BY MELEK CANSU PETEK (ELIT/III)
petek@ug.bilkent.edu.tr
For the last couple of months, I’ve been obsessing over Patrick Ness’s books, especially the “Chaos Walking” series. They may not be the best dystopian fiction ever written or have the most original ideas, but I did engross myself in them nonetheless, and became emotionally attached to the characters and to that world, as is my custom. What I love about the characters is that they are very human, and so they do make a lot of mistakes, but they own the consequences of their actions as well. There is one sentence constantly repeated in the books, and one that I wholeheartedly agree with: We are the choices we make.
But although I do side with that idea, I also find it extremely difficult to handle. After all, once you accept that you are the choices you make, the world stops being a mere stage that you act on. Yes, I’m referring to Jaques’s famous speech from “As You Like It”: “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” Now, no offense to our dearest Shakespeare and to the aesthetics of these lines, but I find his idea hard to subscribe to.
If the world is a stage and I happen to be a mere player, that means that I’m “merely” following a script, right? Perhaps it’s not necessarily what Shakespeare meant by those lines, but I think the implication is still there, and once I believe that, it somehow takes the responsibility of choice off my shoulders and makes me into a body whose reason to exist is to fulfill the role she has been given.
Life would be a lot easier if that were so, but I sincerely believe it isn’t the truth. As much as I dislike the idea of making decisions so significant they can turn my whole life upside down, I’m glad that I get to make those decisions, even if it means that I’ll have to own the consequences as well. When I made up my mind to give up molecular biology to study English literature, I had no idea what I was getting into. My last three years as a literature student have been joyful but also quite difficult at times, yet this process has taught me something very important: I can’t start pointing fingers when things get hard and blame it all on other people. My choices, my life.
A crucial decision I’ve been trying to make lately is about graduate schools, and it was incredibly stressful to choose the ones that I will be applying to. I bookmarked hundreds of programs that I might possibly be interested in, and tried to figure out whether I’d stand a chance of getting admitted. I was sleep deprived for many, many days, with a brain reaching ever closer to the boiling point as I kept thinking about schools, programs, professors, tuition, etc. I thought everything would start making more sense once I narrowed the choice down to five schools, and though there was a temporary sense of relief when I got to that point, my nightmares weren’t over yet.
My stress level increased exponentially when I realized that I had to take the GRE in order to even apply to schools in the States; I was paralyzed with fear, as I’d heard many horror stories about the difficulty of the exam. I ended up taking the TOEFL and the GRE in the same week, and realized that it wasn’t the smartest idea—each one is approximately four hours, and that’s a lot of sitting and concentrating, if you’re as fidgety as I am. To make things even worse, you get to see your GRE scores right at the end of the exam—but again, it’s your choice. I used every bit of willpower I had not to click on the button that would cancel my scores, as I was so sure I had failed the exam miserably. Yet, I also knew that I wouldn’t be able to take it again, so I gathered up my courage and said yes, and agreed to see my scores. Before I clicked on that button, though, I constantly repeated to myself: The numbers you’ll see on that screen are not who you are. It was my choice to say that whatever scores I got on those tests, high or low, they would not define who I am and what I’m capable of.
To end this article on a cheerier note, despite all the hellish stress, I did fairly well on both tests, and the test-taking part of the application process is behind me. Now, it’s time to take another step and start running around asking for recommendation letters, filling out forms, writing statement of purpose letters and hoping that a school will be gracious enough to put up with me for two years or so. In other words, the decision making is by no means over for me, and it won’t be over for any of us until we no longer reside in this world, but whatever choice you’re about to make, remember this, please: It’s your life, and your decision, whether it means success or failure—but when/if you “fail,” it doesn’t make you a failure. It simply makes you a human.