Matt Lim – Fall 14
In what city or town did you grow up in?
Flushing, New York
Where are you currently living?
Providence, Rhode Island
What was your major?
Asian/Pacific/American Studies + Gender/Sexuality Studies
Why did you choose to study away at NYU Sydney?
NYU Sydney’s coursework perfectly aligned with my academic interests. As an Asian/Pacific/American Studies major, I wanted to explore the lived experiences of Pacific Islanders and the Asian diaspora in Australia. Given that my coursework leaned heavily into the histories of settler colonialism and Indigenous communities, I was also interested in doing a comparative study of the ways settler colonialism operated in both the U.S. and Australia. (Escaping the harsh East coast winter was an incidental bonus.)
How would you describe your experience at NYU Sydney?
Academically, my experience felt locally grounded and perpetually relevant. As a current educator looking back at NYU Sydney, it’s particularly interesting as a model of education that integrated our environments as extended spaces of learning, one that brought me intimately closer to the literature we read or the concepts we discussed in class. This would mean going to the museum and appreciating Aboriginal photography that mocked and critiqued the violent performative aspect of colonial daguerreotypes. This would also mean taking a trip out to Cabramatta and unpacking multiculturalism beyond its liberal discourse of tokenism (especially given the national legacy of exclusionary legislation), while also sinking into my own sense of joy from seeing another Asian diasporic community reflected in the sight of cardboard boxes of pre packaged herbs and Asian snacks pouring out of the grocery stores or from drinking a durian smoothie while looking out into a row of Chinese/Vietnamese storefront signs.
But what truly shaped my experience was the visible amount of love and intention the NYU Sydney team poured into the programming and supports. Their commitment to the relational aspect of their work–always interacting with us in ways that moved beyond our titles of just staff or just students–was remarkably important for helping me build a sense of home. This is what I believe set apart my study away experience from all my friends’. There has never been another team that made me feel more cared for than NYU Sydney’s.
What was your favorite class and why?
I find myself constantly returning to Anna Westbrook’s Creative Writing class. Every now and then, I’ll review her well-curated Powerpoints, knowing that they contain endless funds of knowledge and sources of inspiration, whether it is because I am teaching my own interdisciplinary classes that center stories found in students’ homes, story-objects, and landscapes or because I am trying to give form to the ghosts and disappearances in my own life. The liberty to take a class that focused on imagining and articulating the nuances of our humanity ranks as one of the most beautiful learning opportunities during my time at NYU. This course was an important exposure to the life-affirming force of art, something that I felt my coursework up until that point was lacking.
What was your favorite trip, excursion (Student Life or class related)?
Our overnight trip to Inglewood Farm in Eugowra was, by far, the most memorable trip for me. As a New York native, Sydney’s cityscape felt immediately familiar, another urban landscape that was easy to grow into. The opportunity to briefly leave the built environment and bear witness to Australia’s vastness and sublime beauty was incredible for someone whose idea of nature was the flower pots outside Starbucks. It was a great time making digestive biscuit s’mores while sitting around the campfire, surrounded by horses, nervous sheep, and the most horrific spider I have ever seen in my life (the size of one of those plastic rectangular takeout boxes I would use to pack my lunch everyday), a scene I’m sure all Australians got a kick out of, calmly watching as a hoard of squeamish Americans freaked out over something they played off as quite normal.
Where are you currently working/studying?
I am currently attending Brown University for a Masters in Secondary Teaching in History/Social Studies.
When thinking about your experience at NYU Sydney what stands out to you most?
Two things: the ocean and the food.
I miss being a bus ride away from an infinite stretch of exultation.
And never again will I indulge myself in weekly brunches the way I did back in Sydney. It was a great semester for my belly and my Instagram feed.
How has your experience at NYU Sydney impacted life after college?
Growing up in a low-income household, travel was never accessible to me. Because of this, my time at NYU Sydney marked the beginning of my exploration of what (responsible) travel meant. After I graduated, I lived and worked in Malaysia as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant and what I carried with my from NYU Sydney was the constant, rich, and nuanced process of engaging with a nation’s history, never settling for the absences in its simplistic tellings. The multiple strands of narratives that all my professors at NYU Sydney provided (through short stories, novels, journal articles, films, and art pieces) created a disruptive, complex web of intersecting experiences. During my time in Southeast Asia, my incessant search for these leakages of overlapping histories was an attempt to actively inform myself, move beyond tourist voyeurism, and unsettle the normative narratives that we often take for granted–an imperative I believe all travelers are responsible for taking on as guests of other communities. Engaging in this process that NYU Sydney scaffolded for me made for a more meaningful experience in Australia and all the new homes I’ve inhabited since then.