Why I am still a student of (/at) the university.

Last evening my 1pm to 5pm class boiled over an extra hour.
The reason- I was having a passionate debate with my subject coordinator over academic writing styles and word limits .

“….This is why the subject has a high fail rate- students paint a flower garden with their words. Why can’t you (students) write the way you speak? Why can’t students paint a vegetable patch and just stick with growing tomatoes? Its both useful and efficient. ” .

“Yeah..fair enough. I understand the pressures on your time Mr..so and so, which is why the word limit for the assessment makes sense to me. However, most subject coordinators apparently seem to appreciate ‘style’ in academic writing. Or atleast I think I would be fair to make that assumption because marking rubrics give students that impression. Besides, this could be just me, but I have been told my entire life that you don’t write the way you speak. This especially applies to my non-native English speaking friends. ”- That was my response.

And we went back and forth trying to understand each other, until zoom or the internet got tired of us and magically chucked first him then I, out of the meeting. I swear this happened.

Now,

whether either or both of us are right (or wrong) is besides the point. The point is this is what really good teaching and learning involves- passionate discussions, curiosity and empathy, reflection and introspection, opportunities for new learning, and new knowledge creation. and from experience, I know of no other place that does that better than the university.

I might fall down the YouTube, or Masterclass or Skillshare or ‘distant learning’ rabbit hole today, but I seem to be coming back for air in the good old university class. Granted, the former is certainly a privilege and a luxury (where one can learn from the greats themselves) but a student’s mind soon become tired of that transaction. It will crave transformation.

Learning is stale without transformation and that transformation is possible in the university classroom….
This is why I am still a Student of the university.

Half-Life of a tuna fish in the university.

My em(/sym)pathies university academics..because I don’t envy your busyness.

It’s mind-boggling to me, how university academics manage it all. They are teachers to students; staff to the university; researchers to the academic community; a student; a colleague; a friend, and family member. Then, if they’ve a second to spare, they are themselves.
I took a tiny taste of their life this morning. Only just a micro-lick of it, and I’m running off to the fields already.

I am only 3 buckets of things. A postgrad student, a staff member and myself (a friend and a family member), and my digital administrative assistant i.e. my outlook calendar is already struggling to cope.
Come 1pm, it predicts that I’ll be tuna fish for an hour, with one eye, ear and half a brain on a research meeting, and the other eye, ear and half a brain on an intro class for a subject.
I’ll tell you this much- I am not looking forward to it. I dread the guilt that comes with being half-present and apologising for half-fleshed work.

Now, ask an university academic. Double-booking yourself would be a “rookie error” and/or “no big deal”. They’ve either mastered and overcome it or they just deal with it.
Double-booking is part and parcel of the life they chose i.e. to be fish-eyed (metaphorically), coffee-drinking, knowledge-sharing, overworked and grossly-underpaid jugglers.

Two things.

1. Being part of a generation that was born prioritising “me and my mental health” over anything else, the lifestyle of an academic at the moment is not very attractive at all. And,

2. For a responsibility so big as sharing wisdom and shaping new knowledge with minds yearning for it, while doing multiple other things and being at multiple places at once (in other words, playing God), the reward they ask is so little.

Just give them the raise and the paid leave please.

Kopfkino: the inner cinema.

Imagine watching a movie, then a cinema, then watching a film, then watching a YouTube video, then watching TV, then doing it over and over again…
That, I think, is how I would describe overthinking. You play scenarios in you head, and much of it is you ruminating over the same thing. You build up elaborate fantasies and tear down perfectly alright realities.
The Germans have a name for this. Kopfkino. And it quite literally means -mind cinema.

Kopfkino is both the body and the shadow of a wildly imaginative and creative person.

But if anything is a reassurance it is this-
You are the director. You get to say- “CUT!” when you want to. And you are the MAKER of your story.

Action- and her cognitive companions.

When a driver runs one of the car’s wheels into a ditch, the rest of the passengers, onlookers (if you’re lucky), and the driver (if alive), will generally lift the car up and set it on its path.
If not, well it’s no biggie. The car will happily just sit there.

When we see the earth spinning off its axis, there’s less uncertainty than the simple case of car and wheel.
There is no question about action. It must be taken. Because the alternative - complacency, inertia, and inaction are lethal.

Then again, we ask ourselves- “the earth doesn’t fall off its axis every other day… so how do we take action when we don’t have a guide or example to follow?”

We’ve got to make a promise.
We’ve got to think.
We’ve got to come together.
We’ve got to engage and converse.
We’ve got to lift each other up.
We’ve got to cautiously experiment.
We’ve got to improve and improvise.
And we’ve got to capital ACTION.
I mean to say, we’ve got to “verb” action. Not “noun” it. Because we’ve got to keep doing.
We’ve no choice but to keep showing up for home.

And then, well we’ve got to make sure we keep our promise, and let ACTION and her cognitive companions meet again.

Breathe

Just BREATHE. Now read.

The last thing we pay attention to in our day is the most important thing- Breathing.
We lose it.. well, then its game over baby.

Just Breathe. That’s the most important thing.

Oh, maybe hydrate as well.
That’s a reminder to myself and everyone before we plunge into semester again.

Songs of a million parakeets.

Make your own meaning of this little story..

The songs of what seems like a million parakeets wakes the entire street in the morning. The songs are chaotic, and god-awful LOUD. They’re out of tune, a mix of weird whistles, croaks and screeches. These are beings that come after your morning sleep and makes you lose the lyrics of your favourite groovy song in the shower.

But, on days when the song softens, you wonder about them…

Then you walk towards the curb of the street, and watch them parakeets fly around the purple jacaranda tree.

Red, Yellow and green.
Newlings, Parents and all.
The entire family flying to their own song.
The song of a million parakeets.

Out of my mind. Back in 5 minutes

I thought i’d not show up today.

You know, being able to be a no-show is an art in itself and I’d love to learn more. Because I have the opposite problem. I’m an “always show”

• I could never bring myself to miss a day of school. (I hadn't missed a day of school from 6th grade all the way to the 12th.)

• I show up to uni almost every day even if I absolutely don’t have to be. (Friends have a name for it now- the opposite of “chucking a sickie” is “chucking a Shivani”)

• I will almost never miss work

Now, showing up is a really good thing. Most of the time.
Sometimes, it can drive you a little bit up the wall. Like when you could fall into the trap of showing up just to be busy. Here, the need to show up is driven need to not be bored. And before you know it, you’re in a fix, juggling ten thousand completely different things at the same time. That’s a problem.

It might be worth learning from a thing or too from the no-shows. They seem to be okay with not being busy. They seem to know how to say -

“Hey, I’m out of my mind, I’ll be back in 5”

Because there are no brownie points for just being busy.

Don’t be a broiler chicken.

I’ll give movie dialogues credit for inspiring my wacky titles.

If you know a 100 broiler chickens by name and identify them correctly every single time, you should get an award. Why you may ask? Well, for obvious reasons. Its virtually impossible to distinguish between broiler chickens. They’re grown to be optimum size, weight, to produce the same coloured eggs (you know, to basically be perfect and same). They’re even wired the same, producing eggs on schedule with barely any deviation. These days, broiler chickens apparently are so reliant on the path set out for them, that they can’t live without human intervention.

I keep broiler chickens in mind when I am tempted to pursue the path of least resistance. A path that someone else has travelled already that’s easy to follow. Because, it very well may be a struggle to take the path that never has been taken but I’d rather it be different from what we have already seen before .

Trust you’ll get there. Somehow things will fall into place. Don’t be a broiler chicken.

A thousand splendid suns.

In the grand scheme of things, we’ve absolutely no excuse to not be hopeful. Then again hope can be a little bit of a hopscotch. In life we lose hope then we gain. We gain and then we lose.

A thousand splendid suns by Khaled Hosseini, is a book that coloured my childhood summers with hope. I’d cry the book into paper pulp every single time because it’s one helluva ride reading it. But. It does something with your brain and those who’ve read it will know exactly what I’m talking about.

It will remind you that we’ve all a solid square 1 on the ‘hope hopscotch’ to begin with. That we’ve all seen a thousand splendid suns* and that in itself is magnificent!
That that’s one of a thousand splendid reasons to stay hopeful.

*I think i’d be okay to assume that you’re living on Earth and more than a 2.75 years old if you’re able to comprehend this.

Youtube, birthdays and heroes.

This is cheesy, and warm and fuzzy and slightly awkward.

Youtube has probably the greatest sixth sense of all time. I’d go as far as saying YouTube is Nostradamus on steroids.
Youtube somehow knows that i’m an aunty and that a cousin sister is expecting a baby in a month.
Youtube knows exactly what hooks me in and without fail, presents that in a box with a golden bow tie- Baby videos and birth vlogs.

Yep.

I’m not exactly upset with the fact that Youtube has caught up with me. Its taught me something through the dozens of recommendations it has shown me- that I’ve been celebrating the wrong people on birthdays the whole time.

The mother is truly the hero of the birthday. Don’t you think?

Birthday number 0- a battle a mother fights for someone who needs a desperate gulp of air and she wins.
Birthdays thereon- we celebrate the one that was pulled out and saved! The babe becomes the hero of the day.

Its a pretty obvious but not obvious, useless but not useless realisation this.
So what do I plan to do with it?
I will probably give my mum a “Push present”.
But will I thank my friend’s mum on my friend’s birthday?…
Hmm.. Probably not.

Testing the saint.

What’s the most admirable trait in humans? I’m curious.

Calmness comes to mind as a contestant, so lets unpack that a little.

Most people can be mostly calm. But, few people are always capital CALM.

I knew such a person once. A classmate. We studied together at school.

In the years that I knew her, she never ever broke her patience or calm once. Not once. I never saw her lose patience; never was furious, angry, annoyed or ticked off; never ugly-cried, never was stressed; never made a fuss about anything; never hyper about anything; never swore out of frustration. She was basically a saint.
If there was a silly class vote on- ‘Whose the most….’ or ‘Who’s most likely…’ , she was always unanimously voted -‘Whose the most calm person’.

And I mean it when I say, I haven’t met Dalai Lama but I think she could beat him big time in staying calm. When you’d be her desk partner at school, you’d feel like you’re at the beach listening to the waves peacefully lap against the shore. That’s how it physically felt to be around this friend of mine. and no matter, how hard you tried, there would never be a storm. She was something special.

Nearly 6 years later, (and gosh its been a while), I wonder about this old friend of mine. I don’t know if today adulthood has changed this fascinating trait of hers, but I still think about her in awe and wonder how she does it?

That’s how it feels when you experience admirable human traits. Its a superpower, that has people thinking about you years later.

Ghrelin and Leptin: a story about balance.

Ghrelin is a monster. Literally. It sounds like a monster too, ominously rhyming with gremlin, and also works in notorious ways. Its a hormone that makes you hungry and for me, ghrelin makes me puppy-eyed for bread.

Bread is my cue for hunger. I could have just eaten a meal and if I see bread, I will tell myself that there is plenty room for it. I know its a problem!

Human’s aren’t innately wired to have a balanced relationship with food. But we can become more conscious about it. We better become- because the food we eat is influences a whole lot of things. We either gorge or greed food- thats the work of ghrelin. Or we overthink eating- that’s another monster hormone called leptin.

Both these monsters tip our balance quite a lot. I think the trick is to put them up against each other. If we make sure there on the opposite teams and both of them are neither winning nor losing, theirs a good chance they wont come for us.

I got to find a leptin for my gremlin. Ghrelin I mean.

Unruled.

(This might be useless or extremely life-changing)

I think I’ve figured the most compatible paper characteristics for my writing- the kind that inspires me to put pen on paper without fail.

The paper’s got to be unruled.
There’s something about unruled paper that allows me to explore the dimension of my writing. Sometimes, my writing looks like vulnerable young boy, sometimes it looks like a headstrong old woman. The absence of a guide and a path laid out, allows words to travel its own path. Atleast that’s my reason for unruled. Besides writing, as an act of writing in itself, is an art, don’t you think? I often am surprised by how telling the shape of words is of the shape of my thought. If the lines are not straight, does that mean the writer’s thought is crooked or does it mean I’m just a little too hyped about something? or if they’re straight does that mean I’m too proper? Unruled paper allows me to think through the fingers.

The paper’s got to be 110GSM.
The weight of the paper is important. Its should be able to bear the weight of words and make enough of an impression as well. I’m not a fan of words seeping through. I like it contained (on most days atleast).

A5 is the perfect size of paper.
I tried an A4 journal. Frankly, felt like a psychopath. It just feels abnormal to carry around.

The book’s got to be 80 pages. (roughly, not compulsive about this; more or less is fine)
That number just happens to be the sweet spot before I get bored of writing in the same book.

Oh this too-

Silky white paper blinds my brain.
Yeah can’t get words on the paper. the paper’s got to be a little dull. The words must do work of brightening up the page. Also, in silky whites, the lack of resistance to the pen feels wrong.

Heavens know how- the spiral of my spiral notebooks eventually turn out to be a malformed mess. No more spiral- bound notebooks. Besides, that would be more sustainable.

Also, my journal has bits and pieces that I tend to write at the back of newspapers and receipts.
A satin band that contains all my stuff would be preferable. Its like a perfect bow on a dirty shoe. It makes it more acceptable.

Unruled. 110GSM. 80 Pages A5. No spirals or silky whites. Preferably with a satin band. - That, I would argue is the perfect ratio of elements for a journal.

“Fortune favours the contour”.

This dialogue from a movie had me laughing because of its absolute ridiculousness- “Fortune favours the contour”.

But something about it stuck and has me thinking and questioning its validity. I think it might be true in today’s social media age where a TikTok algorithm for example, defines what attractive and intelligent is, and chooses the people who are. When AI decides, it feels like we’re being rated by an unbiased judge.

Humans are vain animals and social media strokes our fur. When it doesnt, we’re stressed.

Today’s AI thinks- “Fortune favours the contour”. So, don’t say I didn’t warn ya.

By mere means.

I don’t know why this comes is a new revelation to me- but reading books is reliving somebody else’s life!!

You’re not just a reader. In your mind, you’re also the actor of the words you read.
Also as a reader, you get invited (or you invade) into another person’s life and live it through their eyes, their wisdom and their truth, and come to think of it- that feels like cheating. What another person may have spent possibly their entire lifetime doing or working on, I get to read in a couple of days and take away lessons from their highs and lows.

Just letters put together intentionally can string up an entire existence and by such mere means, I enrich my world!

Again this is pretty obvious. Don’t know why I’m wide-eyed and mind-blown by it this morning.

The shoulder of a giant.

Some people are leaders. Some leaders are great leaders. But only some great leaders are teachers. These teachers are giants who shoulder an unenviable amount of responsibility. But they’re the reason why the world learns.

Imagine this scenario:

There’s a group of fifteen people that you deeply care about so much and they’ve all got to all swim across a sea in a race to win an opportunity of a lifetime.
Now, this group comprises:

• 2 members who were available and participated in the qualifying rounds of the race.

• 5 members who didn’t participate in the qualifying rounds due to emergency commitments to family.

• 4 new members in the group

• Yourself

Everyone currently on the team is available, capable and eligible for this swim. Here is an opportunity for growth for everyone, and everyone has a fire in them to get to the other side.

Now, there is a way to get people there- immunity pins. These immunity pins give the swimmer a boost of extra energy to swim across the ocean and get to the other side faster than the rest of the group. But there’s a catch. There are only 3 immunity pins in total. Everyone has a case to get the pin.

Who would you give it the immunity pins to?

Also, this is more than just a team. This is family, and one mistake would unleash the green-eyed monsters of envy.

Forget the devil and deep blue sea. The decision-maker is caught between the devil and the devil. Heartbreak is inevitable.

What will you do?

On an everyday basis, this is the kind if responsibility that the shoulder of a giant bears. Its worth watching and learning what happens.

Fairy floss and the beauty of fragility.

When sugar is heated at 300 degrees delicious* for a fraction of a second and flung across by a perforated potters wheel, something interesting happens.

The very hot liquified sugar gets pulled away from the centre (because nature does strange things like that) and is forced out through the tiny holes of the vessel in which it is contained. The sugar, still propelled by nature’s forces, leaves a trail behind. And that trail is fairy floss or cotton candy.

Now, if you think that that cottony, web-like thing is fragile and breakable, you’re sorely mistaken. Its sticks to you. It glues your fingers together. It will make a mess and also bring people together, because almost always nobody can eat a whole stick of fairy floss (if you can eat it whole though, i’d be concerned for you).

Those fragile threads of candy on a weak looking stick reminds most of us of childhood. So, even if you might turn away, a friend might decides its her day to eat fairly floss and you’d be a despicable human being if you didn’t atleast help her with a bite.

And that’s the beauty of the fairy floss. Its fragility binds.

*Was obviously going to write “celsius” but autocorrect makes happy accidents and I let that happy accident be.

Necessarily the hero.

There’s a saying in Kafka apparently that says- “People are necessarily the heroes of their own imagination”. I haven’t read the book, but when I heard someone say it, I found it striking.

“People are necessarily the heroes of their own imagination”

We will paint ourselves in a positive light in our memories regardless of our actions. In our story, our faults are easily overcome at the end, like in the movies people still root for the hero because of some inherent good. In the concentric circles of one’s existence, as a lone soul and as a unit of an entire universe, we are the hero because we need to be. Not once do we consider ourselves villains in our imagination.

That blows my mind!!

When thought becomes life.

Ever gone through life and thought- “Wait a minute, I think I lived this moment already” and you know exactly what the next second is.

I wonder if that’s because you’re vigilant and attuned to emotional psychitecture and human pattern or if its just you losing thought and the world around you is repeating the same thing over and over again. Or both..?

But what about those who actually lose thought. Like those who lose the thought of losing thoughts…?- Not sure if its boring or exciting for them… but I think it might be exhausting when thought becomes life.

Chasing curiosity.

You know that saying “curiosity kills/killed the cat”? - I wonder about that sometimes.
Growing up, it meant that the results of your going after curiosity can sometimes be disappointing or dangerous. But now come to think of it, I think I got it wrong. Because its not the result, it’s the chase itself that kills.

For the sake of simpletons like me, let’s stick to some of the analogy of chasing and imagine a cat and mouse chase - the mouse is your curiosity and cat is you.

But. You are not any ordinary cat. You’re a lion.

Now, a lion is majestic and huge. Its the king of the jungle for a reason- it’s talented and powerful and skilled. It strikes fear in the hearts of other animals. And so you can imagine, the lion probably hasn’t eaten for days. Also, years of evolution have pushed it to the top of the kingdom. So, it needs to eat like a king.

The mouse, on the other hand, is this thing that runs at a thousand miles an hour weaving in an out of nooks and crannies. It eats scraps. And because you are what you eat, a mouse is probably not very high in calorific content or nutritional value. Also, like other animals, mice are not going to just walk into the mouth of the lion and say eat me!

A chase is inevitable. Your cat is doomed from the start.

If the lion commits to the chase, and if its a tricky one, it will die of exhaustion. Its heart will burst and lungs will pop. Or it gets its way, eventually catching the prize of its trivial pursuit, it will still die. Because it is still hungry and but energy-poor.

I reckon- Be something else. Maybe a mousetrap. Not a cat. Stay curious.

*P.S. Lions do eat mice but that’s not the point.