From studying Foundation in Science to graduating with a Bachelor of Science (Hons) in Psychology at IMU University, Danish Ashraf’s journey was anything but predictable. Recipient of the Tun Zahir Merit Award, he reflects on embracing uncertainty, stepping outside his comfort zone through research, leadership, volunteering, and public speaking, and discovering that the most meaningful growth often comes from opportunities he never planned for.

If you’re reading this, my title probably did its job, it convinced you to spare a few moments of your time and hear my story. I’ll try my best not to disappoint you.

My name is Danish Ashraf, a Bachelor of Science (Hons) in Psychology graduate from IMU University and the recipient of the Tun Zahir Merit Award for the School of Psychology and Social Sciences.

I should probably start by saying that I am by no means an expert in this game we call “life”, nor am I able to give advice to anyone.

My journey is still very much “a work in progress”, and I’m certain I still have a lot more to learn.

However, I do hope that by sharing my experiences here, something in my story might resonate with someone out there who is currently navigating their own uncertainty.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been fascinated by how the human body works, which naturally pushed me towards biology and chemistry during my early academic years. That interest led me into the Foundation in Science programme at IMU University, where I genuinely thought I had everything figured out. But boy was I wrong.

Over time, my interests began to shift in ways I never expected. I found myself asking deeper questions about why people act the way they do, why wars happen, how inequalities form. Eventually, I took a psychology elective more out of curiosity than anything else, without realizing that it would slowly change the direction I was heading in.

It was only towards the end of my foundation programme that uncertainty started to set in. For the first time, I genuinely didn’t know what I wanted to pursue next. During that time, I came across the role of a clinical psychologist and I was hooked. A career that felt like a combination of everything I was interested in, a bit of investigative thinking, interpreting behaviour and symptoms, and working within a healthcare setting. It was the first time a career path felt both intellectually and personally meaningful. So, with guns blazing I decided to continue my degree in psychology at IMU, even though, if I’m honest, I wasn’t fully sure what I was stepping into.

Indeed, psychology hit me very differently from what I expected. I walked in thinking it would be somewhat like science subjects I was used to, more structured, logical, maybe even a bit formula-based. Instead, I got hit with essays, readings, research papers, and a completely different lens of thinking.

On top of that, I was in a new environment with people I didn’t really know, and I’ve never been someone who opens up easily. For a while, everything felt like it was piling up academically, socially, mentally. I genuinely wondered if I had made the wrong choice.

But then something changed around the end of my first semester. Slowly, I started adjusting. Not in a cliche “I’m doing great now” way, but more like I just started figuring things out at a pace I was comfortable with. I became more open to taking on things even when I didn’t feel ready, and more comfortable with being a little uncomfortable.

One of the first big things I threw myself into was becoming a research assistant, even though I had zero confidence in my ability to do it properly. I was bad at it at first, not going to lie, but I stuck to it. And that somehow became a pattern, doing things before I felt ready while learning through it instead of waiting for a “right moment”.

As I moved through my degree, I kept finding myself in situations that I would have previously run away from.

A main highlight was becoming an emcee for 3 major psychology events.

Let me tell you something here, public speaking was a skill I genuinely struggled with, and of course I never imagined myself willingly stepping in front of an audience. But I did it anyway. I still remember the first time I stood on stage nervous, overthinking, and extremely aware of every mistake I could possibly make. But once I started, it wasn’t as bad as I thought. In fact, it went way better than expected.

That experience stayed with me because it made something very clear, confidence doesn’t always come before action. It always comes from showing up and doing things even when you’re scared.

Beyond that, IMU gave me multiple chances to:

• Take part in volunteering activities like beach clean-ups and outreach programmes,
• Leading workshops, and
• Being involved in various organisational roles behind events.

I also co-created a podcast that eventually reached over 100 listeners, which gave me a completely new view on communication and collaboration. Across all these experiences, one pattern kept resurfacing and it was that I rarely felt ready at the start, but I always threw and grew myself into the role through doing it. Each experience added something different to how I saw myself and what I thought I was capable of.

As I now complete my journey in psychology, I still find myself standing in a void of uncertainty, but it no longer feels frightening as it once was. Something changed in me, it wasn’t really the uncertainty feeling itself, rather my relationship with it.

Looking back, I know none of this would have been possible without the support of my lecturers, classmates, friends, and family. Their encouragement never failed to challenge me to step outside my comfort zone and embrace opportunities I might otherwise have turned away from. For that, I will always be truly grateful.

Life has a funny way of disrupting even the clearest sense of direction, but in hindsight, it was often those unplanned or unforeseen disruptions that led me to the most meaningful experiences. I found myself stepping into discomfort, unfamiliarity, and situations I was not fully ready for, yet still choosing to plough my way through anyway.

I once heard actor Glen Powell say that “no good story happens from things going right”, and perhaps that best describes my journey so far, not one defined by certainty, but by learning to grow through uncertainty itself.