Chapter 114

The KMK, as much as I hailed it to be this glorious piece of text, is not without flaws. The main flaw with it actually stems from their binocular vision and optics review. The binocular vision and optics section of optometry was much more oriented towards physics, unlike the other topics of optometry which mostly focused on biology and chemistry. For some reason, the KMK had noticeably worse instructors for these sections.

I’m not sure how much of it is just because I’m Asian but I never considered myself someone who struggled much with math. Maybe it had something to do with all the years of accounting for how much money I was costing my mom to keep me alive. However it came to be, I found that I liked math and didn’t mind doing it. When the optics section came around and math got involved with optometry, I felt fine. In fact, while in optometry school, optics was one of the only courses I could say I had a really good grasp of the concepts with. This was good because having a good background in optics was beneficial when the KMK weren’t being fruitful with their lectures anymore.

While I was still okay with the content for binocular vision, the online lectures for binocular vision no longer had the same zing as it had with the other chapters. For the most part, I kind of just followed the textbook more than the online lectures. Sadly, this also meant that I lost a lot of the enthusiasm I had during the other lectures.

That wasn’t the only thing however. The other thing? I was reaching my limit. Around day 10, I think my mind was just too full of information. 10 days of no music, no going out, no social media and no distractions from anything. Just cramming and meditating. I had never done anything this extreme before. It was starting to become torture. My mind was telling me that it was starting to feel too monotone. It lacked new stimulation because it had only been fed optometry information and nothing else. I felt like I could feel the urge to pick up my phone and just scroll. It was just so easy. But I didn’t. I had to prove that I could tough this out. This was expected. At some point my mind would start to ask for mercy. On some level, I knew that it was around here that the real test would begin. It was now a true test of endurance. 

Fueled mostly by a desire to prove myself, I stayed true until the first milestone of the journey, finishing the Big-8 textbook. It was then that I allowed myself a bit of breathing room. Having finished the biggest portion of the material, I felt the time to be appropriate for a mini down time. But how to spend it? I decided to just try and journal a bit. This was not really meant to vent anything. In fact, my initial intention was to give myself a bit of a pep talk. However, as it turns out, I had a few more things to talk about. Anyhow, here’s that passage.

Excerpt taken from NBEO session part 1

I’m starting to forget why I’ve made this decision. This is starting to feel hellish. I’m pulling 17 hour cramming sessions 7 days a week with no breaks. I know I planned it that way as a testament of will but even then, I’m not having a great time. I’m not sure I’ll make it to the end of the textbook nor the online modules at this rate of mental decay. Furthermore, what if there’s an issue at the airport? I’ve been occasionally looking up the Edmonton airport and domestic traveling situations among all the COVID shenanigans and it’s stable but what if it all changes? 

I keep coming back to why I am even in this situation. The demons are coming back. Why did I fail so much? If I hadn’t failed so much I would not be in this situation right now. Talk about regret. I thought I was over it all but in moments of extreme self reflection due to lack of stimulation from my scheduling, I find myself going back and thinking about all my regrets again and again. Am I just not cut out for my career? Am I just not good enough? Was my dad right to leave me be? I’m at an age to know that I still long for his approval even though if I were to get it it would be meaningless to me. Why is that? Why am I so desperate to prove myself to my dad and even my mom when I really don’t care about their response? Is it that maybe I do actually care? What the hell?

I’ve been getting lost in these spiraling thoughts for a while now but I have to just brush them all aside. I don’t have time to spiral. Whenever the spirals start to come down on me, I just force myself to push through them and focus on the study material. I knew this would be the case when I started the journey and sure enough, now it’s realized. But damn it is miserable. 

Despite the fact that the light at the end of the tunnel is so close, I feel like the baggage I’m carrying is heavier than ever. The demons in my head and their constant blabbering are starting to become a loud noise. No longer are they just ambient sounds, they’re starting to become deafening. I feel like my brain is going numb. Actually…Everything is going numb. But numb or not, I have to stay true to the course. I can’t back out now. In some ways I feel like the true test of will is just now starting. 

Out of all the demons I’m battling, there is only one new face. This demon carries the fear that what if even after staying the course and doing my best I don’t succeed? It’s a new way to phrase an old issue. Wouldn’t that just be another failure on my conscience? Wouldn’t that prove the opposite point I was trying to make? I mean, sure I have the excuse of only getting 27 days to study for an exam that takes months to cram for but this was all my own doing. Can I handle that? Am I strong enough to stomach another failure? I mean…this time I am truly 100% at fault. This may even be a worse point than just failing on its own. What’s the point of doing something to prove yourself if that thing turns out to undo its initial goal and knock your ego down? 

I hate that I can’t even stay on these thoughts and talk my anxiety down so that it’s not so deafening. That takes too much time and I really don’t have the resources to dwell on it. I have to just power through for now. Just keep going. 

ENTRY END

I recall that I had to cut myself off as to not spiral even when writing that passage. As you can see, I was not doing so well. The only optimism I had came from the fact that since the Big-8 was completed, I only had the Non-Big-8 left to deal with. The topics for the Non-Big-8 were smaller and shorter. They also required less in depth thinking because most questions stemming from these chapters had less weight on the actual examination. While the pressure had eased a bit, the accumulated stress from days on end of cramming still made it difficult to continue. 

I mentioned countless times that I attributed a lot of my self-esteem and self worth to this test and with that last journal entry, you can tell that this narrative had not lost any steam even amidst all the mental torture. I was hellbent on passing this exam. Despite the fact that the journaling didn’t really seem like a pep talk, it had the same effect. I felt the pressure and decided to get to work. Then, amazingly, I found a rhythm. 

If I really had to guess, I’d say that there are a lot of factors that went into going into the zone from studying. I’d say the main ones are the fact that cellphone withdrawal had run its course and the fact that the course load was noticeably easier. Another factor could be that my mind had simply accepted the torture it was being subjected to. I got used to cramming. It wasn’t a fugue state either, I was fully conscious and high strung. I was memorizing everything and the weight felt normal. I had acclimated. 

Then, a second renaissance for studying happened. The first renaissance was when the KMK’s interesting material had kept me really intrigued and learning. The second one was happening now and it had to do with just the habit I had forced myself to be accustomed to. I felt at peace. While the first renaissance of material cramming was fueled by mania and the relearning of previously difficult concepts, this second renaissance seemingly came out of nowhere except my sheer will and desire to keep going. 

By the time I had completed the Non-Big-8 textbook, I felt nothing of it. There was still a next step of reviewing everything. I didn’t celebrate. I just knew what to do next and got to it. You may think that I would feel a sense of accomplishment or relief…but I really didn’t. I was in the zone and focused. I knew what I still needed to do and how to get there. 

Don’t get me wrong, I was still feeling exhausted and knew of the feeling of burning out. The main thing here was that I had simply stopped complaining about it and decided to spend the energy more efficiently. It was now second nature to me to listen to my brain and feel how it was doing in terms of cramming. There wasn’t a single emotion nor thought that I didn’t know how to handle. 

Thinking back, this was a period of time when I can say with confidence that I had completely tamed my demons. The demons’ deafening noise was being silenced and I had consciously willed them to do so. All the anxiety and all the self-doubt simply went away and was replaced with just optometry facts. All the emotions that were driving me into picking the book up were no longer needed, I had a habit that was propelling myself to just get to work. Since emotions weren’t needed to get up and stir me into cramming, I felt lighter. 

This level of control over my own mind came at just the right time. This was because next up on the schedule were the mock examinations. I knew from research going into this whole thing that the mock examinations were a must but also that they were a difficult part of review to chew through. There were 6 mock exams from KMK, each with an increased level of difficulty. At the time, it was said that the 4th-5th mock examination was a good comparison to the real exam. So in essence, that was the goal. While this seems straight forward, I knew it was going to be anything but. 

The mock exams were a level of torture beyond the cramming. It would make you hate the material and make you doubt everything you knew. These exams were to poke holes in every level of your knowledge and understanding and meant to strip any confidence you had in your studying. Oh and one more thing, the mock tests also ran on a timer too, adding another layer of stress to the entire ordeal. Sure, I had a rhythm going and had completed the material but now it was time to test it all. 

Because of the importance of the mock examinations, I reserved an entire day for each one of them. Since they simulate the actual exam, they each take up around 8 hours of time each with a small break after the 4 hour mark. The plan was that I would start first thing in the morning, finish around the afternoon and then spend the rest of the evening going through all the material I had scored poorly with. Then, the following day I would take it easy and not do another examination. I knew that if I did 2 exams two days in a row, I would probably get burnt out too quickly. So the day after the exam was mainly to go over any material still unreviewed from the previous day. If I was done with that earlier, there were always the quizzes on the KMK app as well as flashcards I could glance through. 

So that was the plan. It was a good plan and a decent one that gave me breathing room and efficient use of time. The sensible decision would be to just follow this schedule. 

Unfortunately, it didn’t quite play out this way.