I was walking beside the math teacher on whom I had had a crush, on the day of a school excursion when I was a sophomore at high school. He asked me which university I was applying to. When he heard my answer, he asked me again, “Do you think you can jump across this paddy field to the other side?” The paddy along the path was over thirty feet in width and I dismissed it as absolutely impossible. “That’s exactly what you’re trying to do for the university,” he said. I resented as I thought he would encourage me since I had gotten full marks in almost every math test. But he was right. I eventually failed all the universities I applied to and my dream to work as a super businesswoman at the leading company was shattered. I lost confidence in myself, lost sense of purpose in my life, and ended up being a freshman in the women’s college that belonged to the same school I attended when I was in junior high and high school. The entrance examination of that college was the only one I passed although I hated to go there and took the exam for my worst-case scenario. Students from the same high school were entitled to get in the college without entrance exam if they didn’t apply to other universities and colleges. While I endured three years of studying for a different university, my classmates just had been having fun, and I settled in the same college as them who didn't have to take the exam. I was humiliated every day when they spotted me at the campus and asked me, “What are you doing here?” or said, “I thought you were going to the better school!” Everyone in the college including faculty seemed dumb to me in those miserable days. Even the slip-on sandals that the president would neatly leave in front of her office door made me furious and I kicked them away to the hallway with all my force. One day I was called into the school office. The staff told me to see a psychiatrist who was temporarily assigned to the college. I had no idea why I needed to see a psychiatrist. I entered her small office and she welcomed me with her warm smile. She just kept saying to me, “It’s all right. Everything is all right. You don’t have to worry anything. It’s all right.” That was all she said. Only two freshmen including me were called in and I asked the other girl what it was all about when I bumped into her. She guessed that had to do with a survey the college had conducted for all freshmen. She suggested that we were called in because we checked yes on a question whether we ever want to commit suicide. I was astonished at the fact that other students except two of us had never felt like killing themselves up until in their late teens. I strongly felt they were the ones who needed to see a psychiatrist, not us. I was slowly, gradually coming to grips with who I was. I wasn’t made for a businesswoman to begin with. Being a musician seemed much more like myself…
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Hidemi WoodsMay 7, 2019
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