It’s getting worse and worse to study a new field,
but hopefully, I can survive.
A week after I arrived in Glasgow,
I feel everything all at once;
happy, sad, frustrated,
a storm between joy and exhaustion.
I try to enjoy the game.
Being a PhD student in a new field is hard—
harder than I imagined.
I cannot follow everything and everything is running out the way,
especially when I’m learning something called
Geographical and Earth Sciences. I am not really confident. I don’t know—the feeling of “impostor syndrome”—catch me out!
During Induction week, I went alone.
My supervisor was in Paris,
finishing his new book.
So, I knew, in this time,
I must go through it alone,
prepare for a new step in silence.
Idham, my roommate,
has been my quiet strength.
He taught me how to find good food, how to cook,
how to spend limited scholarship money wisely in Glasgow.
He’s in his third year now; next year, he’ll go home
to meet his wife and little girl.
He is a a real fighter!
And then there’s Ika. We flew to Glasgow together.
She, too, struggles with distance,
being far from her children, her husband.
But she told me,
“This is my time alone,
a time to meditate with God,
to meet myself again.”
Now she smiles more than before.
Like them,
I am far away from my little boy—Tara,
and my super wife—Nia.
I miss them so much,
and Indonesian food too, especially Gudeg Palagan or Nasi Goreng.
I miss when we ate together, enjoying those foods.
Sometimes I feel frustrated,
learning new things I barely grasp.
But still, I will enjoy.
Let’s see what happens next week.
I will write again, every week,
two weeks, or a month; to ensure that I am still alive here.
And there’s good news, last week, Ainu came to Glasgow to see me.
We shared stories of dwelling in other cities, he studies in philosophy at Univeristy of Liverpool.
We went to Edinburgh, to compare the two. We also met with Rakhmat and his family, and bought many books and went to National Museum. It was really good!
Edinburgh is cheerful,
but Glasgow—
Glasgow promises something stranger,
deeper, half-philosophy, half-geology,
and something quietly calling my gloomy soul.
Greetings from 9 South Woodside Road, Glasgow
Mahaswa
Mahaswa's Thought 