This was going to originally be put in my university's student magazine. I figure it would be more appropriate to be posted here instead.
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A Matter of Growth

2 years. 730 days, then it will all be over with. Yup, college will be done with, you would get your bachelor, and you'll be off with your well-deserved white coat as another success story. If I was a first year med student, I would be over the wall happy. But I am a 5^th year student now, and I couldn't have been less impressed. I hope I am not the only one who feels this way, but I will talk and assume I am not the only one; otherwise this wouldn't go to print. So there, I'll say it out loud. This college has been something of a burden to me. No, the burden of studying hours upon hours, but the kind that makes you think back and wonder "is it worth it?" kind of a burden, the kind that would have "Fallen" by Sarah McLachlan play in the background as the perfect soundtrack to that moment in your life.

When I first joined the reign of medicine in Kuwait University, I had a great backbone of friends and family with me. All I was missing is a degree and voila, the supposed picture-perfect person, as they would say. Well, 5 years later, "they" are wrong. This whole thing was realized when one of my once-close friends announced his intentions to get married. I was caught by surprise when I realized that for once, I didn't snicker, in fact, I was genuinely happy for him that he reached that stage in his life. That takes a lot of personal growth. As for me, instead of college being a road junction in personal growth, its asphalt road feels like a dry quicksand that is pulling downward than help us walk forward. I might be singing the old blues of being "knocked down, but when I get up again, you're not gonna keep me down", but I sure hope I mean those words coming out of my mouth.

This college has been great in creating many great graduates who know what they are supposed to do professionally. But I am having doubt in the system when it comes to giving them space for the much-needed personal growth. Instead of the nonstop lectures, it would be nice if we have a some sort of a "reality check", something that would show us the big picture that regardless of all, we are in fact social humans and that the sever of these connections would mean the sever of our existence as such humans, despite the temptations to do so.

A very small group of us have kept it all together somehow, and whoever you are, I gotta hand it to you, you got it really going. As for the state I am in, after a second thought, I really hope I am the only one who feels this way. I wouldn't wish this to my worst enemy.