New College Life In UKM

After intentionally abandoning my blog for around 6 weeks, I think it's about time I write something about what is currently happening in my life.

Since the last time I updated, I haven't done anything much. I met some of my friends, and mostly spent my time with my families and explaining to every single one of them about "why" am I not returning to the States. Most of the them accept the fact easily and told me to be strong, work hard in the future and don't make the same mistake (which usually just simplified to "don't play games too much")



So it has been one week since I first got into my room here in UKM. Among all the twelve colleges in UKM, I am staying in Kolej Aminuddin Baki, and oh my how I love this college. Let's start with the people here first. The one who handled our orientation program (which is known as Minggu Mesra Pelajar or MMP) are the second year students and we call them PC (Pemudah Cara). They don't treat us like kids (although that is arguable, depend on who you ask) and they don't have bad traditions or bad norms. The easiest example is they don't extend their programs or slots later than 12:30am. Most of the time, they try to finish it as soon as possible, compared some other colleges which usually finish at 3:00am. I am sure they have a lot of things to do that were already planned, but they cut it short or cancel it (but didn't tell us that we were supposed to have an activity on that time). They think about us, the first year students first. Most of them didn't sleep at nights too.

So what did I do during this week? I didn't enter any competition or performance (there are inter-college debates, inter-college performance competition and in-college performances). But during the first day, I volunteered myself the become the Penghulu (direct translation is "chief") for the first year students. I didn't volunteer as soon as possible, I waited for awhile just in case if there are any other students who want to volunteer first. I know I wouldn't have any problems with volunteering myself, so I want to make way for other students first (since most of them are younger than me). To not waste the time, I volunteered myself. Not a very pure reasoning, I believe. As a Penghulu, my jobs were to do headcounts, be the representative for the first year students, and be leader for cheers. I lost my voice for the whole week due to excessive shouting. Luckily there are a few people who seems to love to be the leader for the cheers haha. On Thursday, me and 5 others selected people were selected to become the AJK for our dinner with the Head of College. Since the dinner will be handled by us first year students, our job is to select other people for the other tasks to make sure the event will go well. I took the mic, and gave a short talk, and asked for volunteer. To my surprise, there were a lot of people standing up that we need to choose among them. I was so happy because one of my objectives here in UKM is to make sure that more people will become more active in participating and has more self confidence. I didn't do anything much for the events. Most of the time, I became the mediator between the volunteers and our PCs. If there anything that the volunteers didn't know or if they have anything to ask or if they have any ideas, I will answer them if I know or I will ask the PCs. Then I gave a formal speech on the dinner night. I wasn't nervous or anything, but I do missed a lot of things to talk about. One of them is to thank the volunteers for their hard works. We were only given around 5-6 hours to work on the dinner night, and I believe we did a great job.

So now, most of them call me Penghulu if we happened to meet. I fall in love with UKM ever since they said "you have to have more than just good grades, join more activities and become a leader". In every speech given by different people, they all said the same thing, somewhere along that line. Also, when I said I want to create a video game club (nonchalantly said that), the Head of Felo (almost equivalent to warden in high schools) didn't laugh or said it is ridiculous, in fact he even promote us to do it. Some of my friends also said they want to be in the student council next year, which is very, very good. I also won't laugh at others good intention and dreams. I will support anything that my friends want to do, as long as it is not wrong, harmful or wasting time. In short, all the things that I want to do that I thought before entering UKM is the things that UKM wants the student do.

Maybe, I am really meant to be in this place after all. I can feel that this place really resonate with what I want. Thank you Allah for showing me the other way