The Ride Through The Shadows

If your life is usually as uneventful as mine, you will have only nostalgic memories of your freshman year, memories so banal you dare not share with an excited gathering of folks – but oh, you learn this particular lesson only by repeated awkward experiences, when your long-awaited punch line is so drab no one but you know you are done. It means little to everyone but you. That’s the kind of memory I share here with you and with no guarantee it will make you wring a smile off your face.

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Sitting on a clumsy faded leather-coated seat beside the window in our ‘engineering bus', my nostrils filled with smoke from its ignition, final-year students of my department discussing in the row in front of me about all that happens at that level. Very naturally, I listened wide-eyed, their gist was a scary lot for me to handle; the manner of lecturers they have had to face, the courses, the nights, and ‘project’. They also discussed their poor performance in CHE 513. I wrote down that course code in red somewhere in my head.

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The bus kept on moving, time kept flying and what a ride I had to my final year. The whole time does now seem short, but only in retrospect, for in that time I fell in love, I partied, I laughed, I cried, I screamed in my head, I screamed aloud, I was disappointed, I was committed, I sinned, I repented, I was fervent, I sinned yet again, good food, bad food, lectures, holidays and very importantly there were those friends and those events.

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From that shaky leather seat to a wooden chair in GD4 classroom, CHE 513, Separation Processes 3 exams staring at me, all its charm lost on me until I saw the first and compulsory question. At the realisation of my cluelessness I felt defeated. Anyone unfamiliar with this feeling would have to extrapolate sadder down from terrible to begin to imagine what it felt like. Fact was: I got a four-year heads up. In my predicament, I resolved to hate. I hated myself, I hated exams, I hated the course and the lecturer. The hate spread through me like black ink into a beaker of clear water. I almost gave up. It took nothing less than the fear of a spill-over to motivate me.

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By convention, the lessons to be learnt are diligence, discipline, planning, and for me a strong resolution to preclude further occurrence by rigorous self-discipline. In my life, I have come to know that these wonderful characteristics are traits and not mind destination. Traits which I conclude I do not possess. You are reading probably the most I could make with my four-year heads up.

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Somewhere further in time, I will tell this story, perhaps even to an excited gathering, or perchance it will be read by another like me on a clumsy leather seat. It is not the worst thing to make little of a forewarning after giving your personal best and please always forgive yourself and move on. It is true our life is a product of our decisions, but decisions we make from very limited options. There is not always a reward of surprise but I met with one in the final result.
Now did it wring that smile I talked about?