2020 | The Vision

21:30

I started this blog as an aspiring dentist.

I am writing this post as a qualified optometrist.

That sentence right there, exactly five years ago, felt like a death sentence. Exactly three years ago, it felt like a possibility. Exactly one year ago, knowing I had to give my qualifying exams another go, it felt like a very far-off dream that felt so far beyond my reach. And exactly three weeks ago today, it became a reality.

It's been six years since I launched this blog; in that time, I have graduated in one degree, started and graduated in another and finally completed a two-year pre-reg to qualify as an optometrist. It's not been an easy journey. Nor a predictable one. It was a lot of blood, sweat and tears. So many tears. A lot of you are familiar with my personal conflicts that came with optometry...the struggles, setbacks and emotional pressure not just throughout university, but also over the course of the last two years. I was, once upon a time, convinced it was not a place for me.

Today, my heart is overwhelmed with gratitude and the proud sense of achievement in being able to write this.

It is, for the first time in a long time, the start of a new chapter. It is, finally, the end of an academic journey - and the beginning of the rest of my professional life. I didn't think I would make it. Many times, it felt like the odds were stacked against me. I have carried the unbearable weight of will it ever work out for me. There have been so many moments where I contemplated giving up, only to bite my tongue, grit my teeth, and keep going. I debated whether to pursue a different career altogether. I questioned and doubted my abilities time and time again because setbacks do that to you...self-doubt creeps in and you wonder if you are truly meant for the thing that you are chasing.

But everything in life is about its timing. You have to be ready to receive certain things. The delays are designed to test your self-resolve and patience, your perseverance and faith, your strength of character. It is your personal journey of growth and the wait, the wait makes the success so much sweeter. The person I am today isn't the person I was a year ago. She is stronger, more patient, more accepting of fate. She is more confident and appreciates her journey - and where she is now - with a depth you can't possibly understand unless you've been through it yourself.

To anyone who has/is facing setbacks in their pre-reg journey, or anyone who has had to re-sit OSCEs - once, twice, three times - it is painful. I have been there. More times than you know. That sense of despair is gut-wrenching and it hurts to hide because, yes, you have to take the next day smiling, and the next and the next. And it is exhausting. To feel, to hide, to keep going like it doesn't matter. To pretend like it doesn't hurt when you see everyone else around you succeed - and you can't work out why it's not happening for you. I have felt all of that and more. But take heart in that you will be so much better for it. Grieve, stand up, dust yourself off - and go again.

| fall down seven times, stand up eight

As much as this post is me officially calling time on documenting student life, it is also a reminder - not just to budding optometrists but to anyone who needs to hear this - to keep believing. In yourself, in your journey, in your prayers. Trust where God takes you. Trust His timing. Trust that He is making space in your life for so many beautiful things - things that you want, things that you don't see coming - and He is withholding from you to teach you patience, to protect you from things you are blind to, and He is guiding you, maybe not to a life you imagined, but an altogether different but good life that is everything He wants it to be for you.

I wish, back in the day, I'd had someone else's journey to read. I've said this before, but I put this blog out there, not for views or self-indulgence, but to make even one person feel less alone. Because I have been there, feeling incredibly alone, not having someone else's unconventional success story to give me hope. It's okay if things aren't happening for you in the conventional way...if they're not following everyone else's timeline or the "natural" sequence of events. Life happens and shit hits the fan sometimes; there are rejections and disappointments and sometimes a complete re-routing of your journey. But you will get there...you will get to your destined milestones, all in good time. Keep going.

I wish I could go back in time and read this post to 17 year old me. Because she is confused and devastated, and has no idea just how tumultuous, heart-breaking, unexpected, challenging the next nine years will be and I wish I could tell her...

You're going to come a long way, just be patient. Because it'll be worth it.

Kauser

Part-time blogger, full-time scientist, and lifetime Liverpool fan. Follow me as I document my life, from uni woes, to the chaos of adulthood, and every other awkward moment in-between that is part and parcel of being a socially introverted twenty-something year old.