The late bloomer: A Jill of all trades, master of none

 Perhaps all those earlier years, the cooking, sewing, creating, reading, raising children, serving, listening, observing, succeeding, failing, beginning again, were not detours at all.

From the Tengku Ampuan of Pahang, Tunku Azizah Aminah Maimunah Iskandariah

For most of my life, I have described myself, rather cheerfully, as a Jill of all trades and master of none.

I have tried my hand at almost everything.

I cook. I sew. I embroider. I design. I garden. I collect. I write. I make things. I take things apart and put them together again. I become fascinated by something, pursue it with enormous enthusiasm, and before long, another curiosity comes knocking at the door.

My hands have never been very good at keeping still, and neither, I suspect, has my mind.

But there was always one thing I never really thought of myself as being.

A scholar.

That belonged to another world: to academics, professors, historians and people who seemed to have known from a very young age exactly what they wanted to study and what they wanted to become.

I was already 64 when I returned seriously to academic life.

At an age when one is perhaps expected to slow down, I did precisely the opposite.

I went back to school.

And somewhere between lectures, books, manuscripts, footnotes and many very late nights, something quite unexpected happened.

I fell in love with learning.

Not with examinations. Not with grades. Not even with the idea of obtaining a degree.

I fell in love with the chase.

One question led to another. One footnote opened another door. A sentence written hundreds of years ago could keep me awake at night. I began looking at old manuscripts and wondering who had held them, who had written them, why certain words had been chosen, and what they might tell us that history had forgotten.

Then I met the Hukum Kanun Pahang.

Or perhaps, more accurately, I met it again.

It had been there all along. But for the first time, I began to see it not merely as an old manuscript belonging to Pahang, but as a voice from another age.

And I began asking questions.

Too many questions, according to some people around me.

One discovery became another. Melaka led me to Pahang. Pahang led me to Sultan Abdul Ghaffar Muhyiddin Shah. The laws led me to the sea. The sea led me to sovereignty. And somewhere along the way, the thesis I thought I was going to write began refusing to become the thesis I had planned.

That was perhaps my first real lesson as a student.

Do not tell history what you want it to say.

Listen to what the evidence is trying to tell you.

So I followed it.

I followed it through manuscripts and histories, through laws and royal genealogies, through ports and rivers, through Melaka and Pahang, sometimes with excitement, sometimes with frustration, and occasionally with tears.

And on July 27, at the age of 65, I submitted my Master’s thesis:

The Hukum Kanun Pahang: A Sovereign Malay-Islamic Constitution.

A few weeks later, I received my examination results.

The average mark from the two examiners was 91%.

My internal examiner recommended the thesis for acceptance without any modifications or amendments in content, while my external examiner required only very minor corrections.

I read the reports.

And then I cried.

I cried, and I screamed.

Not very scholarly behaviour, perhaps, but after months of work, doubt, discovery, late nights and wondering whether I had understood the manuscript correctly, I could not help myself.

I had never expected this.

But it was not only the marks, or even the absence of corrections from one examiner and the very minor corrections from the other, that moved me.

Both examiners believed that the work should go beyond the examination room.

My internal examiner wrote that the thesis demonstrated “originality, coherence, and scholarly adequacy” and was therefore “suitable for publication.” Its strength, he observed, lay in reframing the Hukum Kanun Pahang as a sovereign Malay-Islamic constitution, embedding Sharīʿah principles within adat, and highlighting the balance between royal authority and accountability.

He concluded that these contributions provided “a fresh civilisational lens that enriches Malay legal historiography.”

My external examiner similarly recommended that the findings of the thesis should be disseminated through academic publications and conference presentations, to highlight their importance to Malaysia’s inherited constitutional and legal identity.

Those words meant a great deal to me.

I had begun this journey simply wanting to understand an old manuscript that had captured my imagination. I never imagined that at the end of it, my examiners would tell me that what I had discovered deserved to travel beyond my thesis and into the wider academic world.

And then I laughed.

Because after spending most of my life calling myself a Jill of all trades and master of none, at 66 years old I had finally managed to become—

a Master of one.

But perhaps that is not really what this story is about.

It is not about 91%.

It is not even about a Master’s degree.

It is about discovering, rather late in life, that curiosity has no retirement age.

We are very fond of putting ages upon things. There is an age to study, an age to marry, an age to raise children, an age to build a career and, apparently, an age when we should begin quietly withdrawing from new adventures.

I am beginning to think that is nonsense.

Some flowers bloom in spring.

Others take their time.

Perhaps being a late bloomer does not mean that one has arrived late. Perhaps all those earlier years, the cooking, sewing, creating, reading, raising children, serving, listening, observing, succeeding, failing, beginning again, were not detours at all.

Perhaps they were preparation.

Because when I finally entered that library and opened those manuscripts, I did not arrive there only as a student.

I brought a lifetime with me.

And perhaps that was my advantage.

I had spent 66 years learning before I realised that I was a learner.

I had spent a lifetime searching before I discovered what I was searching for.

I had spent years calling myself a Jill of all trades and master of none.

Then, very late in the garden, a little flower appeared.

And I discovered that I had been growing all along.

I am a late bloomer.

And I think I rather like blooming late.

But above all, I know that all knowledge comes from Allah. Whatever I have learned, whatever I have discovered, and whatever little contribution I may have made are only by His permission and grace.

Alhamdulillah.

I thank Allah for giving me the opportunity, the strength and the curiosity to continue learning at this stage of my life. I pray that whatever knowledge He has entrusted to me may be used well, shared generously and become something of benefit to others.

I have just registered for my PhD.

And somewhere in the fifteenth century, Parameswara is waiting for me. -FMT

P/S: My husband insists that I clarify one important point: I met him before I met Hukum Kanun Pahang. So, in the interests of historical accuracy, let the record show that he was my first great discovery.

The Tengku Ampuan of Pahang, Tunku Azizah Aminah Maimunah Iskandariah, holds a master’s degree from the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilisation (ISTAC), International Islamic University Malaysia.