When I was studying at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama two summers ago, a thought started from the back, stretched through the middle, and tunnelled its way to the front. After one month, as I was waiting to board the plane back to KL, I found the words to my augury:

Being a student can be, and should be, life-transforming.

In my one month of classes in London, something changed: my learning habits were vastly different compared to my time as an undergraduate. Every day, I arrived ten minutes before class started. I volunteered for everything, from improv story-telling to weird walk-in-a-circle-and-repeat-your-line-again-and-keep-breathing-and-stop-thinking-okay-start-again. I did voice work on my days off. I asked more questions in one month than I did in my three years in university. My feet were callused, charred from dirt and the dance floor.

But I felt larger. Like I had taken my uncharted hands, and mined within me a fresh well of knowledge and engagement. I heard myself whisper something I had never heard before. I love studying. I actually love being a student.

The same thought is running through me here at Columbia. There is a certain passion that is gripping me about life as a student. Take accounting. As I sat through class a few days ago, I caught myself smiling. I actually enjoy accounting. Maybe it’s the lecturer with the ‘New Yawk’ accent, or because of Sunday accounting study group, but I find it thrilling that I am drafting balance sheets and income statements. I’m spending hours of my Saturday on this. On my own accord. Again. Accounting.

It has made me think a lot about my previous time in school. Why didn’t I throw myself into the crucible of a class? Why was I so ambivalent about being a student? Was it the teachers? Was it middle-class privilege? Was it because I had no idea of how my studies would relate to my work? Was I too involved in extra-curricular activities? Was I plain lazy?

I’m not sure. But I’ve become more than a self-proclaimed student of passion. I am a passionate student. That is making all the difference.

Gideon’s Army, a documentary shown in school some Fridays ago, is about the work of public defenders in the USA. These are lawyers who are assigned to defend clients so poor, they cannot afford lawyers of their own.

It’s a job no one wants. These public defenders take constant abuse from loved ones who think they’re defending the guilty. One lawyer recounts how a person she was representing told his fellow inmates that he was going to “murder my lawyer”. Another public defender showed a few coins in the palm of her hand, and plainly explained that it was the end of the month, and she had only five bucks left. She used it to fill gas so she could finish her drive back home.

Any one of them could have joined millions of their peers in sheen offices with oak conference tables. Why take up this job? In a meeting that gathered public defenders from all over the country, the leader of the group gave them this message: Fight the system. You are warriors. Go to war. He says this as a placard behind him reads: If Christ were a lawyer, he’d be a public defender.

They do the job because they see the world in such different ways. In a kid who could go to jail for ten years because he was part of a robbery, one public defender sees a person who’s “so smart”. When he was pardoned for his sins, she stood outside the courtroom, and cried. They speak on behalf of those who have been robbed of their own voice. They stand in place of the accused, and make sure their life story, however tragic, is heard.

They are re-defining the rules of this world. Their lives are nonsense, because it makes no sense. Their purpose cannot be contained by money, promotions or fame.

These are the ones who hunger and thirst for righteousness. They will be filled.