A SIGH OF RELIEF?



At the car park after wrapping things up

"Exams are over, I feel light". Those were my paraphrased words a week ago after I had finished with my research presentation and which basically drew the curtains of my post grad training. At the beginning of this endeavor, I alluded in a blog post then that "learning never ends". This is true as being a student of health science means that one has to keep abreast of an ever evolving discipline. However, there is a sigh of relief at the moment, one that is a let-out steam and which indicates that some feat has been completed.

The mental alertness that one bears during prolonged study comes at a price. These last few weeks have needed a real shut down from every other thing that entangles the mind. Life as I knew it was relegated to the background of my thoughts. Friends and relatives who did not reach out heard very little from me; my video club membership went inactive; I even timed my meal time to coincide with when my club's game was being aired on TV once! Only the basics and essential became my custom. Perhaps attesting to the fact that only few things really matter in life.

At last, I breathe some other air. The world of assignments, exams, online discussion boards that one must initiate and then contribute to, logbooks (!) and sundry deadlines are over. Not that these are a burden in themselves, considering that they squeeze the juice out of us over time, making us thoroughbred in the career  of our choice. In addition, studying gives us the opportunity to genuinely interact with other people from varying educational and cultural backgrounds. There is also the privilege of gleaning the the fields of knowledge possessed by one's teachers (especially if like me, your thesis supervisor is a national name of the discipline of study). Isaac Newton got it spot-on when he said "if I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants".

One can never really take a pause from learning though. The bulk of what we know is acquired passively. When the students of science from old concluded that the characteristics of living things included adaptation, one could say they meant learning. Just a day after the final exams, I went to the stores to arm myself with some books on parenting (yes, the subject of another blog post...hopefully soon) and a collection of political thriller novels. I guess it means I am alive!

So my sigh of relief is by no means the last of such. Brief as it may, I will revel in it.    

Also, here is to say happy cheers to those colleagues who became friends while we studied together