26/04/2026
From the first bench to the center stage, Tasfia’s ULAB journey is a story of finding her voice, her people, and herself.
There are stories that begin with certainty, and then there are stories like mine—written in fragments first, like a half-finished poem tucked inside a worn notebook. If Virginia Woolf believed a woman needed a room of her own, I began with something far more fragile: a corner of a classroom, a trembling voice, and a mind at war with itself.
I walked into the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh not as someone with a plan, but as someone searching for air. I was lost—battling depression and anxiety, confused and deeply unhappy. In my first semester, I sat alone on the first bench, unsure of who I was becoming.
But university did not leave me there for long.
I found myself stepping into spaces I never thought I belonged in, starting with the ULAB Media Club—where I moved from silence to stage. I performed in front of hundreds, hosted events, danced, and eventually led a flashmob of more than a hundred members. That energy, those people, those shared moments slowly brought me back to life.
Beyond the stage, I immersed myself in everything I could. I volunteered at international events, competed and won on global platforms, and stood in spaces where I once would have frozen in fear. I began writing more deeply—publishing my poems and letting my words exist beyond me. Professors, mentors, and friends became quiet anchors in my becoming, shaping me in ways I am still discovering.
Academically, the journey was just as transformative. My thesis became a world of its own—demanding everything from me and returning a version of myself that was more grounded, more aware. And then came convocation. Standing there with the same people who once taught me how to live again, how to laugh again, how to feel free—it was not just graduation. It was a full-circle moment I will never forget.
After graduation, while stepping into my professional journey with Renata PLC, I found myself returning to the Department of English and Humanities, ULAB—this time as a speaker. Conducting workshops and standing on the DEH orientation stage, I spoke from the other side of the journey—the one I once feared.
My journey has never been perfect. It is messy, human, unfinished. I am still making mistakes, still learning, still becoming. But I am no longer lost.
And somewhere, in the quiet spaces of my memory, remains Syed Manzoorul Islam—a presence that shaped the way I think, read, and understand the world.
I did not become who the world expected me to be. I became someone my younger self could not have imagined. Because in the end, this was never just about success. It was about proving something deeper:
To read.
To write.
To speak up.
To take up space.
Because every time a woman refuses to shrink, the world adjusts.
— Tasfia Ahmed Mohima
DEH, 191
