Chapter 44

Now, you’ve pretty much read all there was about my clubs and extracurriculars in university at this point. Breakdancing and acapella were great experiences and definitely worthy of a mention but as I previously alluded to, unlike in highschool, they would no longer be the main story arch of my time at university. So that begs the question, if they are only part time commitments, why mention them at all? And for the love of all that is good, why spend so much time talking about it? I mean, I spent almost 5 chapters just talking about hobbies that were part time and pretty much have zero influence on my journey to applying for optometry! What a huge ask for the readers to stay interested! 

Well, one of the reasons is that I had the most fun when talking about the hobbies and clubs I did rather than the studying stuff. As you now know, studying and discussions around studying only served as fuel for cynicism for the most part. So part time hobbies were supposed to be an escape from all that. Furthermore, it is very relevant with current events since the Olympics (featuring breakdancing in 2024) are happening as I write this. The only problem with this explanation is…The hobbies acting as an escape from the unmotivating dread of being an undergraduate science student is kind of an inefficient method. 

I mean, just refer back to a few chapters when I was talking about breakdancing and acapella with guilt. There was always this looming feeling of guilt for not studying even when I was actively doing breakdancing or singing. The hobbies were not effective at taking the edge off of the anxiety that an uncertain future brings. In fact, if anything, they pile on more stress because they are in themselves, commitments that eat away at your studying time. It would have been probably more cost effective time-wise to simply be a guy who went out to parties. Parties were low commitment events after all. All you really had to do was know a few people and bring alcohol. Not only that, there would be more girls at parties than at an acapella concert and definitely more girls than a breakdancing event. Regardless of all that, I still did choose breakdancing and acapella as my main source of de-stressing and escaping responsibility. Efficient or not, it’s how it played out. 

I wasn’t unaware of these effects and did do cost – benefit analysis on it but I simply found myself unable to stop. But then that begs the question, why was I unable to stop myself from doing any of these hobbies when I needed to manage my time better? The answer to that? Two things. The first one is that there is a bit of a deeper and more rooted meaning for me and my hobbies but I wouldn’t really come to understand how strong that bond is until 2019. The second reason for this was I was really bad at relaxing. 

I once thought that maybe it was because I was a masochist for punishment or just simply couldn’t sit still for long. To some extent that is true. But there probably was a role somewhere there for anxiety about the future. This was the premium fuel that really drove the point home. The anxiety that I wouldn’t get to where I wanted to go loomed over me during first year undergrad even during the summer term when I was off. And who could blame me? 90 seats a year siphoned from an entire country? What a tough race to be a part of. Sometimes, the feeling of anxiety would get to me and I would feel overwhelmed. This was a relaxation killer. Especially during the summer term of first year. My first summer off school. Relaxing felt like such a waste of time. How could I relax when others are out there sharpening their resumes? After spending a few days back from university relaxing, I quickly found myself unable to really relax at all. So what did I do to alleviate that feeling? I got to work. 

The best thing I could have done in the summer as an Optometry program hopeful? Get a volunteering position at a clinic. This was premium resume fodder for the application and since my GPA during first year had turned out just kind of average, I knew I needed this. While some politicians think that going out of your way to find a place to accept your free labor is somewhat messed up, sometimes, the experience is worth it for a leg up on the competition. 

During the summer, I lived with mom in North York. There were lots of optometry clinics nearby and after a bit of searching and emailing, I stumbled upon a local clinic who took me in and gave me a position filing their paperwork and doing some “pre-service”. Let’s call this clinic, “Clinic A”. 

The position I held there was a hands-on job. I was to help run some of the optometry clinic’s  pre-service machines. It was an easy job and got me talking with some of the Optometrists which gave me some insight into their routines on a day to day basis. Sometimes I even got to shadow some of them, though to be honest, it was kind of boring when you didn’t know what they were actually doing. I think it was a good set up all in all. I really got to see what I was trying to get myself into. But here’s the thing. I was volunteering there around 3 times a week. It wasn’t really really busy and definitely not enough to take the edge off of the anxiety of my future. 

So what else could I do? Simple, I registered as a part time Waterloo student and took 2 online courses. I figured I would try and boost my average with some easy bird courses. After some googling on what was easy, I enrolled in french 101 and philosophy 101. These two courses were supposed to be easy and furthermore, philosophy 101 (or 106) was a prerequisite for Optometry School too. The courses, once again, were not spectacular in any way. However, I found out something about myself as I was taking them. I was starting to become very petty. 

Everytime I would lose 1 or 2 percent from a written test or assignment, I would be annoyed and immediately email the professor asking about a recheck. These were incremental differences that, to be honest, did not really matter. I imagine I may have made those online professor’s jobs a living hell from all the crap I was making a fuss about. Even when I had very little chance at a boost in grading or a redo on an assignment, I still emailed in. At first I thought I was just being keen but later on, I realized that there was more to it. I felt like I couldn’t focus on anything else.

I think this was because of anxiety about the future. In the summer, you have all the time in the world. For some, this is a blessing, for others like me, who like to do things, this is torture. All I had was volunteering, where I was thinking about my future, and my online courses, which were a direct form of trying to improve my chances at my future. I no longer had any friends to hang out with like in highschool, they had university friends and were doing their own form of resume boosting. Oh and for hobbies? I hadn’t touched my cello since the beginning of the first semester. If you’ll recall, I accomplished all the things I wanted out of cello already. There was no point in chasing RCM grades anymore. And before you mention playing the cello just recreationally, I’d like to point out that the bridge with the Chinese Classical Music people has been burned and playing the cello by myself just felt pointless and sad. Singing by yourself was also not a fulfilling investment either. As for breakdancing? Well…it was quite far away now. Let me explain some of the context to that. 

Right before I had left for China to see dad before year 1 undergrad, my mom had paid off the condo we lived at and bought a new condo near Bayview and Finch. Since it was ages since I mentioned how she got the money, the quick and simple version of the story was that she was earning a lot from working as a teacher for Branksome Hall, the private all girls highschool. This was understandable since she had a Phd in Chinese and private highschools liked teachers with prestigious resumes. 

Anyhow, after purchasing our Bayview condo, she and I moved into it. This was a better neighborhood and it also meant she can rent out the old condo in Scarborough. To give you a bit more context to the new condos, the Bayview condo was about an hour away by bus from our old condo in North York. This meant it was very close to where the optometry clinic was. However, it was also very far away from all the breakdancing spots I knew, which were still in Scarborough. It was hard to visit any place near the old condo on account of bussing taking forever but I couldn’t move back. Our place was rented and my volunteering position at Clinic A was too valuable for me to pass off.

I was stuck at Bayview. While there were definitely advantages to living there, I never got to enjoy the place that much. Before my summer vacation before undergrad, I only got to live there for a few weeks. After I came back from the vacation, I once again only had a few weeks before I had to go off to university. Then, during my summer term, I was volunteering all the time and doing online courses and really used the Bayview condo as an anxiety echo chamber. My time at Bayview wasn’t very enjoyable at all. The only benefit of Bayview? My mom stayed out of my way.

The Bayview condo was a small one. It had only a living room, a den and a bedroom. During this summer, I got the bedroom and my mom got the living room. This arrangement was mainly because I needed the bedroom to have silence when I attended online lectures. We first tried it with me in the living room but between all the online voice recording I needed for my classes and listening exercises, the bedroom was just much more quiet. While you may think that the smaller space would ignite a lot of tensions between my mom and I, it didn’t. The reason? I’m not sure. But if I had to guess, I would say it’s a mix of her seeing me more now as an adult after living with my friends for 8 months, the fact that we now have centralized air conditioning in our place and the fact that I was always studying in my room, meaning she stayed clear of me.

With just my mom and I going about our own businesses with little interaction and all my friends in Scarborough where it was hard to get to. I found it a bit isolating. I had essentially left for university and come back to a new neighborhood. The only reason I had to visit Scarborough now was lifeguarding. Yeah, I know, I have a lot of things going on and this probably slipped under the radar but as I mentioned, lifeguarding was a good paying job and while it wasn’t sustainable to stay in and do it then, during the summer, it was still a good thing to keep going. However, being so far away in North York and volunteering for most of the week, I could only really hold on to a weekend only shift. My lifeguard was with the pool near my old highschool afterall. This was kind of random but I figured I’d mention it for two reasons. 

Lifeguarding was kind of the last piece of attachment to my old highschool’s area now that I’m a university student. I felt kind of that part of my life was done. Since I had such a good time back then, it’s easy to see why I felt kind of attached, especially now as I drown in anxiety about the future. I knew my highschool days were fleeting because of how limited it was but that didn’t make it any easier. Furthermore, I knew lifeguarding would also have to cease and that this last piece of my highschool life would also soon expire with the expiration of my lifeguarding licenses. A few pieces of paper I had no intention of renewing. The second thing to bring up this small side note? Not being paid to volunteer at Clinic A meant that I was short on money to simply commute to the clinic. Need I remind you, two online courses for the summer weren’t free and neither is the TTC. This is the other side of the coin for unpaid internships and/or volunteering positions. It is only an advantage you can do if you have the resources to afford it. It’s kind of a gatekeeper but unfortunately one that we can’t do much about. 

Anyhow, summer would pass by in this manner and was a bit boring to be honest. I had nothing to do except for lifeguarding, volunteering, and studying. While this was definitely a good boost towards my resume for optometry school, I wasn’t liking this new version of me which had so much anxiety. This new anxiety-filled version of me was a bit of an irritating *sshat to my professors and generally all around not a great guy. 

I wish I could say this would be the last time I did this kind of behavior but that would be a lie. If anything, this behavior would get worse as I habitually continue to obsess over my GPA. In hindsight, this summer was the beginning of a mild obsession with my academic performance that would become pretty much a mental illness in the years to come. 

Curious how that played out? Let’s move on to Year 2 of undergrad.