{"id":502,"date":"2016-09-20T05:15:55","date_gmt":"2016-09-20T05:15:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/?p=502"},"modified":"2019-11-20T05:36:47","modified_gmt":"2019-11-20T05:36:47","slug":"giving-the-global-university-a-chance-by-sue-do-nym","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/2016\/09\/20\/giving-the-global-university-a-chance-by-sue-do-nym\/","title":{"rendered":"Giving the Global University a Chance &#8211; By Sue Do Nym"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul class=\"wp-block-gallery columns-1 is-cropped wp-block-gallery-1 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex\"><li class=\"blocks-gallery-item\"><figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"807\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/tumblr_inline_ojpmw4Sq0Z1un32nx_1280-807x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" data-id=\"503\" data-link=\"https:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/?attachment_id=503\" class=\"wp-image-503\" srcset=\"https:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/tumblr_inline_ojpmw4Sq0Z1un32nx_1280-807x1024.jpg 807w, https:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/tumblr_inline_ojpmw4Sq0Z1un32nx_1280-237x300.jpg 237w, https:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/tumblr_inline_ojpmw4Sq0Z1un32nx_1280-768x974.jpg 768w, https:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/tumblr_inline_ojpmw4Sq0Z1un32nx_1280.jpg 946w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 807px) 100vw, 807px\" \/><\/figure><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Wherever I go, every place, I need to discover every side of it that I can with my two hands and feet. Because how can you consider loving something you don\u2019t really know? I took a walk at 6 AM on a winter day at Jindal Global University one day \u2013 I saw a peacock fly, tens of other birds sit around me like I was a natural part of the surroundings, and I witnessed the campus wake up. Mornings for us college kids are usually the afternoons, but I think I\u2019m more of a 6 AM person.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Why does it matter to know the campus as I\u2019ve wished to? There is a culture of entitled pride that transverses us all in colleges these days, where rebellion weirdly stands for conforming to usual stereotypes of a college kid, and anything else is merely \u201cweird\u201d. There is a culture of appreciating only those things that are generally beneficial to all, and while that is well and good, I wonder sometimes as to where our love for beautiful places and wonder has gone. I see people complaining all the time \u2013 sentences like, \u201cI feel boxed in, I need to get out of here\u201d, or, \u201cThere\u2019s just nothing on campus\u201d, or, \u201cI want to leave, this place has nothing for me\u201d. The funniest part, is that these sentences almost always come from those who\u2019ve never known the place like some of us have been blessed to know it. Go beyond the systemic flaws that exist everywhere and must be fixed, go beyond the issues, and go to a simple question that you\u2019ve probably never asked yourself \u2013 have you given this place a chance, the benefit of the doubt, to be your home?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Somehow I feel, that what\u2019s missing is a knowledgeable humility amongst people. A humility of noticing the more beautiful things than the darker, where the world is pervaded by a culture of bigotry enticing more bigotry, resistance to discrimination breeding more stereotypes, and people undone by their ignorance of the fact that sometimes the means to achieve something is more important than the ends. I feel that the students of JGU, perhaps including myself, require an ability to wonder and see beauty, and stand up to create a preserve it. Perhaps the only way I can communicate the strength of my wish for people to do this, is to write of myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>All through my normal CBSE school life in Chennai, I yearned for those wonderful years of college where I would pursue that which I loved. Whenever I used to fail at something, I provided an excuse to myself in my mind, that everything I wasn\u2019t doing then I would do when I got here. In my mind, I thought of finding new music in college, meeting the most interesting people, having the most beautiful experiences, travelling to the hills, the beaches, and the secret places untraveled to, and basically live the life of Kabir from&nbsp;<em>Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani.&nbsp;<\/em>For me, there never was a second chance, because these three years of my undergraduate college at JGU is all the opportunity I had asked for in the entirety of my school life, the opportunity to have a little bit of an adventure \u2013 and when I\u2019m here, I have no more excuses to give.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So when I saw that little bonfire by the flagpole, with people singing Tamil songs in the middle of Haryana, in the memory of Ashwin Maharaj last year, I nearly cried. That\u2019s the beauty I wanted to find, and I couldn\u2019t help frantically call every friend I had to that place, because that was without a doubt\u2026 beautiful. When I take a walk at night and see juniors at the flagpole now, apart from my initial uneasy memories of nights passed out there, I can\u2019t help but love them with their guitars, music, and singing. It\u2019s nights and days like those that I want to remember. Or even random public gatherings demanding change from the administration that bear fruit and result in hundreds of people being polite to each other and the people they\u2019re angry with in an open space, and knowing respect when the \u201crebellion\u201d of college kids would probably mean the lack of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So although I propound skepticism, I\u2019m not a fan of cynicism. Never was, never will be. Because for me, it doesn\u2019t matter if there are issues, for those by their very nature can be solved. But if there was a lack of beautiful things, like beautiful public spaces to walk in the morning or the night, or green grasses to lie on in October weather, or people with loud music playing \u201c<em>Tenu suit suit karda<\/em>\u201d outside while my Literature Professor blinks in confusion inside the class, or a simple lack of wonder in the majority of the people I know, I\u2019d be horrified. Community is lovely, let\u2019s preserve it a little bit more, and perhaps give this place a chance. There\u2019s more to it than what meets the eye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We see beauty only when we travel, when we want to see it, when the places we go to are definitely exotic and incredible. But it won\u2019t hurt us to wish the same beauty upon the place we are in. So in our struggle to improve, debate, argue, change, and become the individuals, campus, and university that we wish to be, my wish is that we remember to have a little bit of wonder and a little bit of the light humility in us while we do so. We\u2019re a relatively smaller community, which means that we could be closer too. In the spirit of open-minded intellectualism, against the dull and boring parochialism, could we give this place a chance?<br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wherever I go, every place, I need to discover every side of it that I can with my two hands and feet. Because how can you consider loving something you don\u2019t really know? I took a walk at 6 AM on a winter day at Jindal Global University one day <a href=\"https:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/2016\/09\/20\/giving-the-global-university-a-chance-by-sue-do-nym\/\" class=\"btn btn-link continue-link\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corner"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=502"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":504,"href":"https:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502\/revisions\/504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}