Week 1 - Back to Uni Life and Orientation

The first week of university life has passed. Technically it’s the Summer Pre-Program course and orientation. We have 31 freshmen in total that are joining this course.

The last time I spent time as a university student was in 2016. I enrolled in the material engineering program at the time but my curiosity brought me to be engaged in Thai political issues and I had a passion for creating a better learning environment for the next generation.

In the past five years, I also started my gender reassurance journey. Starting from hormone replacement therapy by injecting testosterone every month. I had a mastectomy or top surgery two years after that. The Covid-19 pandemic just had the first worldwide outbreak one month after my top surgery. This is the turning point of my life.

During the pandemic lockdown, I came to learn the importance of sustainability and I noticed I lack certain skills that I know if I have had, my life would be different. Things I would like to obtain more are financial literacy, project management, social impact assessment, design thinking, and the interconnection between problems. Sometimes the solution will come after we truly understand th

e cause of the problems.

And here is when the journey starts. I accepted the challenge of becoming a social entrepreneur who has dreams of making a better world, at least creating a world where I wish I would grow up. But the journey has only just begun and there are so many stuff and skills and need to acquire before I become a successful famous businessman, hopefully.

I need to unlearn in order to relearn things in the new eyes of wonder and curiosity. It’s a good thing the thing I do best is ‘learning’. I really enjoy

all kinds of learning method that stimulates my brain. I also have life experiences, and people I met in life that I could connect gaps between the dots. I need to keep track of what people need and want along with what materials and resources they have. My learning style is to integrate new information with the knowledge I have and think and reflect on them with a friend or just writing them like a blog is very helpful for my learning.

These are the topics that we learned in the first week:

- Changemaker, What's there to Change? - AJ Dipendra

- Social Innovation & Prototype - AJ Chris

- Global Issues, Local Solutions - AJ Matthew

- Technology for Good - AJ Yonnik

- The Impact of Social Enterprise - AJ Istvan

- Age of Complexity - AJ Stefan

The important key learning for me this first week is the importance of Partnership. Social Enterprises alone cannot save the world or solve all the world’s problems. We need as much collaboration as much as possible from all sectors such as the government, the NGOs and NPOs, the civil society, the ministry, the education curriculum, the media, the law enforcers, the religion, the agriculture, and livestock sectors, etc. I’ve noticed that there are much more beneficiaries in the world’s situation.

I want to be a key player and lead change in society. I’m grateful to be here with the high energy and excitement of a new status as a student again. I never thought I would come back and join the university but GSSE is the perfect program for grooming my next decades in life.

One of my dream jobs is to be a professor or teacher of some sort. So I’m quite on track with people accepting me more as an educator than when I was a Uni dropout. Or at least that’s the thought that was holding me down all these years. I had a lot of social anxiety I need to deal with. At least rejoining university is like healing my pathway by creating new memories of student life.

I somehow always surround myself with things I want to focus on and build skills on. I am so thankful and grateful to be GSSE cohort 9 and TU 88. It’s one of the greatest opportunities I received and I will make the best out of my 4 years here. I want to change the world. The next question would be; who do I want to see myself be? The option is still open and I will know when I listen to my heart.

#gssecohort9 #schoolofglobalstudies #perrysjourney #thammasatuniversity