1. Stepping outside of your comfort zone is the first step for personal growth.

Back in July, 2023 as I was deciding to leave my part-time job, I had a thought of joining university clubs. That thought was intimidating and the decision was certainly out of my comfort zone, because after that winter I would enter my last year of university. I asked myself whether it’d be late to be a part of a student club if I was in my last year already, “wouldn’t it be something you do back in first year?”.

But screw it! Have I ever regretted doing something? No. I only feel regret if I don’t do it. Arnett (2000) on the concept of Emerging Adulthood once put it as the only life period where “nothing is normative demographically”. In this sense, there is no such thing as “too late”. So I took it as my compass and joined MUPA

Now looking back from having spent nearly a year in MUPA, I had never once regretted that decision of quitting the part-time job, or registering to join the sub-committee (despite thinking that being a part of a club will require me to step out of my comfort zone). I have learned a lot in this journey, which brings me to this next point. 

2. “There is only one thing for us to do: learn all we can” - The perk of not being afraid to be the dumbest person in the room.  

Despite the fact that I am the “oldest” in the group, the way all my members are so experienced with how clubs run just amazes me every time. Each moment where I learned a new skill from a member, the analogy of Ali Baba seeks for treasure of knowledge keeps arises. Be curious about the world and knowledge, the resources are everywhere. 

• Learn to communicate: just similar to anything else in life, if we are unsure, just ask for clarification and be open to constructive feedback. I was growing up in a culture where asking questions is not fully encouraged, so I am aware that not all environments nurture the growth of your curiosity seeds. But the nature of being in the Education team is that everyone has one same mindset of wanting to learn and help each other develop to our fullest. But communication also comes more handy in group work, because being transparent in letting others know what you are at (i.e., your capacity) would be fundamental. Imagine how pressure it would be for you to take on a lot of MUPA responsibilities but you are also juggling multiple jobs and also uni work. As a group, we learn to communicate and accommodate each other’s availability. At the end of the day, the purpose of the club is not only for you to learn individual skills, but it's also us learning to work as a group to produce the best possible outcomes. 

• Learn that each of us has our own pace and styles of working. The fact that it was so miraculous to see your members being efficient and fast-paced in work, makes me have a strong desire to learn and speed up my work. It is a natural instinct to think that if I work fast, more work will be done, equal higher efficiency. However, in that same process I’ve realised that it is even more important to recognise/nurture my own strengths and utilise them in order to contribute my best self to group work. Other than having the sense of wanting to learn more, respecting your own pace and knowing what your strengths are would indeed be crucial for growth.

3. Human connections develop despite different backgrounds and cultures. 

Language is merely a means of transportation for communication. Me as a first year international student used to think there would be barriers for me to feel bonded to friends from other cultural backgrounds. I thought that the ways we speak and interpret are different, so it’d be hard to feel an emotional connection. Being in MUPA taught me that communication is much more than just the language you speak to each other. It is your attitude when saying something, it is your body language, it is your attempts to care for one another like an actual family.

If there is one thing that I remember the most when I end the term would be, you guess it, the hug. Naturally, hugs increase oxytocin that make us feel so connected to each other. In MUPA, it was another extreme of hugging and feeling connected. This is something that I have learned from Arati, now the external director of our MUPA education team, that we need to make sure our hugs are huge enough to deliver our feelings and carings towards one another.