Scarred Memories

Feeling slightly down at the moment. A few events triggered memories of how what one did (how small that may be) goes unappreciated and at its worst, ridiculed. I thought I put these down for those who wish to understand me. It is for these reasons, that I wish to stay away from people, particularly certain individuals, to prevent me recalling bad memories.

Let me take several years back down the road, when I was a young lecturer joining a workshop on university publications. It was a brainstorming session and it was supposed to welcome ideas. I took a shot at it. Despite my naivety, I did my homework and was already familiar with the Chicago Style Manual, and knew the importance of setting standards on problematic matters. At the time, I was already thinking about how to standardise the names of Asian authors that do not quite fit the given name-surname mold used mostly in the West. The idea was brushed off and I realised quickly that when you are 'nobody' in the eyes of others, one's contribution is not worth considering. So, in many ways, it made me becoming more cautious to contribute ideas, particularly with people who are not within my circle. Since 'it was unimportant', I simply adopt the Western mould and named myself as H. Zainuddin in publications. Years later, I was 'ridiculed' in a book of an emeritus professor for adopting this Western name style, making me as an Anglophile. I'm not trying to make issues out of this because I rather focus more on the larger picture, but one gets annoyed, right?

All last week and perhaps the week before, the focus was on final exam questions moderation. I saw some of my thoughts of good practices of writing exam questions have been adopted, but today it went beyond what I did by including standardization of fonts, margins and detailed categorization of questions. My thoughts of the good practice was not really targeted for standardization - the educational intent is far more creative outstripping the standards that caged them. I have no issues in following all these standardizations though I do feel the emphasis might be misplaced. For instance, I know that these exam questions will not be published in a way that they'll need uniformity as one finds in a published book. But, hey this is just a small opinion of mine.

Another concern when I was at the institute is how little attention was given to our activities but I brushed these feelings aside, thinking that mathematics tend to be abstract and it is usually difficult for a layperson to appreciate the things that (pure/theoretical) mathematicians do. However there was this thing that happened to me involving university publicity of institute's events, that got me curious until today. There were two major articles that appeared in the university newspaper that had my pics cropped off. I was really wondering why; I'm not good looking or I'm an embarrassment or what? Sometime last week, I saw the photographer had got her promotion, which is good for her. But the news had awakened up my earlier mentioned curiosity and I really wished I know what the answer is.

Once my junior colleagues mentioned that they know that I was not taken seriously by some. Again, I do not intend to create a fuss out of this because my focus is on progress, rather than who should take credit for whatever happened. Yesterday, received some messages about our university's journals Pertanika are listed under ESCI, which is good and should be applauded. Our Malaysian Journal of Mathematical Sciences had already been inside the ESCI list since at least 2015 or possibly earlier. There was not much fanfare of the matter then. In fact, when MJMS received the CREAM award in 2017, very few took notice about it. In fact one senior staff brushed it off saying that the award was given to encourage our newbie journal. For me, that is fine, as long it was not meant to be discriminatory. As I said, I was aware about how little attention was given to our institute then.

There are many other events I could recall as scarred memories. For me, now, it does not really matter. All I want was progress and if I had helped contribute to this in any small way, my only wish is that it will help me in the hereafter. Once again, I wished to be left alone, so that my intentions are left pure.