Depression To Apathy To Happiness

Almost a month and a half into this semester and I seem to have finally made that transition from depressed to apathetic to (this week) happy. Grades are pretty good and every two weeks, I get to be lazy (to try to expedite my recovery from the previous two weeks of exams).

Here's what I think has made me happy again. See, last semester, life here was revealed to be incredibly unfair. Injustice seemed to reign unchecked. A professor at a medical school is worse than any substitute teacher you've had in high school? The only hope is to write a bad review of him the next semester, which you gradually realize will only be read by said professor, and not by any administration who might actually change something. In the class that should be the easier of your two difficult ones, you work harder and study in the specific way that you are instructed, and then your grades become worse as a direct result. You feel like you've mastered material (and according to outside practice questions, you have it down), and the result is a worse failure than you've yet had, a huge curve not even bumping you up into the 60's range. Meanwhile, grades are fine, even exceptional, in the classes you (rightly) feared most.

The love of learning was sucked right out of you and replaced with an overwhelming depression that forces its way in any time you think of doing well academically. In a world that quantifies you based on very flawed scoring system, any amount of happiness should really be shocking.

But in walks this semester. Class you're repeating is the same thing. There's no difference except a resentment towards that one professor whose questions caused your failure. Not a conscious, bitter resentment, but the kind that comes from the feeling of betrayal that can't help but linger when you obey the advice of someone who's supposed to know and it backfires in a most awful way.

After that class, though, is the new class, the class you've been looking forward to because of your previous experience in the clinic. That's right, it's neuroscience, and the head professor for the class is the best you've had thus far, for any class in your academic career. Even aside from perks like how he does not want you to preread (which is standard for any and every other class) and how he frequently lets class out early. Even aside from these things, he genuinely gets excited to teach and to have you join with him in the joy of learning, something that every other professor seems determined to drive out of us. We hang on his every word and he is sensitive to us as well. Unlike other professors, he goes over the test with you and tells you his impression of your weak spots (he pointed out that I was weaker in the later material, which is usually true because I review in chronological order, usually cramming by the time I reach the last lectures).

So now I have a class that I look forward to. It's not a matter of trying to force myself to look forward to it, either. I genuinely look forward to that class every day. Of course, another, far worse professor teaches during alternative blocks, so that is the flaw in the class.

Still, the joy of learning has returned, and that, coupled with good grades, is making this semester into a far more sober one. Granted, I drink wine every night now and am almost finished with one bottle of fancy rum and the vodka is 2/3 gone, but still, significantly more sober.