On Overdose Street

Tales of College Days : I

 

 

 

 

At which point in the life of a society does it come to create a cognition that it must change? How long does it take from there to a full dress rehearsal? These are the thoughts that occupied my mind when I first began lecturing in college in the designer 90s.

 

As a city, Kuala Lumpur, sits at the mouth of two rivers. Its a former tin mining town that grew into the capital of the country. But at every point in its history, it always seemed to be saying its not ready yet and was pointing to more that it was on the way to being.

 

Such was the venue that produced the sort of students I encountered in class. They were all into the American thing .... blue jeans worn below the hip, vamp lipstick, $50.00 haircuts and personalized sneakers. However, none knew what it meant to be an American.

 

I had returned from Los Angeles a short while earlier. The colleges in the country were converting to American styled education and if a person spoke staccato English, American style, they were getting snapped up like salmon. Colleges were growing on the landscape like mushrooms.

 

After five years, they offered me the position of Head of Business School. But my biggest challenge was yet to come. In the lecture rooms, in complete American dressage, both student and lecturer came to affirm in each other their relevance to the times. But there was one thing missing.

 

It took me 6 months to wean my lecturers away from the former British perspectives and train them in the nuances of American attitudes. And then, for a while, it seemed like we were on our way with a product we considered real. It started to look promising.