Buffering

 

After a bad exam with a bad question paper, one finds many people whose thoughts resonate with theirs. People get together in groups, counsel each other, slander the University and say sweet words about the Professors who set such papers, and finally the mood lightens as someone cracks a dark joke that makes everyone laugh in spite of themselves. But there are other days when you and everyone around you craves that resonant frequency that is nowhere to be found. Every heart seems to play a different tune and everything combined seems to create a chaotic din that makes the air heavy.

The wait for results at med school is a test of patience. Weeks full of false alarms, fake news, tension, and flashbacks finally lead up to the day of results when people initially don’t want to believe that this time in fact the news is true. As usual, website conveniently crashes. Then begins another long phase of trying, staring at the words “Error” or “Connection timed out” on the screen and trying one’s level best to keep calm. As friends and family call to find out the much-awaited result, or to ask for your help to see theirs, your mind screams, “For God’s sake, let me be! I don’t know!” And then just like that, standing alone at the foot of a statue late at night, one finally sees their result, and for a moment the mind cannot believe that the buffering has ultimately stopped and what the eyes see is in fact the final fruit of their efforts.

Picture courtesy: Mehetab Alam Molla

For some, it is their long-awaited good news, a dream come true, while for some others it is an unexpected delight which hits them like winning a lottery. There are others who cannot meet their expectations, leading them to wonder, “Was that too much to expect?” Finally, there’s another unfortunate group, whose dreams remain out of reach. As some celebrate and some retreat into a lonely corner, people fail to support one another. The mobile phones flood with texts asking “How much?” But after sharing your scores and wishing each other through a statutory “Congratulations” or smiling emojis, conversation stops. Probably because one is too caught up in their own emotions to care, or because there is no right thing to say. The mind grows skeptical as emotions run supreme. Kind words seem like pity and cheers or best wishes seem like occult jealousy. One wonders, did we all really wait all this while for this day?

Unable to find comfort in family or friends, one feels lonely with their feelings, so much so that even two people in the same hostel room remain oceans apart, each dealing with their own emotions. So my fellow medicos, what do we do to support ourselves and others? Probably by not asking leading questions like, “How many honors did you get?” Or by not texting those batchmates we never remember throughout the year, just to ask their scores on the result day. One can also do their bit by not judging all those who did well, however unexpectedly, just to alleviate their own pain, because this author believes that slandering the successful only increases the heart’s despair.

At this point though the question remains, how do we move on? The answers of course vary from person to person, and on their ways of finding comfort. Some find it on getting drunk with friends, while others find it on dreaming about their fathers getting them a pack of chips. One must remember that everything unexpectedly sad that one faces at med school, is probably a preparation for this morbid profession which can turn gruesome deaths into casual dinner table conversations.

Lastly, these are the days when we must remember a famous Taylor Swift song which goes as: “Time turns flames to embers, you’ll have new Septembers, everyone of us has messed up too. Lives change like a weather, I hope you remember, today is never too late to be brand new.”