a fork in the road
2003-11-09
The world stirs to greatness but I am here, pacing, memorising; left to the cold ravages of study. I have no choice but to leave the room, retreat to a dark place, and commit those oppressing tablets of stone to memory. Examination time comes to strip me bare again. My consolation: this could be the last time I will ever sit for an exam. This could be the last time I ever study law. This could be the portent of closure. Come this December, I will be graduating from my undergraduate Health Sciences degree. Next year, I will defer my law degree, take up honours, and complete my tenure at university – at least for the time being. And so, assuming I do not go on to finish my law degree after next year, this will be my last exam for the foreseeable future. My last exam: that should be an event worthy of celebration, and yet, it is also an event laced with uncertainty.
When I don my graduation garb next month; when I receive the piece of paper that somehow certifies my efforts over these last three years, I will be that much closer to the transition I have been fearing; a transition I have always feared. I will be that much closer to going into what many people call the ‘real world’: a world of reality, a world not bound by books and flexible timetables and lectures I rarely attend. It will be the world of the 9-5 day, the rat race, the stress management courses and the bureaucracy. Do I want this world? Do I want to sit in front of a computer for eight hours a day, five days a week, clinging to the hope of seeing that glittering horizon that is the weekend as though it is my saviour?
There is little certainty in my mind as to what career I could find with this degree as my pass card. The public health discipline is a noble ideology from which to approach the world, but one requires specialisation and prestige in order to, as they say, ‘get noticed’. I have generalised knowledge and a certain amount of passion. Taking up honours next year may also help me some; give me focus and a CV boost, but without additional specialisation behind me – like epidemiology, anthropology, sociology, or nursing –, it will be more difficult to find a niche, to find direction.
In many ways, I doubt my passion for this discipline. It has grown duller, blunter, dampened by the passing of time, the cynicism of the ‘real world’, and the politics and bureaucracy that bury idealism and the naïve drive to change things under inestimable tons of red tape and futility. With each passing year, I feel more and more akin to Camus’ beloved iconic figure: the rock-pushing Sisyphus. Will I, like Sisyphus, continue on my course in spite of its inherent futility? Will I persist in that existential struggle against ‘absurdity’? Will I reach for what I want, even if in the balance of things, it is meaningless? Do I know what I want? That is the quintessential question.
