BY MELEK CANSU PETEK (ELIT/III)
petek@ug.bilkent.edu.tr
As I’m writing this article with eyes half-closed, in the middle of the night, it would feel really ironic to write anything that might remotely sound cheerful, so I’m not going to do that. You see, it’s that time of the year again, when all my tasks pile up on top of each other, while I try to breathe underneath them all. The very first article I wrote for this newspaper was entitled “There Is No Such Thing as a Midterm Week” and here I am, after two years, with the exact same sentiments. This is the only school I’ve studied at, so I’m not sure if this is the case for every university, but being a Bilkent student certainly feels challenging at times—actually, almost every day. I know I’m not the only one juggling papers, assignments, presentations and graduate school applications—we all feel the pain.
The problem is, even if we weren’t students, we would probably still be in pain, under the yoke of busyness. Most of my nonstudent friends are struggling with a variety of things, and voicing the infamous “I don’t have enough time for everything” cry. Now take a deep breath and repeat after me: “I’m about to fail everything I’m working on/studying!”
Did that take you by surprise? It’s probably not the most positive sentence I’ve ever written, but I decided to be honest with you, and this is exactly how I feel. Knowing that I have to graduate this year hasn’t had the morale-boosting effect I was hoping to receive. In fact, the pressure of preparing for graduation, and at the same time keeping my GPA up, is so high that I have ended up with a shaky, fragile morale that I constantly have to contend with.
One serious problem I have at this time of the year is going back and forth between questioning my own worth in comparison with how well I do, and reminding myself that even if I don’t measure up to my own standards, I still matter—not in a cheesy, self-applauding way, but more as a person. Considering how many times I’ve written about such topics, you’d be surprised to hear how much I need those reminders. Then again, the only reason I keep writing columns that tell you how much you matter and how you need to hold onto hope is because I constantly fail in believing that. Does that make me a hypocrite?
Then we come to the topic of resting. I wrote before that I was trying to set some time aside so that I could rest and ponder upon the beauty of life. Well, lately I haven’t done much of that, either. As a matter of fact, I feel more inclined toward grunting and biting instead of handing out rainbows and unicorns. Sure, there are beautiful things in life, but let’s be honest, life gives you more reasons to think that it sucks, and there is not much you can do to change that.
Now, what to do? I sincerely have no idea. My intangible self-confidence was thrown out of the window a long time ago, if it ever existed. “I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread,” but I don’t even have the ring of power. (If Peter Jackson hadn’t done such a bad job with the Hobbit movies, they could have cheered me up a bit at least; now they make me even more angry.) All right, folks, I’m giving you the only solution I have to date: Deal with it. In more vulgar terms, suck it up and do whatever you’re supposed to do. Apparently, there is a milder phrase that means more or less the same thing, if that’s what you’d prefer—face the music. Whichever you choose, the message remains: stop complaining, sulking, grunting, biting, and start working. Now I’m off to write some papers!
P.S.: Maya Angelou said, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” This rings true when I think of Prof. Talât Halman and the loss to the Bilkent community upon his passing. His achievements and academic successes are absolutely incredible, and there are very few academicians in Turkey who can claim to have done more, but there is one thing that set him apart for everyone who had the chance of running into him: his kindness. That’s what my friends and I dwelt on after hearing the sad news. He was by far one of the kindest, sweetest and humblest people we have had the privilege of meeting, and he will be missed dearly.