My brief stint as a beta-Microbiologist has ended, and it is only now beginning to settle into me – the meaning of the thing. I called myself a beta-Microbiologist because I wasn’t a Microbiologist, and though I was studying Microbiology, I still wouldn’t end up as a Microbiologist. I was then, just beta-testing– yes, I was there to work through it all, get all the bugs out, then leave.
So comes the purging. But I’ve been consciously avoiding the confrontation: between the self that embraces the end of a taxing experience and delves into the practicality that is to come, and the other, the hopelessly frightened other – frightened that this exquisite thing is now to be cast permanently away, frightened that what is to follow bears no relation it. Today, the practical self considered the selling of my old texts. Of course, this was the logical thing to do, the proper thing to do for bulky, expensive blocks of plasticized paper and card taking up much needed space – the thing to do quickly before they became outdated or unneeded and were not sought after again, the smart thing that will enable you to buy more texts later, for unrelated things. The thing – but this was impossible, said the other. My texts? Must I? I looked at them. Brock Biology of Microorganisms, Janeway’s Immunobiology in fuchsia; I have a dense primer on Genetics and a formidable treatise on Biochemistry. I have stiff unturned pages and glossy unsmeared pages and spines bent floppy in the frustration of research. Must I? But of course! Why not? I won’t look at them, I hardly did before when I ought to have. But, no, I will! Because otherwise…because without them… I won’t remember – I’ll… forget. How can this be? These four years of mine have been condensed to a crisp paper with a pretty stamp – a pretty glossy red stamp, which I would have admired with shining eyes as a child. Slowly every intricate detail I learned will dissolve, gradually every ray of understanding will dim into nothingness. I will be left with this triumphant page, while the pages of my mind turn blank.
So this is what education is? The painstaking attempt to prove that you know, the heartbreaking realization - that soon enough, you won’t.