I went from Odia Medium School to one of the best colleges for my 11th and 12th grade. But those two years at BJB College in Bhubaneswar were probably the toughest in my entire education.
I found it particularly difficult to understand the topics as the medium of communication was English. I was shy which meant I had very few friends to ask for help to gain momentum in the studies. I really struggled with Physics, but I couldn’t find a teacher for extra coaching classes. It went on for more than 6 months and with each passing day, my confidence was heading south.
Finally, I found a teacher who I thought would bring my struggle to a standstill.
There were only two students including me in the coaching class. Sajan Moharana was the other guy who was on the same boat as mine. The teacher would come to teach the subject for 10-15 min and soon, he would leave for his personal work. He would expect us to finish some tasks by the time he returned after an hour or more. Our job was to write/copy the exact information from the engineering physics book into our own notebook. Probably he thought that was a fantastic way to teach physics to someone who was seriously struggling with the subject.
This went on for several months. By the time I decided to put an end to my misery, I had serious doubts about my ability to even score passing marks in the final exam.
After that episode, whenever I recollected about physics, it only gave me pain and regret.
In Oct 2019, I started writing as a hobby. Soon I started enjoying the process and focused mostly on penning down my running experiences. I was still not comfortable looking back at those agonizing two years of college.
Few months into the writing and I found more opportunities to look back on my life. Slowly and steadily, writing improved. What came up as a big revelation to me was that although I wrote in a plain notebook, the spacing between the lines and the font size were perfect as if I was writing in a ruled notebook.
It reminded me of my physics class where I used to spend hours each day just copying the text into my notebook. And for the first time, I didn’t feel any regret about my physics class. Probably the time I spent writing had helped to improve my handwriting.
Writing gave a whole next context to my past and freed me from the agony of 20 years. In fact, the most difficult experience helped to improve my writing and I couldn’t be happier.
So, pick up a pen my friends.
“You can’t change your past, but you can use the past to write a whole new future.” – Sambit Kumar Routray
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