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When I arrived in Melbourne in 2023, my biggest fear wasn’t my Master’s programme—it was the tram system. That taught me something valuable: everything that intimidates you becomes part of who you are.

Walking into my first classroom, I realized I knew far less than I thought. My classmates from different countries taught me to listen, question my assumptions, and see beyond my own perspective.

I will tell a story, a story of Bhutan that I am very much part of. Perhaps you and I can contextualise it more to Bhutan’s journey than my regurgitating of the standard and established approach of retelling the narrative would otherwise do. In the late 1980s, my mother was contributing Zhabto Lemi (voluntary labour contribution) in Mongar to construct a school in her village where she would later send her eldest child. Around the same time, Honourable Deborah Keith was working in Paro to transform and improve Bhutan’s agriculture sector. My mother must not have met my father yet at that point in time.    

Getting a scholarship to study at Cambridge in 2023 came with a very neat idea of what the experience would be. It was not merely a reward, but also came with a quiet pressure to excel, make the most of it and especially, to prove that the scholarship committee had not made a mistake. It was also my first time studying outside Bhutan, which made the experience feel even larger than the scholarship itself. It was beyond something I could’ve ever afforded on my own. 

What are we here for? It’s a question we all come back to from time to time – when there’s a gap in the pressures of ‘everyday’.

It’s a big one – especially if you think that you are only on this earth but once. It’s relevant – in a slightly different way – even if you may be back again (and again). But we can save the very serious philosophical discussions to another day.