The Little Things in Life

Sometimes, when you’re having a rubbish day, you’re late for your lectures and things just aren’t going very well for you, it’s the little things that people do or say that make all the difference to your day…

• After one of my lectures the other day (which I had turned up late for) I went to the toilets to sort out my hijaab. As I was pinning my scarf away another girl walked in. She was in my year and I’d spoken to her at the beginning of my first year (you know that time where you strike up random conversations with anyone in the hope of making a friend….) but since then we hadn’t really talked much. The first thing I noticed about her was her coat…..it was the same as mine. I looked at her through the mirror and her eyes met mine, for a brief moment waves of tension filled the room, just for a brief moment though, that is until both of us burst into a giggle simultaneously. (Just thinking about it now brings a grin to my face!!)

• For our third year projects (similar to a dissertation) we have a project supervisor who as well as being our tutor, kind of guides us through the whole process of carrying out our experiments and writing it up etc. The first meeting I had was as a group, the second was one on one, which I turned up 10 minutes late for….Regardless of that, the meeting went well and we came up with a few ideas of what my project could be based on. After the meeting I went to the library to get some books after which I went to pray my zuhr. After praying I made my way to my lecture, found my friend, sat down, started talking and generally did all the things you do when you get to a lecture. The lecturer arrived a few minutes late (ha!) and began with a few announcements, the first about the essay deadline which had been misprinted, which we now had an extra few months to complete (woohoo!) The second announcement was that somebody in *insert lecturers name* project group has left their train ticket in her office so could they please pick it up after the lecture. Now when that lecturer’s name was mentioned a tiny bell rang somewhere deep down in my mind, why did that name sound so familiar? Then I realised it was my project supervisors name and a second later the lecturer mentioned my name. At first I thought “great I have to trudge over to the other building before I can go home”. However when I got to my project supervisors office and found out that she had to do a bit of detective work in order to find out which lectures I was in so she could pass the message on, my heart warmed…., here’s someone who I’ve only met twice in my life and she went to the trouble of ensuring I got my train ticket back. Ok so she probably could find out what lectures I was in by a few well placed clicks of the mouse but it was the thought that counted!, I mean it would have been far easier to chuck it in the bin….

• You may remember the incident mentioned here, (if you can’t and you don’t want to read my essay here’s a concise summary: a muslim girl (who wears a hijaab) who attends the youth club where I work spat at me…repeatedly). Well after that incident the girl was obviously banned from the club, however the kids are wise to the fact that they’re likely to get banned after they misbehave so they “disappear” for a while. The girl in question was also wise to this and so we didn’t see her after the week the incident took place…until last week when she decided to come back. It was my turn to let the children in, so I was the first face she saw, or she would have if she had made eye contact, but she made a conscious effort to avoid me throughout the whole session. About an hour later she was playing pool with my colleague, it so happened that I walked past her as she was taking her shot. The pool cue ever so slightly brushed me, which caused her to erupt into a stream of apologies each more sincere than the last, which definitely was the last thing I was expecting. It wasn’t as if it has never happened before, the staff are always having to gently warn the kids to watch their cues, even if it does poke us we don’t make much of it as it’s always accidental. I looked into her eyes, and the part of me that likes to see abit of good in everyone, wanted to believe that she was apologising for spitting at me (that and somehow I don’t think she was apologising so much just for barely touching me with the pool cue) , in some ways all of me wants to think that. Not so I can say “ha! I got my apology”, but because I want her to realise what she did was wrong and for her to make a pact with herself, to never spit at anyone ever again, and if that was worth me getting spat at then so be it……