Tell Me Who You Are / Tell Me What You Love
By Paris Mercurio ‘23, Gadjah Mada University Fellow 2023-2025
What is your favorite thing to talk about?
This is the first question I ask my students on the first day of each new class. If it’s a writing-focused course, I adjust the question accordingly (“What do you love to write about?”) but the point remains the same. Typically, it is closely followed by questions like “What do you think I should know about you?” Or “What are your favorite things?” But the more time I spend as a Shansi Fellow, the more often I wonder whether the follow-up questions are truly necessary. The first question already tells me everything I need to know.
Some traditional Javanese art depicted on the side of a building in Jogja
I become acquainted with my students through the interests they share with me in response. Throughout each semester, these tidbits of their inner lives and personalities inevitably become a significant part of our classroom environment. Common themes emerge in our conversations and throughout their weekly journal entries, and quickly I notice the same topics of interest appearing over and over. Whenever students have the option to choose their own topic for a project or assignment (as they often do), I end up learning even more. Because I work with nearly 100 students per semester, these glimpses into my students’ passions really help me to get to know them as individuals. When I pass a pair of students in the hallway, I think, That’s So-And-So, who closely follows Formula One racing, and her friend, who’s really into fashion design. I occasionally wonder whether my students would find it amusing to know that I associate them so heavily with, say, their favorite musician or TV show, inflating the interests they’ve shared with me to major facets of their personalities. But then again, if this is the information they want to share with me—if this is what they choose to share as a “fun fact” on the first day of class, stand up to share with the entire room during check-ins, and divulge in their journal entries every week, doesn’t that mean that this is what really matters?
Listening to our class discussions and reading assignments, I am frequently struck by the sheer excitement with which my students talk and write about the things they love. In a time when it feels increasingly tempting to guard our true feelings with layers of protective irony and humor, or downplay our passions to shield ourselves from judgement, I am especially impressed with how openly and earnestly my students verbalize their thoughts and emotions in our class. A 15-minute writing assignment designed as a warm-up frequently leads to students pouring their hearts out on the page, eagerly volunteering to read their piece in front of the whole room. I listen as they describe a pivotal moment in their lives, tell us why a special person matters to them, or explain how their favorite song or movie affects them emotionally. There is so much depth and care to be found in their unique stories, and I feel simultaneously surprised and lucky to bear witness to them in the unexpected environment of an English language class.
A post-yoga photo-op with my junior fellow Mia and our friends Dhira and Anya
I learn about a lot of new things from my students, but we also have a lot of common ground—especially because we’re still not too far apart in age. We watch a lot of the same shows on Netflix, listen to the same bands. We probably even have similar Instagram algorithms. I often wonder how different it must have been for Shansi Fellows 25 years ago, who lacked the internet as a piece of connective tissue. Now, getting to connect with a whole classroom over a viral meme we’ve all seen feels like an almost absurd, yet obvious fact of the world we now live in.
But even with a certain amount of common ground, there is still plenty of unfamiliar terrain. Moving halfway across the world is a macro-cosmic version of introducing yourself to a classroom full of new people: on drastically different levels, both scenarios force you to confront your ideas of who you are. How do you boil that down? How do you describe it? How do you convey it to someone else, especially someone who might not have the same social––or actual––vocabulary? How much of it relies on where you’ve been, or where you are now? When I first landed in Jogja two summers ago, by the time my jet-lagged brain had caught up with the ten thousand mile leap that my body had just taken, I suddenly found myself thousands of miles away from all of the people, places, and things that had created me and, consequently, helped me feel like myself. Now, in the physical absence of all those familiar components of living, I took on the new task of defining exactly what those things were, and dissecting why and how they served me (or scrapping the ones that didn’t).
This sounds like a bizarre, abstract process when I break it down this way, but in reality, it manifests itself quite simply. For instance, a thought like, What should I buy at the grocery store? Would naturally break apart into several more rudimentary, precursory questions: What do I like to eat? (Do I actually like that, or am I just used to it?) What do I usually buy at the grocery store? (What can I actually buy here?) What do I already know how to cook? (What can I actually cook with the tools I have at my disposal?) It’s no surprise that simple tasks can end up feeling so daunting when you’ve just moved abroad. Early on, even the most unassuming to-do list item made me feel a little bit like a robot who had just woken up after some sort of de- or re-programming process, now attempting to re-acquaint itself with its familiar, yet foreign host body.
A music festival I attended in Jogja, which featured indie bands from around Indonesia and other countries in Southeast Asia
The upshot of all of this is that you inadvertently spend a lot of time learning about yourself. For me, this process quickly revealed how much of my identity was wrapped up in, or made up of, the people in my life, the things I liked, and the ways I spent my time. Moving abroad forced me to relocate these aspects of my identity in the absence of those things, and discover how to engage with those things in a new context. Lacking the context of a shared past, these habits and hobbies have also become the primary way I’ve been able to convey who I am to the people I meet in Jogja. Over time, I’ve found myself clinging to these parts of myself more tightly than ever before. Perhaps this is why I feel so connected to the excitement and passion I hear in my students’ voices when they share projects about topics of their choice. In those moments, we endeavor reach a mutual understanding of one another through discussion of what matters to us. To me, this seems like the ultimate impetus for language learning.
The process of rediscovering identity through experience is never over. I’m constantly asking myself questions (When and where do I feel most like myself?) and finding new answers (When I’m listening to live music. When I’m browsing at a used bookstore. When I’m sharing a meal with friends.) The process of re-discovering and re-contextualizing your own joys and habits is not unlike that of getting to know a new friend: I always get a warm feeling the first time somebody picks up on a pattern in my behavior, associates something with me, or identifies something I enjoy, no matter how small or inconsequential. Why is that? Because by paying attention to what I like and what I do, they are showing that they are getting to know who I am, and it’s just nice to feel known.
One of my favorite walking shortcuts near the UGM campus
I try to apply this logic to my relationship with myself as well, paying attention to where I am and what I’m doing when I get that feeling–– the one that tells me, This is who I am. This is where I’m supposed to be. I specifically remember feeling that way the first time I watched one of my students’ play rehearsals. Every semester, the English Literature students are responsible for creating an original play as part of a department-wide event. From writing a new script in English, to advertising the show, to performing it in front of an audience, everything is done by the students. They even create merchandise, which is sold before the show. As soon as I heard about these shows, I was excited to be involved in any way I could. It had been a while since I’d been a part of a theater production, and it had begun to feel increasingly like one of those things I wanted back in my life. Luckily, I got to provide help with the script while it was being drafted, and I frequently observed rehearsals to provide feedback. I am still in awe of how much time and effort goes into these performances. On top of a million other responsibilities and extracurricular engagements, my students—most of whom are not typically theater kids—meet several evenings per week for several hours at a time. Rehearsals are often intense and expectations are high. However, breaks are long and frequent, and there is always an overarching feeling of playfulness and compassion, even in the most stressful moments. Though the plays themselves are always in English, the students expertly shift back and forth between English and Indonesian while discussing scenes and giving each other notes, often switching mid-sentence and using slang, speaking too quickly for me to catch everything. It’s hard to describe how fantastic it has been to see my students come alive in these rehearsals––though they are already quite animated in class, this is something completely different. I can identify this as one of the greatest joys of my Shansi experience so far.
After more than a year and a half of living in Jogja (which is almost too unfathomable for me to type), I have also picked up plenty of new habits, and many of these pastimes have tweaked my conception of the kind of person I am (or can be). Though I am a terrible visual artist and have always thought of myself as too impatient and easily frustrated for the fine arts, my friends and I love to go to a local cafe where you can buy small canvases and paint while you drink your coffee. Every few months, I try my hand at some other artistic venture, like batik-making (which is even harder than it looks, and my combined impatience and lack of cautiousness have led me to some… abstract results), and Javanese calligraphy. Despite not being a lover of exercise, I’ve taken up weekly Zumba classes that, complete with mind-numbingly loud music and colorful strobe lights, feel less like a workout session and more like a choreographed hour at a dance club, if that nightclub’s target demographic were middle-aged women.
My first attempt at batik painting
But one of my favorite parts of my current routine is a nightly walk that I take by myself. While I can’t say that I actually do it every single night, especially during the rainy season, I’ve come to look forward to the ritual of taking a stroll around my neighborhood soon after sunset, which is pretty much the only time of day when it’s cool enough to walk around without sweating buckets. Because of this, plenty of people are always out on the streets late into the night, and people love to meet up with friends and hang out after dark (the coffee shops are always most packed between 10pm and 2am, although I’m not much of a night owl myself––my junior fellow Mia and I are constantly wondering when everyone actually sleeps, but we’re pretty sure this city thrives on a combination of sleep deprivation and caffeine). As someone with an absolutely terrible sense of direction, going on these walks has also helped me get a better mental image of the city. Getting somewhere on foot always makes it easier for me to remember than when I’m a passenger on a GrabBike. I feel like I’ve truly gotten to know this city through these walks––moments spent completely alone, not really trying to accomplish or “be” anything.
It’s absurd that my time as a Shansi Fellow will be coming to an end in just a few short months. Lately, as I walk down streets that have grown familiar, passing buildings that I’ve now walked past countless times, I’m overwhelmed by the feeling that I actually have a history here. While I know that I have grown and changed a lot, and in many ways I feel like a different person than I was when I arrived, I also feel so close to the version of myself who still had all of these new experiences ahead of her. When I walk back to the neighborhood where I lived for the first year of my fellowship, I experience an almost tangible sense of separation from the past version of myself who walked these same streets a year ago, passing the same houses and trees that have come to feel like a symbol of home.
Meeting up with friends Tata and Dhira for lunch
And even as so much stays the same, so much changes. I leave Jogja for a month and there are two new shops on my street. My favorite coffee shop has closed down and swiftly been replaced by a new one, as if the place I remember loving never even existed. My favorite bakery has packed up and moved across town. It’s a city full of young people, a student city: people come and go, everything changes in the blink of an eye. And in another few blinks, I’ll be going, too.
I already know that when I leave Jogja, I’ll miss a million things: the familial warmth of the UGM faculty, the fresh juice available on nearly every street corner, rainy movie days and paint nights with my friends, and even ordering GrabFood (a little too much), to name a few. But I think that my enduring image of the city will be pulled from my solitary evening walks. My heart swells just thinking about them. Of course I’ll cherish every special memory I’ve made here, but I’ll really miss navigating the chaotic streets that led me to all of those moments––expertly avoiding the potholes that have worked their way into my mental map over time, eyes glued to the fading sunset peeking through the silhouetted trees, knowing that it wouldn’t be the last time I’d see it.
One of my favorite walking shortcuts near the UGM campus