growth. I used to sit always in the same corner at the end of the train and see it as a ritual from which I could emerge as a university student. When that ritual was taken away from me, I longed for the dreadful dull of that train ride. The longing, I now recognise, came from that ever-human need to forge something within the vacuum of \u2018university life\u2019 that belonged to me, and also enabled me to belong to the community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I anticipate the fall term of my third year, I examine my rituals and think of how they will morph in the face of circumstance. In the space without fixed expectations, I think of how the freshmen will enter, how we will meet in our private lives within a public space. There is an excitement that lingers in tasting the possibilities of the next term. When I write this, I pause at the thought of submission and transition. Our realities are messy things, and our expectations even messier, but within the chaos of it all exists potential. When I began my time at CUHK, I wrote \u201cexpectations vs. reality\u201d and I fixated on the differences as if they were errors and not avenues for adventure and growth. When you, reading this, begin your time at CUHK or simply come back to CUHK, I hope you can examine your reality not through the pressure of expectations but rather the possibility of adventure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In closing, I see: a still of myself standing at the precipice of the chasm between expectation and reality, daring myself to finally look down and find sanctity in the promise of potential.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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