Wednesday 7th January, 2009
The PPS, A. Geek, Imperial and myself
Issue #1396 [Feb 15th 2008]
When I came to Imperial for an interview, I remember getting off at South Ken and ambling down the subway, passing museums and whatnot. There was a jazz flautist busking, my interview was a few hours away and the morning air was crisp. I instantly fell in love with the place and with London, and I knew that this is where I was going to be if I did not get into Oxford.
When Medicine Year 1 finally started, I had just finished two gap years of travel, business, and jobs where I had done much and caught up fully with my other life-enriching hobbies such as books, politics, guitar, drums, art, etc. But coming from an erratic, almost lonely education in a state school where no-one understood me, coupled with the detached gap years, I arrived at university expecting something larger than life itself. I made it a goal to utilise every opportunity and pursue all my interests with a will to progress on all fronts from journalism to clubs/societies, from photography to sport, and from culture to current affairs! I was ready to take London on.
Yet, a bit into my first year, and although I started to achieve many things, I could not help but feel a little disappointed. Firstly, being an Asian, I had never encountered the rude-boy culture either back home or anywhere else, so instantly felt sidelined from vast swathes of people of my own race and culture at Imperial. I really had nothing to say to them or anything in common with them to talk about. Secondly, I felt completely alienated from another majority on my course, the public school boys, for whom I felt the concept of friendship meant something different to mine.
Moreover, medicine itself was a real bore in the initial years, grinding me down with pointless lectures and facts that needed to be swallowed and regurgitated solely to pass exams. The icing on this bitter cake was the unnecessarily competitive nature of fellow medics which I found unbearably annoying.
All of these feelings slowly turned into contempt for Imperial and the people around me. However, it was not all doom and gloom as in good time I also found some people who were very much like me. People who did not care about what others thought about them and had enough self respect and guts to see beyond the obvious and say or do what they felt was right. These have become my amazing friends and ones that I enjoy making compromises for, but still I could not shake the dislike that I had for the majority and the institution.
You should know that this was not all in bitter response to an Oxford rejection as I actually had managed to get in to study PPE there and rejected it to pursue medicine, and I now also much preferred the less scientific medical course at IC. So why this disdain for Imperial? I did not know. I just knew that it existed.
Things slowly changed, though, in third year. I met a person or two that got me thinking with my heart and I also got to enjoy my first year as the leader of an organisation, The Pakistan Society, going on to win the President’s Award from the Union. Furthermore, medicine finally became clinical and a golden opportunity presented itself for me to follow that year with a trip to Kenya to practice medicine there, cementing my love for medicine proper.
But none of these were responsible for changing my attitude towards Imperial. It was, in fact, the gradual realisation that no matter where you go and what you do, ultimately it does not matter.
This is a bit weighty, be warned, but after much thought I felt that if life is to eventually come to an end, then what does anything matter? Existence seemed suddenly very short and all things temporary, and I pinpointed my dislike for my situation stemming from an inability to accept the temporary nature of life as you and I know it.
I realised then that no matter where I went or what I did, I would not find peace and happiness, unless I can learn to be thankful for whatever God has given me. And then when I took a good look at myself, I had so much to be thankful for.
So I think I was not actually unhappy with Imperial but with life itself, and I came to realise that if I was looking for permanence, I would find it nowhere but with God, the one who is infinitely wise, most merciful, and above everything else the one who we come from and everything comes from and the one to whom we must return. This realisation happened in early June and I don’t care how cheesy that sounds!
So, after such heavy-duty philosophy, I come to the crunch of this article. Over time, I have realised that I am very happy to be at Imperial and very grateful for all the opportunities I have been able to pursue here. I have realised that actually there are a lot of like-minded people here but we are just not the majority, being dispersed across various concentrations and years. And I have realised that no other university would have provided the same feeling of belonging as Imperial or such an excellent city to live in.
Nevertheless, I have recently made some mistakes in the way I have handled my privileged responsibilities here and I have learnt a lot from them, and now I want to make some statements regarding them.
Being the chair of the Political Philosophy Society as one of the most buzzing societies on campus is a real honour and I have the following to say. Mr. Samuel Black, the reason I felt that the Jerusalem Post was trying to malign us, our university, and our speakers is because it reported inaccurate facts. Over a day before it went to print, we had changed the speakers and Prof. Newman had never pulled out. They used an old private email that Prof. Newman sent to us to go to print, without consulting the Prof. or ourselves first and he was as angry as we were. Furthermore, they did not want to print a follow-up with the correct facts as they were happy to try and portray us as having invited Tamimi just because of his views. In hindsight, the right thing to have done would have been to say goodbye to Newman since he was the one not willing to share the platform; but we acted to save the event. Maybe we did so at the expense of principle., but in any case the PPS sincerely apologises to Mr. Tamimi.
Also, regarding our study on Kashmir on Thursday, I would like to apologise to those who attended expecting the same quality discussion as the Israel/Palestine and Somalia/Ethiopia events. I thought that inviting a Kashmiri speaker to address both sides would suffice, but did not expect that it would be a one-sided rally-like address. It is not the speaker’s fault but ours as we did not do sufficient research when inviting him. Trust me, a lot of important lessons have been learnt here!
Next, I want to thank the good folks at Felix for their help with managing the furore and inadvertently giving the PPS some excellent publicity through their balanced reporting. And I also want to thank Union President Stephen Brown for understanding our situation, the mistakes we made as a newbie soc, and supporting us (also sorry that the one PPS event you came to sample was not of the same quality as the rest).
Finally, a warm thanks to Mr. A. Geek for his kind words. I am really glad that you enjoyed my work so much, sir! Reading your comment piece last week was quite an experience! When I came to the Felix office to lay that issue out, I remember reading it and thinking that it was utter trash, similarly to you, but your compliments have given me renewed initiative as I continue to tackle other themes in my two-month trip. When you put a lot of hard work into your writing and find it buried at the back of the issue, it can be a bit disheartening to think that people may not even get to it.
Anyway, please find an article on the Congo in the travel section soon and for anyone looking for the piece Mr. Geek refers to, I have put it up on my Facebook profile with a corresponding photo album.
When Medicine Year 1 finally started, I had just finished two gap years of travel, business, and jobs where I had done much and caught up fully with my other life-enriching hobbies such as books, politics, guitar, drums, art, etc. But coming from an erratic, almost lonely education in a state school where no-one understood me, coupled with the detached gap years, I arrived at university expecting something larger than life itself. I made it a goal to utilise every opportunity and pursue all my interests with a will to progress on all fronts from journalism to clubs/societies, from photography to sport, and from culture to current affairs! I was ready to take London on.
Yet, a bit into my first year, and although I started to achieve many things, I could not help but feel a little disappointed. Firstly, being an Asian, I had never encountered the rude-boy culture either back home or anywhere else, so instantly felt sidelined from vast swathes of people of my own race and culture at Imperial. I really had nothing to say to them or anything in common with them to talk about. Secondly, I felt completely alienated from another majority on my course, the public school boys, for whom I felt the concept of friendship meant something different to mine.
Moreover, medicine itself was a real bore in the initial years, grinding me down with pointless lectures and facts that needed to be swallowed and regurgitated solely to pass exams. The icing on this bitter cake was the unnecessarily competitive nature of fellow medics which I found unbearably annoying.
All of these feelings slowly turned into contempt for Imperial and the people around me. However, it was not all doom and gloom as in good time I also found some people who were very much like me. People who did not care about what others thought about them and had enough self respect and guts to see beyond the obvious and say or do what they felt was right. These have become my amazing friends and ones that I enjoy making compromises for, but still I could not shake the dislike that I had for the majority and the institution.
You should know that this was not all in bitter response to an Oxford rejection as I actually had managed to get in to study PPE there and rejected it to pursue medicine, and I now also much preferred the less scientific medical course at IC. So why this disdain for Imperial? I did not know. I just knew that it existed.
Things slowly changed, though, in third year. I met a person or two that got me thinking with my heart and I also got to enjoy my first year as the leader of an organisation, The Pakistan Society, going on to win the President’s Award from the Union. Furthermore, medicine finally became clinical and a golden opportunity presented itself for me to follow that year with a trip to Kenya to practice medicine there, cementing my love for medicine proper.
But none of these were responsible for changing my attitude towards Imperial. It was, in fact, the gradual realisation that no matter where you go and what you do, ultimately it does not matter.
This is a bit weighty, be warned, but after much thought I felt that if life is to eventually come to an end, then what does anything matter? Existence seemed suddenly very short and all things temporary, and I pinpointed my dislike for my situation stemming from an inability to accept the temporary nature of life as you and I know it.
I realised then that no matter where I went or what I did, I would not find peace and happiness, unless I can learn to be thankful for whatever God has given me. And then when I took a good look at myself, I had so much to be thankful for.
So I think I was not actually unhappy with Imperial but with life itself, and I came to realise that if I was looking for permanence, I would find it nowhere but with God, the one who is infinitely wise, most merciful, and above everything else the one who we come from and everything comes from and the one to whom we must return. This realisation happened in early June and I don’t care how cheesy that sounds!
So, after such heavy-duty philosophy, I come to the crunch of this article. Over time, I have realised that I am very happy to be at Imperial and very grateful for all the opportunities I have been able to pursue here. I have realised that actually there are a lot of like-minded people here but we are just not the majority, being dispersed across various concentrations and years. And I have realised that no other university would have provided the same feeling of belonging as Imperial or such an excellent city to live in.
Nevertheless, I have recently made some mistakes in the way I have handled my privileged responsibilities here and I have learnt a lot from them, and now I want to make some statements regarding them.
Being the chair of the Political Philosophy Society as one of the most buzzing societies on campus is a real honour and I have the following to say. Mr. Samuel Black, the reason I felt that the Jerusalem Post was trying to malign us, our university, and our speakers is because it reported inaccurate facts. Over a day before it went to print, we had changed the speakers and Prof. Newman had never pulled out. They used an old private email that Prof. Newman sent to us to go to print, without consulting the Prof. or ourselves first and he was as angry as we were. Furthermore, they did not want to print a follow-up with the correct facts as they were happy to try and portray us as having invited Tamimi just because of his views. In hindsight, the right thing to have done would have been to say goodbye to Newman since he was the one not willing to share the platform; but we acted to save the event. Maybe we did so at the expense of principle., but in any case the PPS sincerely apologises to Mr. Tamimi.
Also, regarding our study on Kashmir on Thursday, I would like to apologise to those who attended expecting the same quality discussion as the Israel/Palestine and Somalia/Ethiopia events. I thought that inviting a Kashmiri speaker to address both sides would suffice, but did not expect that it would be a one-sided rally-like address. It is not the speaker’s fault but ours as we did not do sufficient research when inviting him. Trust me, a lot of important lessons have been learnt here!
Next, I want to thank the good folks at Felix for their help with managing the furore and inadvertently giving the PPS some excellent publicity through their balanced reporting. And I also want to thank Union President Stephen Brown for understanding our situation, the mistakes we made as a newbie soc, and supporting us (also sorry that the one PPS event you came to sample was not of the same quality as the rest).
Finally, a warm thanks to Mr. A. Geek for his kind words. I am really glad that you enjoyed my work so much, sir! Reading your comment piece last week was quite an experience! When I came to the Felix office to lay that issue out, I remember reading it and thinking that it was utter trash, similarly to you, but your compliments have given me renewed initiative as I continue to tackle other themes in my two-month trip. When you put a lot of hard work into your writing and find it buried at the back of the issue, it can be a bit disheartening to think that people may not even get to it.
Anyway, please find an article on the Congo in the travel section soon and for anyone looking for the piece Mr. Geek refers to, I have put it up on my Facebook profile with a corresponding photo album.
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