Chapter 104

Now, there’s a group of people who I didn’t mention for a while now that I think I should. It’s the friends I went to Hong Kong with. You may think that since I complained so much about all of this that I should maybe team up with the other Hong Kong exchange people and complain about it together. Unfortunately no. They weren’t in the situation I was in. They didn’t have a replacement to go to their previous sites when they returned to Canada and because of that, they had nowhere close to the amount of missing clinical days I was missing. By my estimate, I think they all must have just missed out on about 3 weeks of clinic throughout this entire ordeal. 

3 weeks was a short time compared to my 7. These 3 weeks were then further reduced by them all working through the Xmas break and working extra days during that time. By extra days, I mean that they worked more than just the 5 days that were mandatory for clerkship. Before you ask, these extra days were something I wasn’t allowed to do even though my replacement wasn’t working every single day and the clinic was open 6 days a week. All of this is to say, my fellow Hong Kong exchangers had very little time left to do by the Winter term’s start unlike me. 

I wasn’t mad at my colleagues. They were benefiting in a way I couldn’t. All of the frustration was just with the coordinators who seemingly chose what compromises to make and what not to make on a whim at my expense. I was definitely one of the people who spoke the worst about all of the coordinators though now that COVID was running its course, I wasn’t the only voice on being disgruntled. Speaking of which, let’s go back to the night of the lockdown. 

The night after the clinic went into lockdown, everyone was kind of on edge. What is going to happen? When are we going to graduate? Why is all of this happening so quickly and without any input from anyone? All these questions filled our class group page. Seeing as how we were all anxious but powerless, I decided to go to the UWB’s favorite spot on campus, the Student Life Center and just dance. 

I had chosen to enjoy the night hanging out with my fellow breakdancers and de-stressing instead of eagerly awaiting a verdict. I had my phone with me so that in case something major did drop, I would know about it. For the most part though, I only half paid attention to the chatter. Like I said, we were powerless. 

The University of Waterloo Breakers club was now just myself and 2 other members. Unlike the thriving scene we had in 2012 when I first entered Waterloo, this now baren. Although I felt like a dinosaur, having been dancing on this same floor on and off for a good 8 years now, I also felt familiar and comfortable with the scene. Usually people just stay for 4 years. I’ve been here for double that time. I danced here when I was scared about my future in undergrad, when I met the girlfriend for the first time, when I got into Optometry school and now again, during a global epidemic. I’ve seen generations of breakdancers and just normal dancers pass me by. It was home for me now. 

One of the three of us had a dream of funding a Jam with our own money this term. It wasn’t such a bad idea. There was no other way to fund it since we barely had classes that made money and in the last term that I did teach, all the money went into paying off older members who did fund a jam or two. I think by our estimate, it would’ve taken around $1,000 to host a jam this term. 

The jam in question? “Ground FX”. A longstanding and cherished event of Waterloo for breakdancing. It was started before I even got to Waterloo, having a legacy of over 10 years now. Though funding it ourselves was kind of iffy on its own, it was kind of a shame if we let the tradition die now. I did think about helping out quite a few times but seeing as how I was out almost $2,500 from a horrible experience in Hong Kong, I was a little light on budget to really contribute. The other thing I had to keep in mind is that I wasn’t sure if I had to pay tuition for the next term ahead to fill in my missing clinical hours. 

That night though, all that talk seemed like ancient history. The on-going debate between the three remaining members of UWB had been decided for us. If the school was shut down, even if we had the budget, we couldn’t host the jam. 

Despite this seemingly abrupt end to a big issue that persisted during the term, the night was pretty ordinary. The three of us talked about some random things and just hung about while dancing reminiscing of the bygone era of UWB. If I had to describe it, I would say it was a night just like any other at the Student Life Center for the breakers. I kind of wanted it that way too. I was never a full time member of UWB and this final send off of just chilling there and doing our own thing seemed appropriate. 

Oh and you did read that right. I said final send off. A part of me knew that this night, very likely, was my last time on the dance floor there and as a member of UWB. I knew this because of just how poorly I was treated by the coordinators in Hong Kong. If history repeats itself, which I suspect it will, I wouldn’t be able to come back here to the dance floor again. Honestly, I had little hope for a favourable outcome for our class. 

When I got home from the session that night, NA came to my room and we decided to just hang out and just talk about how stupid the situation we were in. During our discussion, we got an email. The school had made an official announcement, the clinic was now canceled for the following week, March 14th – 23rd, 2020. 

I’ve seen this before. In Hong Kong, a familiar pattern happened. This was the first message that would eventually lead into closing the school for good. Unlike HK though, this was messier despite no protests. In fact, just the next day, there would be contradictory messages. 

I got up and had breakfast with NA. We started planning the week. I mean, a free week off when we’re about to graduate? That’s a pretty good excuse to explore the area around our campus. There was only one commitment that persisted despite the shutdown of the clinic, it was a class in fourth year where the students would choose a particularly special case they dealt with during any of their rotations and share it with the class. We called it Grand Rounds. To be honest, it wasn’t really particularly hard. A bit of research and some powerpoint and you’re good to go. 

Since this class was just presentations and no clinical work, the class continued in the form of a zoom meeting. None of us knew it at the time but very soon, this was about to become the norm pretty much everywhere. Fortunately for me, I presented my deep dive into a case I had run into back in the Toronto clinic regarding Posner Schlossman Syndrome just the week prior. This meant I didn’t have to learn any of the technological know-hows on how to operate zoom and powerpoint together. 

Anyhow, while NA and I initially started shooting ideas on what to do, we decided to hold off on it until after we did our grocery shopping for the upcoming week. It was a Saturday normally, we had a small routine of doing our grocery shopping that day. While shopping, we got another email. The Optometry school, in their infinite wisdom, had sent an email saying classes were now back on again for the week. And just like that, the school was open again. 

Wow. What a quick turn of events. School is open! Welp, I guess no planning out our following week then. I suppose we’ll just prepare to get back into school. Or so we thought… 

The next day, another email came in. The Waterloo School of Optometry’s faculty, in their unrivaled and unfathomable intellect, bestowed upon us a message saying, “you know what, forget the email yesterday, we’ll just stay closed for the next week.” Wow. Amazing! 

NA and I found this hilarious. The school was unsure what to do and is now chasing its own tail. Our classmates, though, found much less humor in all of this. As I mentioned, our class was 90 students sourced from the entire country of Canada. This meant that there were lots of students from different parts of the country that thought about going home for a week or so. Between all the back and forth the school had done with our announcements, some had booked flights home only to be left to forfeit their plane tickets when news changed around.

For the rest of Sunday, our class group page was filled with chatter. After I read through the countless comments it became clear that it wasn’t just the school that was shut down. All the interns on their external clerkships weren’t allowed into their clinics either. This was happening even for those who were working in small towns where no one has even heard of COVID yet. But still, they couldn’t go to the clinic because of something regarding intern’s insurance. Or at least that was the school told to us. Personally I think the school was just so unsure of what to do they decided to shut it all down to avoid fault in case something went wrong. 

By the time Monday came around, it was clear that the message from Sunday stuck. We were getting a free week off. If you can call it that. NA and I killed time by making food, taking long walks together and going to the gym. During this time, we couldn’t let up because we kind of felt like at the drop of a pin, the situation could change again. We had lost faith in the institution between the indecisions it had. 

One more thing to note was that while this lockdown period was pretty much the perfect time to cram for my board exams and get back on track with the rest of my class, I just couldn’t bring myself to it. I’m not sure I even understand it today but the best way I can explain it is in terms of pseudoscience and mental energy. When you’re unsure of what the world will go through, the anxiety of the unknown sometimes just crushes your spirit for doing anything. For most days, instead of doing anything. I felt like all I wanted to do was lie down and just do nothing. Despite having free time on my hands, I didn’t feel like doing anything.

Whenever I did get motivated for anything, it was always prompted by anger and never productive. By this I mean to say that as the week kept moving along, our class would occasionally get emails from our school in a tone that I was familiar with. That is to say, it would be an email of reassuring words that spoke of very nonreassuring situations and indecisions. Then, I would, out of anger, vent heavily in my journals before I run out of anger and then go back to a state of depressed thought. While I would have loved to channel that energy from rage into something more productive, the conversion simply didn’t take. 

I think what pissed me off the most was that the entire world felt so illogical. What was the point of the update emails when they didn’t say anything? Why send them at all? Why not spend more time working out some way for the students and get back to the clinic and work out all their missing hours? 

The uselessness of the emails pissed me and my classmates off. Our class saw right through what the school was doing. They were doing the bare minimum to not incur legal action. That was it. They were 100% in self preservation mode and on nobody’s side but their own. 

I think the only meaningful thing that happened while our class awaited judgement from our school regarding our fate was that I discovered a good outlet for some darker and more negative states of mind. It was 20th century classical music. If you know about this genre and style of music…you know. It was the era when everything can and will happen. From John Cage and his empty scores to Philip Glass and his strange compositions. The weirdness of the 20th century classical music scratched an itch that I had whenever I felt overwhelming hate or rage build up. What scratched it even better was Ligeti and Shostakovich. I think what drew me to it was just how tormented the sounds felt and how unpredictable and chaotic it all was. It was reminiscent of the start of COVID lockdown in a lot of ways. 

As the week progressed, another announcement came proclaiming that our clinic’s reopening was delayed again. How predictable. To be honest, at that point, I started packing my stuff. Then, sure enough, a short while after that announcement, we got the official announcement for closure. It was all to be shut down for the rest of the term. History had repeated itself. This was now the second term I wouldn’t get to complete completely. 

Anger seeped in pretty much all of my classmates. It felt like we’ve been forced against our will to stall in our careers. All students in the US sites were to return to Canada. All rotations in Canada were suspended completely even if the clinics that the students were situated in were still open. Our entire class, irrespective of being inside Waterloo or out, were now all in limbo. 

I saw that my class had now sunken to my level. They all had clinical hours they couldn’t make up anymore. Graduating on time seemed impossible.