by Shameera Nair Lin

Before starting my first year as an MPhil candidate, I made an active vow to myself, where I sought to document as many memories as possible. When I made such a promise, of course, I had no idea any of these photos would be seen by an audience beyond my Instagram and Twitter followers. In a way, the very quotidian nature of these snapshots encompassing my year resembles the experience I’ve had as a graduate student: chaotic, teeming with new opportunities and a way to explore my shifting identity as a scholar and person, more broadly. As such, here are a few moments where the photos will do the talking, rather than vice versa.

  • A series of practical jokes we designed for one another in the English postgraduate office.
  • Cataloguing all-nighters spent on research
  • Joining the HKU women’s football team and losing (happily!) against CUHK
  • Forming lifelong friendships and getting into misadventures with other graduate school peers

There are, of course, many pivotal moments I have simply failed to capture: standing in an emergency ward on New Year’s Day as I attend to a family emergency; monthly visits to the University Health Service where my doctor warns me against overworking; falling in and out of love with my research topic; passing my beginner Cantonese examination; making a breakthrough on my research; realising I’d fallen in love; spending 35 hours playing Hades on the Nintendo Switch; getting COVID and struggling to recover; 2am trips to the office to write yet another 7 pages of my thesis introduction; frantically consulting Google to understand affect theory beyond the basics; wanting Derrida not to be mentioned in one seminar; the funniest photos from the aforementioned misadventures with peers; various research seminars; sitting with peers on a rug until 7am as we contemplate our research and its purpose. Then again, if there’s something I’ve learnt from putting this together, it’s the beauty of leaving many moments to the imagination. And in graduate school, it is the tenacity of your imagination that will see you through, as I have found myself holding on to throughout this journey.