Happy Friday!

Today is the first day of my winter break but I woke up this morning by this pain in my right arm. I hope the nerve in neck aren’t swollen again and is not now affecting my arm.

Anyway, I took a look at the prompt this morning, more question and answer. Will there be a prompt that actually inspires me to write a story? Of course, lying is not okay, it’s never okay! Otherwise, why would anyone teach us that? On the other hand, you can’t expect a person to tell the truth all the time either. The truth hurts sometimes, you know.

Sometimes, it’s better to just tell neither, to simply to just hide the truth.

I remember the start of junior year into my engineering program. My grades from the semester before were terrible. I couldn’t understand why except that numbers just aren’t on my side. The entire semester, I couldn’t find a single proper answer to a single problem. I followed the exact same procedure as taught by the instructor and still couldn’t get the right answer.

About two weeks after receiving my grades, I received an email from my adviser saying that I’ve been down-graded from major status to pre-engineering status. That was terrible news for me, for anyone, in this matter.

To be back at pre-engineering status meant I couldn’t be enrolled into the already registered classes. It meant the only class I could be enrolled was the one I’m retaking. Worst of all, it meant I only had one course.

Quickly, thoughts swirled in my head. How am I going to explain to mom when she sees the tuition bill and only sees one course register? What am I supposed to tell her? That my grades were so terrible that I’ve been kicked out of the program?

My head and chest pounded as I got up and paced back and forth in my room, trying to come up with a solution. Then I decided. I’m going to fix this myself and I’m going to tell mom nothing. She will know nothing of this. My adviser and I communicated back and forth through email.

For two days, my hands shook and I hardly had any appetite. I felt bad about hiding this from her. In my freshman year, I failed Chemistry. I hated this, I’ve never failed anything in my life. When mom discovered, she was angry but at the time, she didn’t have as bad of a temper as she has now. But she told me, “If you don’t tell me, I can’t help you.” So maybe she helped me then, she could help me now.

But another part of me thought otherwise. So I kept it from her. Two days later, a solution came, it was like god-sent. I discovered in my degree audit report that they never took the “E” I got from Chemistry away and thus lowering my GPA to below requirement. I emailed my adviser and told her what I’ve found and asked her to have that removed since I’ve already taken that class. I was back on track.

The lie in that little story was that I pretended to be fine when everything was fine. I should have told my mother the truth instead of hiding it from her. On the other hand, I wanted to prove to her that I can handle things on my own, that I don’t need her guidance on every misstep I happen upon this crazy journey call life. I guess I’ve proven that here.