By İrem Naz Duymuş (AMER/III) & Eda Emekoğlu (AMER/III)
nazduymus@ug.bilkent.edu.tr
eda.emekoglu@ug.bilkent.edu.tr
Dear readers, I know I usually give you the details of the month’s bearings and festivities, but I feel like I ought to tell you something or at least share my embarrassment because as they say, if you are able to talk about it, then you ain’t got nothing to worry about. So sit tight because I have a story to tell.
My mid-terms started on the 28th of February with HUM 112. Mind you, I love my class; it is very dear to my heart, and I enjoy every moment I learn something new or comprehend any ounce of information. I really love the satisfaction of highlighting a sentence from my course reader; I think it’s the great happiness of acknowledging that I’ve got it all figured out. I don’t often experience that pure epiphany of knowledge, but when I do, boy do I feel like the most intelligent person ever. Anyways, bear in mind this height of knowledge that I certainly felt (because there is no other logical explanation to this incident) walking to the most crowded exam room ever: V1. I get there and realize that the entire room is filled with students and there is not a visible seat left. Therefore, I walk to the top of the stairs, and with each step I take I feel increasingly frustrated for not finding a seat. When I reach the top of the stairs, I find the single most miserable seat I have ever seen in my life and think to myself: “Is this the seat I will take while acing a test? Is this seat even worthy of my superiority for my HUM 112 exam?” Blinded by this superiority complex, I decide that it is definitely not the worthy seat. Therefore, I glance with my eagle eyes and spot a seat that I think is slightly worthy of me and my very expected process of eating my exam. However, because I knew there were others who might take up that seat, and because I had read Machiavelli and knew it was important to establish authority, I rush down and put down my things. With a shocking control of my right pocket, I realize that I’ve left my phone on the miserable single desk upstairs. Naturally, I get up to get it. That was the moment the trajectory of my life changed because arguably one of the most tragic things then happened to me. Whilst I was climbing the stairs to hell, I came across a friend and raised my hand and then slipped. I started to feel the rapid loss of balance and realized that the situation was getting serious because my body was unable to fight the imbalance. Struggling to stand still, I grabbed the first thing that I saw: the miserable desk. I thought of that desk as a threshold of my balance, dignity and being, but it let me down as I literally fell. With my grasp tight on it, the miserable desk fell with me. As we both hit the ground, I thought to myself: should I have not trusted? Should I never hold onto anything because in the end everything lets me down? Is this punishment for my general cockiness? Unanswered questions, thoughts raining over me as people asked with little smirks and glances, “Are you OK?” Am I? Will I be? I don’t know. What I do know is that now I am a different person. The world, people and my surroundings have changed because I have changed.
Today, know that I am addressing you differently because something inside me has shifted, maybe forever, or maybe until I will be confident enough not to wear a disguise on campus, I am not sure. What is for sure is that you should bear this story in mind when you are thinking that you are going to fail your mid-terms or will fall down with the weight of them because it can’t get any worse. Confidence is great, ambition is admirable, but neither of them will catch you when you slip, especially when mid-terms decide to pile on all at once. Trust me, I checked.
