Chapter 119

I knew it was going to happen. I mean, you expect a result for a test when you do the test, that’s how that worked. Yet, when it was around time for those numbers to be released, I was still shaken. A part of me tried to forget it had happened. I was better off for doing it and proved myself capable of being studious. Why do I even need the result? I was already good with the journey. Who cares about the rest? 

I know I sort of romanticised my last moments in Edmonton but the truth was I did not feel good when I walked out of that Pearson Vue center. When the email came telling all test takers to check their marks online, I got scared. The first thing I did was convince myself that it didn’t matter. What if I failed? So what? I was working for only 27 days or so and that’s a great excuse for failing part 1. It was a big ask and no one would fault me for not passing because of it. Sure, they could fault me for choosing to do it in 27 days but failing to cram so much in 27 days? That was understandable. But even with an excuse, I still couldn’t really shake the feeling that I really wanted to see a pass.

Eventually, I got the courage to move on. As I clicked on the “check scores” page, my heart skipped a few beats. I felt unsteady but forced my eyes to stay open as the page refreshed. On the page, a few numbers were listed. On mine it read.

412P

The first three numbers were my mark and the letter that preceded it stood for pass or fail. Anything over 300 was a pass and that was confirmed by the “P” next to the number. 

Son of a b*tch. 

This means that I passed. HOLY SH*T. All 27 days of cramming paid off. What the f*ck? How did I do it? Holy f*ck! I was overjoyed. I remember this mark. 412P. For some odd reason I always thought that it should have been a 413. That didn’t matter though, as long as it was over 300 and a pass. I was happy. I feel like I have been vindicated.

It wasn’t a particularly special mark but I didn’t care. I passed. More than that, this was a gamble that I had come on top with my own capabilities on the line. We often think about vindicating or redeeming ourselves as a fantasy because as much as we want it to happen in real life, it seems to only happen in movies. It’s a good story but it often is just that, a story. Rarely do we get a second chance at something and even more rarely does it work out in our favor. But that also means that when it does happen, it feels so incredible.

Even to this day, I still recall the moment I found out about the test. I was ecstatic. I had overcome adversity and come out the other side. It was an achievement that almost no one would know about and no one would appreciate yet it means the whole world to me. There was no fanfare but symphonies were playing in my head. 

This feeling of vindication stayed with me in the next few months. Everything felt easier. I had just completed the hardest part of the journey and now I was much less insecure about pretty much everything. Don’t get me wrong here, I didn’t let up. I still met up every week with my study group for OSCEs cases and kept planning and overplanning as I worked at Clinic A. But it was different. I was walking on water. Then, as the Canadian winter cold dissipated and the seasons changed, there were more positive changes in my life happening. 

The breakdancing scene in Toronto around this time was always outdoors. Most of our indoor practices were held in churches and gyms with some spare space. Since they were hosted out of the generosity of volunteers, that meant they were the first to go when COVID came around. To still dance anywhere during this climate, we had to buy linoleum and place it down somewhere outside, usually at a park. It was a good vibe when it did work out but it had limitations. The main one being that when winter came around, we all went silent. But at this time in our story, Spring was coming back again.

I felt like I could afford the time to dance again. I was running with NBEO part 1 knowledge. This was preparedness meant to pass an exam that had an overall pass rate around 60% or so. My next test? The Canadian written exam with a pass rate of over 90%. Although I knew I would pass the next test, I reviewed quite a lot out of anxiety. I did, however, at least allow myself to dance a fair bit too. There was breathing room. I knew I wanted to dance but it wasn’t until it became a regular part of my life did I really understand how much I missed doing it. It was exercise and it was artistic expression. Even more than that, it was also just the feeling of being part of a community again. 

**Recap** In the fourth year of optometry, most of the class had gone their separate ways on externships with only 1 term (4 months) where they would interact with other colleagues. Even then, it was only with a portion of our full class. 

The optometry family was pretty much dissolved at this point. The one reunion we were supposed to have since 4th year was convocation but due to COVID, that was a complete bust. COVID had taken our last get together from us and with the optometry ties already so loose, it was bound to disappear. 

While I was never fully immersed in that family due to my own demons, I still felt the loss that COVID made. It was sad to see people you’ve seen for 8 hours a day for the majority of 3 years just forget about the whole thing. Optometry was an end goal for a lot of us. That meant that the time we spent in school was our last lap in academia. Our last stepping stone before adulthood. In that sense, the way it concluded is sort of sad. In the end, a few of us still kept in touch but honestly, it was noticeably different for everyone. We were all growing apart.

The once lively group chats from the Optometry family were now desolate and I found my circle of friends smaller than ever. At some point, our study group for the next OSCE (made of 4 friends only) became my new optometry family and I was thankful to have had that much. I mean, sure, I had a girlfriend and wasn’t that lonely but I felt like I was missing the feeling of being something a bit bigger. 

All of this is to say, when breaking came back into my life, it filled the void the optometry family had left. The breaking scene made my group chats alive again. People were chatting and talking about session spots now. I felt like I wasn’t just an island. On some days, that made a world of difference. 

As the next few months came, two things happened. Firstly, the Canadian written exam came and went. It was going to be easy in comparison to the NBEO and sure enough, when I did it, I found that I had already done all the cramming I needed months ahead. I breezed through it and never looked back. 

The second thing that happened? Some familiar faces among the dancers I hung out with got more organized and started a crew. It sort of just happened. Our crew was and still is called the “Just Another Day Crew”, named because sometimes we’d get heat waves in Toronto and the saying goes “we’d have to just session another day”. We were just a group of dancers who liked to hang out and for us, that was enough to make a crew out of it. This was a little pocket of kinship that honestly felt pretty nice to have and I welcomed it. 

With things going so steadily, I could have easily just kept riding the highs of passing the NBEO part 1 until my Canadian Board Exams came around a few months later. That would have been the easy route. But here’s the thing, with everything running so smoothly and with my ego in the sky for passing the NBEO part 1, I was yearning for more. 

It was then that I had another idea. If I had done the NBEO part 1 and breezed through the Canadian written board exam for it, what if I did the NBEO part 3 to do something similar for the Canadian OSCEs?