30/05/2026

SATURDAY | MAY 30, 2026

18

Nobody warns you about 39

B Y 39, your body becomes a WhatsApp family group. Everything pings. Your knees crack when you stand up, your back sends passive-aggressive reminders after sleeping wrong, your hormones behave like they are contesting in an election – chaotic, dramatic and impossible to reason with. Even your stomach has standards now. At 25, I could survive on instant noodles, iced coffee and pure delusion. At 39, dairy is a calculated risk. One wrong bite and my body responds like I have committed a personal betrayal. And yet, strangely, this is also the age where life itself starts getting louder. Not clearer – louder. Because 39 sits in a strange middle place. You are no longer young enough to believe you are invincible but not old enough to stop pretending you may still “get it together” soon. This is the age where your children are growing up while your parents are growing old, at exactly the same time. In the morning, I remind my son not to leave wet towels on the bed. By afternoon, I am reminding my mother to take her medication. Somewhere in between, I forget why I opened the fridge. Motherhood at this stage feels less like parenting and more like running HIGHER education today stands at a crossroads unlike any in living memory, buffeted by disruptions that arrive not gradually, as in past technological shifts, but with breathtaking speed and scope. The arrival of generative artificial intelligence – tools that can draft essays and solve complex problems or even mimic human creativity – has upended long-held assumptions about teaching, learning and assessment almost overnight. What began as a frantic scramble to detect cheating has evolved into a broader reckoning: universities must now decide whether to resist these tools, ban them outright or embrace them as partners in education. Yet, the evidence points clearly to the latter path, for generative AI is not a passing fad but a fundamental reconfiguration of knowledge work itself. Where does the sector stand in late 2025? Initial panic over academic integrity has given way to cautious experimentation. Many institutions have moved beyond outright prohibition, issuing guidelines that permit supervised use while wrestling with ethical dilemmas and uneven faculty preparedness. Surveys reveal a patchwork reality. Some campuses integrate AI into curricula through pilot programmes and updated assessments while others cling to traditional methods, fearing loss of rigour. Students, meanwhile, adopt these tools enthusiastically and often covertly, viewing them as essential aids in an overwhelming academic landscape.

editor says, “I need to talk to you”, as if I have done something wrong in the copy. Even health becomes deeply humbling at this age. Medical check- N P O

you love. With laughter in between the fear. With grace for the versions of yourself that did not know better. At 39, I no longer want a perfect life. I want a meaningful one. A life where my children remember feeling safe with me. A life where my writing made somebody feel seen. A life where I laughed loudly, loved deeply and did not spend every year waiting to become someone else. Realising the point of life was never to stay young; it was to stay alive – even when your knees crack, your metabolism betrays you and the world feels frightening and fast. To still find joy in hot tea, noisy children, unfinished conversations and ordinary days. To understand that growing older is a privilege denied to many. Perhaps the real sign of adulthood is this: You stop asking whether you have become successful and start asking whether you have become kind. So, yes, I am 39, terrified, grateful and slightly bloated but still here – still laughing, still Pottu on Point. And this Sunday, I turn 40 a little more knowingly. Happy birthday to me. Hashini Kavishtri Kannan is the assistant news editor at theSun. Comments: letters@thesundaily.com

an underfunded government agency. Someone always needs something. One child is hungry even though they just ate. Another is emotionally devastated

That is the terrifying thing about ageing – not wrinkles, not grey hair and not suddenly making sound effects every time you sit down. It is love. Because once you deeply love people, you become aware of time in the most painful way possible. You realise nothing stays. Not youth, not energy. Not health. Not parents. Not even versions of yourself. And maybe that is why people become softer as they age – or stranger. Sometimes both. Because life eventually humbles everybody. The ambitious girl becomes a tired mother reheating coffee three times. The strong woman learns strength is not loud. The independent person discovers vulnerability anyway. And somewhere along the way, you stop chasing perfection because survival itself becomes sacred. So here I am. Thirty-nine. A little softer around the waist and significantly less tolerant of nonsense. Emotionally held together by caffeine, sarcasm and calendar reminders. Still anxious. Still healing. Still Googling symptoms I should probably ignore. But also wiser in ways younger me could never understand. Because ageing is not really about losing youth; it is about losing illusion. You begin to see that life was never meant to be conquered; only lived. Messily, loudly and imperfectly with people

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because I gave her the wrong chicken part in the chicken rice – a crisis apparently worthy of a national inquiry. There are school

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ups now feel like exam results day. You walk into clinics bargaining with God over cholesterol readings. Suddenly everyone around you has a health T

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forms, sensory meltdowns, missing socks, unfinished homework and at least one person yelling “ Ammmmaaaa !” every seven minutes like it is a legally required alarm system. Meanwhile, I am secretly Googling whether random chest pain means stress, hormones, indigestion or my final destination. Nobody talks enough about how motherhood changes when you start ageing too. When you are younger, exhaustion feels temporary. By 39, exhaustion has moved in permanently and contributes nothing to rent. And career? That is another hilarious scam adulthood sold us. When I was younger, I imagined 39-year-olds as composed women who drank green juice, owned matching storage containers and understood investment portfolios. Instead, I still panic every time my S H Yet, a profound gap persists between high-level principles (ethics, fairness and humanity) proclaimed by administrators and the practical scaffolding that faculty and students desperately need to use AI effectively and responsibly. The disruptions extend far beyond campus walls. Public confidence in the value of a college degree is eroding, accelerated by soaring costs, demographic declines and now the perception that AI can replicate or even surpass much of what universities have traditionally provided. Employers, once reliable champions of higher education, increasingly question whether graduates arrive equipped for a world where generative AI is reshaping every profession. Businesses are racing to deploy these technologies at an accelerating pace, yet report acute shortages of workers who can prompt effectively, interpret outputs critically or integrate AI into complex workflows. The result is a widening mismatch: organisations hungry for AI-literate talent but graduating cohorts whose education often treats these tools as Above all, a holistic approach that treats generative AI not as a bolt-on gadget but as a core element of human capability development. Early childhood teaches foundational skills, primary and secondary schools build upon them and higher education has long served as the bridge to productive adulthood. If universities fail to facilitate AI adoption through faculty training, redesigned curricula, ethical frameworks and authentic threats rather than allies. What are we missing?

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story. has hypertension, someone discovered a slipped disc from sneezing and someone’s metabolism simply resigned without notice. And then there is sleep. At 20, sleep was optional. At 39, sleep is a luxury wellness retreat my children refuse to sponsor. But perhaps ageing itself is not the tragedy we think it is. Maybe the real shock is realising how temporary everything has always been. At 20, life feels endless. At 39, you start understanding time differently. You count moments now. How many more years before your son stops reaching for your hand in public? How many more family dinners before life rearranges everyone? How many ordinary mornings do we actually get before they become memories we ache for? Someone

Purpose beyond panic: Higher education’s AI moment

COMMENT by Diana Abdul Wahab

Public confidence in the value of a college degree is eroding, accelerated by soaring costs, demographic declines and now the perception that AI can replicate or even surpass much of what universities have traditionally provided. – BERNAMAPIC

assessments that reward human judgement alongside machine augmentation, they risk producing graduates who are functionally illiterate in the very tools defining tomorrow’s economy. We face a shortage of investment in instructor development, equitable access to licensed tools and partnerships with industry to align learning outcomes with emerging needs. Most critically, we need a shared vision that views AI as an amplifier of human potential rather than a

transmitters of information, which machines now handle adeptly, but as crucibles for wisdom, ethics and human flourishing. In investing wisely now, we can ensure that the coming disruptions will strengthen rather than shatter the academy’s vital contributions to society. Dr Diana Abdul Wahab is a senior lecturer from the Department of Decision Science, Faculty of Business and Economics, Universiti Malaya. Comments: letters@thesundaily.com

replacement for it. The path forward demands urgency and coherence. Universities must transition for AI integration: training programmes that demystify AI for educators, curricula that teach prompt engineering alongside critical thinking, assessments that value synthesis over rote production. Only then can higher education fulfil its enduring mission, which is to prepare thoughtful, adaptable citizens for a world in flux. Far from rendering universities obsolete, generative AI reaffirms their irreplaceable role – not as mere