The bell ringing brings the sounds of doom, luring the kids into each classroom like a moth to a flame. In case you didn’t hear it, they have the people to remind you of the fact that you are missing out on being the academic powerhouse they want you to be molded into. Some people are malleable in the way of their life, like clay, ready to be molded and shaped into what they are told to be. Then you have the people who stand out in the empty hallways, waiting to be herded and ushered into the following lecture, their uniqueness lost in the shuffle of conformity.
For these people, it is more like a rock stuck in a stream, ready to be either rolled down the path they need to be on or shattered and changed into someone completely new. People have their own skills, whether they admit to them or choose not to showcase them– like flesh disguises. If they slip up and show these skills, they know they will be pushed and prodded to use them; some people just don’t want to be molded into the shape that others want them to be.
School is a mush of ideas and not for everyone, but I digress into the subject at hand– Science. If you want to know about how the organisms work, that’s up to you, but if you don’t, the system shoves new experiences at you while dangling credits like bait.
With school, they push you to try “new things,” so they make you use your required credits to pay for freedom and your safe exit out of the confines of the school system. If you don’t, you get rolled over as the kid who’s an outcast, who doesn’t want to try to make their own path in this world. So you have to accept your fate like the prey of a snake. You get choked and struggle until you get faced with one of your two options: accept your fate and burn out like a phoenix, or emerge stronger as the one who survived.
Science isn’t my comfort zone; it’s a jacket I have to wear, even if it’s tight. When you take on a challenge, you have to make sure that you can complete it and climb the mountain that is your life. If there was a teacher who could ignite a flicker of motivation in me, it would be Mr. Culligan with his bear of a college bio class. Even when the material is unforgiving, it doesn’t mean he has to be. At the end of the dark tunnel is a pottery barn with a warm kiln, allowing me to mold myself into what I am meant to be.
Confidence is a double-edged sword. Like with my lab mate in the color lab. He had an unshakeable belief in his observations, utterly oblivious to his colorblindness. That’s the poison of confidence, where you genuinely believe yourself when you know that your truth is washed out by the circumstances that are thrown at you. True confidence, though? Making a presentation five minutes before you present, and still getting people to listen when you are oblivious to what you are talking about.
In life, I live on the razor’s edge because the thrill of the unknown keeps me alive. If I attempt to prepare anything, I stutter. I forget. I stumble, but when pushed, I allow myself to make the razor to the other side. It takes time to learn, experience is the only way to learn. Put on the spot, and forced to make the truth your own. But without the preparation of this skill, it leaves you stuck with the truth of procrastination. As Hunter S. Thompson said in “The Proud Highway,” “A man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.”
In college biology, survival is a relentless challenge. Since it’s a class that starts in the morning, lectures make you feel like a stalker hiding in the bushes, writing down every little thing you see, hoping you don’t get caught watching from the shadows. With it being an unforgiving class, it pushes you into the night with questions and more things to take in, until your book is filled and you have to come out of hiding and hope for the best. Once again, the idea of Confidence is pushed– Can I or can I not is the new question? Am I right, or did I just ruin my whole experiment? If you make it your own and push through, then your truth is all in what you find and write down, hoping it’s convincing.
Living dangerously with this class is like navigating a minefield without a map or a plan. There’s a chance you might survive, but the truth is that you are now stuck with your actions, and there’s no turning back…
