The Long Weekend

A satirically innocuous take on the final year of high-school and my dreadful gap year experience : the long weekend - extended version

-         The Long Weekend

Common App, UCAS, essays, and long goodbyes; these are the elements that constituted the summer of 15 for my A'level graduating batch and I. We had dialed in the gladiator to cram in a year's worth of educational substance into the last 2 months of the school year and now, supposedly, the world was ours for the taking. Our elders and teachers periodically radiated the "A'levels karlou agay bohat scope hai" " it's all easy going from here on out; roughly translating to you have no idea what's about to hit you " in the shade of the meaning of course.

Whilst people around me engaged in a frantic bid to meet the preset deadlines for their university application submissions, I could not help but ponder over the impact these two years in college had imparted over the boys. A special honorary mention goes out to the final year of college where everyone is jacked up on emotions (hormones) and almost everyone had chalked out a silhouette of a roadmap which would lead to life together with the love of their lives " the high school version of the love of our lives. So that meant collectively applying to the same universities which obviously meant some people had to lower their standards and aspirations while others had to stupendously raise theirs all in the name of testosterone. *Love, I meant love.

However, I never realized that one way or the other almost everybody had applied to some university whereas I was still hungover on the false promise of "agay bohat scope hai" I too had aspired to reach for the stars within me. I believed I could author a phenomenal success story out of my life, in what field or walk of life? Utterly clueless I was. My career choices resonated with the expansive array of TV shows my eyes absorbed at the time. By the time I had comprehensively consumed the likes of Suits, House, The Flash, Breaking Bad, and Downton Abbey amongst a plethora of many others; I could, shamelessly yet vividly, envision myself as a: lawyer, a doctor, a superhero(immaturely farfetched I admit), a junkie/chemist and a Lord or a politician in more contemporarily relevant terms " respectively. The breaking bad gig is still pending parental and societal acceptance. I remember somebody suggesting the desperate housewives at some stage…So my life was in absolute tatters and I had not the faintest inclination as to what profession truly interests me. This realization was further reaffirmed when I signed up for the much despised medical entry tests and found myself rigorously looking up "engineering jobs in 10 years" on Google. Oh, the dichotomy.

The inevitable happened. As lethargic and slow as I was in deciding a career path for myself, the tears rolling down my cheeks were even slower still. Deadlines for application submission had long elapsed. The ever dreaded Gap Year yawned in and cast a rough uncomfortable blanket over my future. My facebook newsfeed was serving as a canvas to the blend of bright celebratory colors depicting the successful college placements of my batchmates whereas the insides of my skin served as the canvas to the blacks and the grays; painting a grim picture moving forward. Breeze onwards to judgement day: August the 13^th the infamous CIE result day but it didn't matter. I had no acceptance criteria to meet as my indecision to zero in on a career path lead me to apply to a grand total of a single solitary university. I had, in good conscience, pinned my future and the aforementioned good scope on a single university " no Plan B. Pretty ballsy if you ask me. I still remember that wretched day: it was raining in Lahore that day and I stood outside the famed red bricked structure of the Beaconhouse Defence Campus with the most useless of As and Bs on my result card glaring back at me. To set the scene " this one university rejected me in an elaborate manner by home delivering a generic letter wishing me well for my future and saying that I would add value to any university that offered me a place " very much synonymous to the "She doesn’t deserve you " plenty more fish in the sea" not at all comforting and utterly useless advice we'd offer to one of ours who'd parted ways with his/her O'level sweetheart.

What followed was in all fairness expected but pretty taxing nonetheless. I'd be generously served up as a free for all ages piñata, with salivating aunties and uncles methodically dissecting my gap year conundrum. "Senior prefect in college…high achiever in academics, Faiza! How did Mohib end up on a gap year?? This effectively eclipsed politics as the beating heart of table talk on dinners and get-togethers. The disappointment on the faces of these well-wishers when I told them I didn’t flunk my A'levels and actually had decent grades was very satisfying. They were all but ready to whip out the "ghoomtay phirtay rehtay hain parhein gai kab? meri dost ki chachi ki beti kay betay ka bhi yehi masla hai….." One aunty took this disappointment to heart and shot me the "You're a novice, I live for the drama" look and proceeded to suggest drug abuse as to why it all went south for me. My argument of needing time to identify what truly interests me fell to deaf ears and didn't sell well. Where's the fun in that? , exclaimed the muted screams of friends and family alike. Nothing could incarcerate the onslaught for the gap year, the extended long weekend, had arrived.    

Author's Note

I have used some native language dialogues which are encased in italics

Reviews

[Najam Us Saher]

Is this a true story ?
Students are really tensed when it comes to choose a suitable subject to study that has been nicely portrayed in this story. The dialogues are very true and relatable.

[Mohib Mohyuddin]

Hi! Yes, this is based on my personal real life experiences - it was a difficult time and I thank my stars I'm past it. I'm glad you liked it!