Jayne in HC Coombs Wonderland: In the words of a CHL Graduate and Medalist

One summers day, I saw a rabbit enter the HC Coombs building.

Having never seen it before, I ran after it with excited anticipation.

Three hexagonal buildings joined through a myriad of shared corridors.

I had entered the metaphorical equivalent of the rabbit hole.

I begin to look around. Am I in a vortex? A time machine?

I run up to the administrative desk to ask for help.

How do I get out of here?

You just need to obtain 96 credit points, they told me.  

That sounds simple enough. How do I do that?

You’ll need to complete 16 subjects. Okay…

…And write over 100,000 words.

…. And read thousands of pages of readings. Great.  

But surely there is an easier way?

I desperately look around for a backdoor or a corridor I hadn’t yet seen.

Please, you’ve got to tell me!

You can ask your friends and academics for help.

What? Don’t be silly.

I knew from my undergraduate degree that this is not how it works.

I’m meant to lock myself in the library and someone will come and rescue me when it’s all over.

Suit yourself, they told me before they disappeared into a puff of smoke.

I spot the rabbit heading to Dr Galway’s class on transnational histories.

Immediately I see my friend Yahya, who is staring at a map of the world.

Perhaps he knows the answer.  

Yahya, how do we get out of here?

Dr Galway told me to read between the lines.

Really? We stare at the map a little longer… and eventually, the lines begin to disappear.

Instead, we read about people and important figures whose lives transcend borders we take for granted today.

As the lines disappear, we find a new portal and we enter together…

Together, we spot our friends Yang and Galih in the library.  

Except the library is not filled with books.   

It’s filled with pictures, and fabrics, and threads. 

They hold secrets of the world beyond anything we could ever write on a page.

All of a sudden the ground shakes and a mountain appears before our very eyes  … Thesis Mountain.

As large as the Himalayas, I see my friend Samantha also looking up in horror. 

At the top we can see the rabbit, and not too far in front we see our trusty sherpa or supervisor, Dr Nisa.

She was always one step ahead of us …

However, with her words of encouragement we start to speed up

I can no longer see the rabbit

But I can see all of our academics and fellow student comrades

Their cheering us on as we near the top

If you hadn’t been able to tell, there was no rabbit. It was the degree.

And even then, getting the degree was not the goal. 

It was the opportunity to share an intellectual journey with so many wonderful students and academics from around the world.

And I’m grateful that I get to celebrate with you all today.