The Day My HSE Hoodie Became an Ambassador
 - Tooba Masood.jpg "The Day My HSE Hoodie Became an Ambassador")
Dubai airport in 3 A.M. is a planet by itself. Neon lights, rolling baggage, dozy parents watching towers of shopping bags, the unchanging scent of coffee and perfume. Flights to everywhere are shown and vanished on this huge screen: London, Sydney, Karachi, and Seoul. There in the midst of it all, I was nothing but a small and tired HSE student in a large hoodie, walking between my Moscow gate and my Islamabad gate half way between my university life and my family life.
I did not expect that something magic will take place. I had actually hoped to see my boarding gate... and perhaps some bestial food.
Rather, my hoodie initiated a discussion on my part.
- "Excuse me... HSE?"
I was waiting in a queue to a cafe, practicing my questions that I usually ask in airports in English:
- "Large or small? With sugar? Does it have any vegetarian food?"
Just then I heard a voice behind me, and it said, rather hesitatingly:
- "Excuse me... HSE?"
I go panicked wondering that I had dropped some unknown document called HSE. Then I realized that he was indicating my chest - at the big letters on my hoodie: HSE UNIVERSITY.
It will produce, said I, in a sort of an enthusiastic way.
- "I study there."
His face lit up.
- "Really? You are of Higher School of Economics in Moscow?
I straightened up a little. I am pursuing my Master degree there. He smiled and nodded it was like he was being told something meaningful, and not some chatter at a coffee stand at three in the morning.
- "I'm from Turkey," he said. My major is Business at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul.
That name rang a bell. Boğaziçi is not the exception as it is one of those universities that are featured in rankings, in articles, in discussions related to the best universities. This was no longer just some small talk. It was as though two campuses were passing by each other.
We continued to march in the procession and we were officially at the coffee machine stage of academic networking in our lives.
HSE is a highly prestigious organization in Turkey. What surprised me was not the fact that he was able to recognise the letters on my hoodie. It was how he recognized them.
I inquired, "So, what is it you know about HSE?
He didn't pause to think.
HSE is very prestigious in Turkey, he said, like saying that the sky is blue. One of our best Business professors attended it. He never ends up lecturing about HSE. At this point, the background noise at the airport was mixed with tunes as background music. Flights were loading, kids were screaming, announcements were being made over the ceiling, and here I was in Dubai, in the heart of it, being told by some Turkish student about how well-respected my university is in his home country. The image I was having changed. Up to that point, HSE was a highly localized experience: freezing mornings in Moscow, rides on the metro, the corridors, Google Classroom, spending the evenings in the dorm. I could relate HSE to people surrounding me, running in between buildings, consuming numerous cups of tea during exams. Now, abruptly, HSE was somewhere, too, in another place, in lecture-halls in Istanbul, in the pages of the biography of a professor who once passed the same corridors as I do to-day.
Moscow, Istanbul, Islamabad - All in one Hoodie.
When we came to the head of the queue, we were talking about a Moscow, an Istanbul, and an Islamabad that was linked through coffee and an HSE logo.
He informed me that his professor is also an alumnus of HSE and mentioned the university a lot:
- how strictly the programmes were,
- how sound were the economics and business departments,
- how global the environment was.
You see it is like he changed his life when he was in HSE, the Turkish student said. So, when I noticed your hoodie I thought, Wow, some one of them.
I laughed, I was to a small degree coy, a minute degree proud.
In my case, HSE was continuing to transform my life. Being an international Master, I always feel that I am in between: I am between languages, between cultures, I am either a student or an employee of future. The process is sometimes more of a storm than of a change.
The mention of HSE in another region of the globe by a stranger caused me to understand something so basic, so strong: as long as I study there, HSE is also slowly shaping its own narrative within me, as well as within other people, in other places.
We got our coffees and proceeded to a table, as any other friends that had not just met five minutes ago over a hoodie.
Airports Are Passed through - and for Reputation qualifications.
Wearing a hoodie of your university in a foreign airport will give you a good idea of what it would appear like on the outside. Airports are zones of in-between: time zones and roles and versions of yourself. In Moscow, I'm an HSE student. I am a daughter and a friend and a relative in Islamabad. Getting to Dubai airport, I am not anything, and not anything at the same time, just a person with a boarding pass. However, on this night I too was something different: one who had become an accidental ambassador.
In the middle of our discussion, I observed how his eyes would gleam at any point when he was talking about his professor. As students, we hardly get the picture of how our universities are intertwined. We are in lectures without necessarily knowing where our professors studied or where they worked previously, the conferences they attend. However, such intellectual travels establish invisible bridges.
There is a professor in Istanbul who narrates about HSE. In Moscow a professor talks somewhere, of Boğaziçi. Their students listen. Next two of those students bump into each other in Dubai at 3 a.m and immediately have something to discuss.
It was at that point that I realized that rankings and official websites are not the only way to build up the reputation of a university. They are made by individuals: by alumni who reminisce fondly about their time, by students who put on their hoodies during commuting and respond to questions posed by passing people.
- "You must be proud"
We were of different numbers at the gate, and similar at boarding, so we sat in one place, and saw the screen go round between boarding soon and last call. He questioned me on what I study at HSE and I explained to him about my Master programme, my courses and my plans. I said that HSE could be very stressful, the working conditions, the deadlines, and the fact that you are always attempting a little harder. He nodded in understanding. "It's the same for us," he said. But of course, in case HSE is as good as our professor makes it sound, you must be proud.
I paused. It is not the fact that I was not proud earlier. Though, student life does not always have time to be proud. One has group projects to get through, deadlines to meet, verbs to conjugate in Russian, to eat a sandwich at weird times. The overwhelming feeling is merely: I hope I am okay most days. It was a different thing to hear some stranger talking about you, and telling you that you must be proud, when it was not in either of our universities.It was the first time I looked at my hoodie and I did not only think of an idea I study there but I have something to take care of when I put it on.
A Brief Farewell in Two Dimensions.
Upon their eventual announcement of his departure to Istanbul, we all rose in support, taking our bag packs and half-eaten meals. With airports, goodbyes are quite simple: you do not have to tell me why you are leaving, the board does it on your behalf. It was pleasant to meet you, he said, shaking his hand.
- "You too," I replied. Remind your professor there is another HSE student out there who is happy.
He laughed. Maybe someday we will meet once again, in some kind of conference, not in a cafe of the airport.
- "Deal," I said.
Then he was heading towards his gate to Istanbul, and I towards mine to Islamabad, both of us faded into the depths of the impersonal mass of travelers. But I was less an anonymous person.
What That Hoodie Means to me now.
When the plane between Dubai and Islamabad was flying, later, I continued to think of the conversation and when everyone was supposed to be asleep.
I thought about:
- My instructors in Moscow, some of whom are likely to be those who studied abroad.
- His teacher at Istanbul, a former student at HSE.
- All those unknown individuals whose academic careers move quietly across boundaries and establish these invisible reputational continental lines amongst universities.
At home in my family, when people would pose the question: "How is your university in Moscow?" I would say the standard stuff: about the cold, the metro, the variety, the workload.
Actually, I encountered a man in Airport, Dubai. One of the most superior universities in Turkey. He immediately recognized my hoodie. His professor studied at HSE. According to him, HSE is ranked highly prestigious there. As an international student, such an accident with the airports turned into a silent affirmation to me: I am not getting credits and grades. My scope of things is greater than I can view through library window or the dorm kitchen.
An Advice to freshmen: Wear Your University.
Any moral of this story is, all too easy:
- Wear your university.
- Put it on your fanatic, on your laptop badge, on your backpack. Not because it will be advertised, but because it would get connected.
You really do not know who may know it:
- A future colleague that has studied under your professor.
- A friend of yours had an exchange semester in your faculty.
Even a stranger in an airplane who will be able to see your college through the eyes of other nation.
I believed that I was simply doing a plane change that night in Dubai.
There was in reality still another thing that changed.
My HSE hoodie ceased being an item of mundane warm-up clothing and became a symbol - of the career trajectories it traverses, of the fame that follows us even more than we do, and of the silent boasting that we belong to a university whose name can cause a stranger in a foreign land to say:
"Oh, HSE? I know it. You must be proud."
Shared by
Tuba Masood
