Chapter 50

It’s funny how roles of couples naturally get defined with the passage of time. For one, I stopped cooking all together. I rarely cooked in undergrad year 1 but now that I had a girlfriend, I had cooked almost never. She had usurped my mom’s previous role of food preparer and also my role of part time ingredient masher. Part of the reason for her role uptake of cook was the fact that at some point in the summer term of my second year, I’d get very busy preparing for my optometry school application. Since my girlfriend didn’t have any aspirations of going into a professional school, she had a very different schedule and a lot less stress. Seeing as how she not only cooked better than me but also had more free time, we easily arrived at the roles we had.

The summer of second year university was the first summer term I would spend at school. As I mentioned previously, I wanted to take a few bird courses to up my GPA and also to knock out a hard course or two I had in the summer while things were more chill. This was the plan at least. In reality, the term was a bit more hectic than I anticipated. 

**A “bird” course is simply a course that was known to be very easy to pass with a high mark**

First off, the term started with me as a coordinator for Welcome Week. I applied for more responsibility as a coordinator for Welcome Week last term thinking it was going to be an easy task and to a certain degree, that was kind of true. It was a simple position and lasted only for a week. It was a pretty quick and easy resume filler without too much time commitment. Due to the lack of interest and participants, the position was pretty easy to get. I got the job and then found out most of it was exactly the same thing as being a volunteer for the event. The reason for this was that there was another level above the coordinators where the decision for campus events were actually made. Coordinators were simply those who followed the orders of someone higher up. They were by no means anyone with the power to select events or even get a glimpse of the budget we had. 

The responsibility I had was simply that I needed to do what the higher ups told me to. When I couldn’t do the task myself, such as setting up or tearing down an event, I would get volunteers, for whom I was responsible for recruiting. Luckily, I wasn’t alone and didn’t have to brave all the events by myself. There were around 6-8 of us, each with a specifically assigned role. I think I had been a Sponsorship coordinator for my first time as a coordinator for Welcome Week and to be honest, outside of being responsible for sending a few emails out with the Welcome Week official email address asking for continued support from our sponsors, it wasn’t really different from any of the other coordinator roles. We had titles in the team but most of us simply were general coordinators. We all helped out for all the events on a similar level. 

Welcome Week was only a week long and featured pretty much all of the previous Welcome Week events we had. We got some free breakfast, some stress relief stations where we gave out care packages in the form of granola bars and caffeine chocolate bars and then there was Sex Toy Bingo again. It was honestly pretty copy and paste as the previous Welcome Weeks. It was pretty familiar to the girlfriend and I at this point. 

Since this was Welcome Week for a summer term, the turn out for the events were even lower. This was because the number of students enrolled in school during the summer term was lower. The campus still had students but most of them were co-op students who had the alternating study term/work term schedules. Overall, I’d say the summer had maybe half the amount of students the campus usually sees in the fall and winter terms. 

While the events that took place in the summer terms occasionally felt kind of sad since there would always be such low turnouts, it wasn’t all bad. The main benefit of having less people? The highly contested library study cubicles were now usually very empty. This came at a good time too. Right after Welcome Week finished, I needed to cram.

During this summer, I took on a full course load though, as I mentioned, it was mainly filled with easy bird courses. Now, you may be wondering, which bird courses did I take? Well, as much as I would’ve liked to simply fill my schedule with Reddit’s Top 10 Waterloo Bird Courses, I decided to gamble with the music courses. From the previous chapter when I talked about doing the Instrumental Chamber Ensemble, I mentioned that I really wanted to get music back into my life and wanted to also experience what it was like to go to university lectures excited about the topics. I figured, no better time than now to start that. The gambling part of this was that I was going to be thrown into a class having not touched any music theory or history since a year and a half ago. Furthermore, I was going to be clumped together with music majors who do music exclusively. 

Luckily, the gamble paid off. In the summer, I took 3 full science courses and 2 music ones. This opened up two of the science courses I needed to take in year 3 but more importantly, it allowed me to experience what having music courses in university was like. Firstly, I loved the music courses. I was right to think that music courses in university were going to be fun. We talked about music history and music theory but there was also a lot of interaction. Back in highschool,  I had friends who did RCM and had to learn music theory and history but they were usually miserable about the entire ordeal. Usually, they learned the things because they had to do it for RCM. In contrast, now I was in rooms surrounded by people who liked classical music because they simply liked classical music. They liked talking about it, listening to it, discussing all the small details about it. They were all nerds for classical music. I fit right in. 

The second thing that really made music courses a blessing for me? As it turns out, I was learning the same things I had back when I did RCM. The music theory courses were a breeze for me. They had a faster pace than the RCM curriculum, sure. But even then, I had such a solid foundation on things that nothing we learned ever felt hard to me. The fact that I wasn’t an out-of-place scientific fish out of music water was a huge relief. Furthermore, it meant that all the music courses that were offered in university were now, in my head, bird courses. I wasn’t underprepared for music courses, I was overprepared. As an example, in that first music course I did in the summer, which was music theory 101, I pulled off an over 90% grade in the end, having not studied for any quizzes, midterms nor exams. 

That was not only a stroke of luck, but it was also necessary. That’s because this summer, I would need to cram for something big. You see, this was the summer when I would need to take the OAT. The OAT, which stood for the Optometry Admissions Test, was a requirement for Optometry school applications. Outside of your GPA, this was the only other number that was on your optometry school application and I really needed to stand out here. 

My second year of university has enlightened me to the fact that I did not do well in the subject of organic chemistry. This was exemplified in the winter term when I would bomb the course, Orgo2. While I didn’t fail, it did net me my first under 70% grade, which was also below the class average. Even worse, this was one of the prerequisites for the optometry school applications, so I couldn’t even hide it behind higher scoring music courses. Since the admissions committee would definitely be seeing this grade, I figured I would try and make myself look at least a bit more competent by doing better on the organic chemistry section of the OAT. 

The OAT had been a pretty standard test with technically around 4 subjects involving sciences (most biology and chemistry), English, physics and math. All of these subjects were usually tested with regards to fundamentals only. While the material wasn’t necessarily that hard, I still spent every minute of free time cramming for the exam. Afterall, this test wasn’t about passing, it was about standing out. 

Out of all the subjects tests, Math was definitely the easiest because it was mostly just simple logic and mental calculations. Both of which I never had any issues with. Physics was also pretty easy. Since my highschool had that advanced placement program, I had been well prepared for university level physics. In terms of easiness, the next ones up were Biology and Chemistry. Biology was simple enough though it definitely had the largest range of possible questions available. The online guide for subjects covered in biology was a very long list though luckily, since the questions were all fundamentals, it never really involved that much memorization. Chemistry was simple except for the organic chemistry portion. Even then, the organic chemistry section turned out to have a very limited syllabus and therefore, didn’t actually contain nearly as much material as I had learned in my classes.

So, you may likely think now that the OAT would be a breeze. However, that wasn’t true at all. Because as it turns out. I can’t English very goodly. 

I have never expected that reading a passage of text and then immediately recalling information from said text was difficult. That was until I hit the English comprehension portion. It was at this point when I realized that my constant method of study for science classes by looking over material and then searching through everywhere to find the one particular answer I was looking for has left my reading abilities with a limited amount of focus. I struggled on this portion.

How badly did I struggle? The OAT was done at a Pearson Vue Testing center. If you’ve ever done a licensing examination or a GED, this would be something familiar to you. It’s just an office space with security cameras and examination computers that track your every action while taking an exam. The area wasn’t very outstanding but even if it were, I probably wouldn’t have paid any attention to it at all. That’s because when I did my OAT’s I had taken the entire allotted time. A majority of which was for just English.

The math section was easy because it was simple arithmetic and a little bit of logic. The hard part was that you got around a minute for each question, so you really had to be alert. For me, this was kind of easy. In fact, I finished that portion with time to spare. The physics was a bit harder but still, nothing really tripped me up. Then came biology and chemistry and wouldn’t you know it, I was breezing through. But then, I got to English. For some odd reason, this was something I simply did not perform well at. I spent the entirety of the rest of the exam on it and even then. It still proved to be my weakest subject. 

After the test, the computer would spill out a chart that told you how well you did in all the subjects and then give you an average that would place in a percentile of all the test takers for the OAT. My first test in the OAT landed me 85%+ for most of the sciences and around 95% for math. As for the English portion, I scored around 70%. This put me at a final percentile of around 87%. This was pretty good. 

I don’t think I ever recalled what the average OAT score was for those who would go on to enter Optometry school but I heard rumors in the Pre-Optometry club that an 85% was competitive enough to be considered for admissions and interviews. While I wasn’t entirely satisfied with my performance, this basically meant that at the very least I was going to have a chance. 

With that said, I wasn’t very happy with myself afterwards. For me, what ticked me off was the fact that if I had just done better at English, I would have scored around an average of 90%. I had to get over it though, I mean, there was a limit on how many attempts you can do for the OAT within a period of time and the next time I would be able to take it would be after the next year’s Optometry school applications deadline. 

I tried to be okay with it with limited success but I eventually came to accept this. What really helped with all that? The girlfriend. I was taking care of myself better now because she took care of me and grounded me. All the while, I was still incredibly selfish and egotistical. As a matter of fact, during the cramming sessions for the OATs, the girlfriend’s birthday passed and you know what we did? Nothing. 

While I was busy studying, I still felt like that was a poor excuse. I mean, the term was chill in terms of coursework and I had the entire summer term’s 4 months to study for the one exam. Surely there could have been one day I could have spared to do something special for her. 

But I didn’t. And she never made a deal about it either. What’s worse is that my birthday was a month before hers and when it happened, she showered me with my favorite food, a birthday cake and even decorated my room with balloons and other cute things. Whenever I think back to the girlfriend in the summer of second year, I always think about how she was always providing for me and not receiving pretty much nothing in return. I honestly don’t know how she put up with all that. Especially when I never really showed any appreciation towards her either. 

I really wouldn’t understand this until later but that was what love was. The girlfriend I had that summer loved me and saw through all the ungrateful ignorance I was wearing. She saw me for the things I aspired to do and wanted nothing more than to help me achieve the goals I had laid out. 

Whenever I think back to that summer, I feel like I want to go back in time and slap myself. I should have shown her more appreciation. Especially when I know how rocky our futures would be in just a few more years.

After the OAT, it was time for finals. For the first time in my university career, I wasn’t stressing out at all. All the courses I had taken were pretty easy and I was well prepared for exams that followed. All in all, the summer was quite a great resume booster all around. I had enough time to do my OAT, improve my GPA a little bit and also add a few things to the resume from my time as a coordinator for Welcome Week. 

While already a successful term, I wasn’t completely done with the summer. There was one more thing I wanted to do before the next term started. And that was? To get a job.

The reason for this was pretty self explanatory. 

I needed money.