A late entry

From March 27, 2011.

It’s raining where I am. Tomorrow (Monday), we have a huge exam (that may determine whether I’m to make it to third year med school or not) and on Tuesday we have two more—medical jurisprudence and a comprehensive exam that encompasses the entire year. It’s all a bit much to take in and over the weekend I did experience a few moments of sheer unadulterated panic. But the human body can only take so much worry. This morning, having gone to mass and having shooed home a beloved friend who came to spend the night and study with me, I went to a coffee shop near the bay—not so near it that I’d smell the water, but close enough to be feeling the breeze. I tried studying there from about nine to twelve, but was getting nowhere. I was struck with the brilliant idea of cutting my hair, and called my mom to ask if she thought this would be a good idea; moments later I found myself in a tiny salon a few streets away.

I’ve never gotten a hair cut for fifty pesos before. Somehow the sheer cheapness of it made me even giddier as I sat there, watching the scissors snip away more than a year’s attempt at growing my hair out. Where it reached down to the middle of my shoulder blades, now it’s barely past my chin. I find it kind of glorious. It does make me look a bit fatter, but I do think I look five years younger, and that’s enough. I went to another coffee shop by the bay, sitting out on their terrace, and watching the rain fall really gently and silently. Everything smells like grass after rain and where I’d usually find it a bit distasteful, I couldn’t stop breathing it in today. Everything is peaceful.

Only two days left til the school year. How can I not be excited, and how can I not want to step into a small oasis of calm in the middle of all the panic?