What Went Before

I remember how it started. I had dozed off on my bed, under my all-too-comfortable blanket, surrounded by thick Physics textbooks from which I was supposed to be solving Rotation problems (suckiest Physics topic ever btw). I had slept through the dawn of the year, woken some 40 minutes later, only to realize I had missed the advent of 2010. The arrival of the "most crucial year of my life." The one that would make me or break me. 2010 was to be the proverbial 'it'.

The second thought that popped into my mind was, "FUCK. How am I ever gonna finish Rotation by 4 am now?"

I still remember.

2010 had found me completely disheveled, not only hair-wise, but also life-wise. There were tests at my Pre-Med coaching center almost everyday, and the Boards were fast approaching. I wasn't doing too well on either count. The Boards I just didn't care about. But the worst part was that for my coaching, I knew I could have done extremely well. If only I had just had the inclination to.

My Pre Boards weren't too great, if I remember correctly. Just about decent. The practicals of course, were nothing but cheating and fraudies, especially when it came to Physics. I remember I had the simplest electricity experiment, something about simple diodes and p-n junctions, but me being me, I had no idea what to connect where and how to differentiate between the connections for the red and black wires. I had hurriedly written down the correct observations that I had memorized beforehand from a friend's file and disconnected the apparatus before the examiner came around to check. "Sir, I was in a hurry to move on to the next experiment," accompanied by an innocent face. Worked wonders.

Of course, close to full marks were guaranteed to almost all the students by our internal teachers as far as the practicals were concerned.

Then came the Boards. I went through them somehow and they didn't go as well as I would have wanted them to. But CBSE people are very lenient markers and I ended up with a percentage much higher than I was expecting (91), and though it wasn't a great one or anything, I was more than satisfied.

The entrance exam period seemed to stretch on forever. I was basically tied down until about the middle of June since for Pre-Med kids there are so many different tests to take. Not to mention the fact that I wasn't at all certain about what I wanted to do in life, all of 18 years old, so I took tests for 5 different fields. Most of them were decent but I got a breakthrough with NLUD. I saw the result around the middle of May and since that day I almost stopped studying, even though the subsequent Pre-Meds were supposed to be my main focus. But I was pretty happy with NLUD.

College has passed by in a whoosh. However much we moan about how much college sucks and how we have no freedom, I for one, am pretty happy where I am. Mainly because of the people. The people were the one reason I was completely against MBBS, and it's really paid off. It gives me supreme satisfaction when now at college I'm talking and people around me actually know and relate to whatever the hell it is I happen to be bullshitting about at that moment. All in all, it's been a great semester and I couldn't have asked for better.

So here's wishing goodbye to 2010. It definitely wasn't one of the best years of my life and I'm glad it's over, but it was probably the one that has brought on the most transition and change for me (yet), and I'm just happy that the change was a good one.

Scratch that. An awesome one.

P.S. Happy New Year everyone.

P.P.S. This one's for you, Nidhi Chikkerur. =D