What do you do when, after being a straight-A kid for twelve years, you fail your IPCC exams for the second time in a row? You turn to others for their advice. I did too. And what did they say?
“It’s all because of your poetry.”
“You waste valuable time writing verses when you should be using that time learning costing formulas.”
“Where is poetry going to get you? Nowhere.”
The Fall
In hard times like these, you get desperate for something, anything, that works in your favour. I was at a point where if at a garage sale someone sold me a broken walking stick saying it was Potter’s wand, I would have believed and tried working that in my favour.
Believing that my beloved poetry was the reason for my bitter failures was tough. But broken, negative minds are funny, the things dearest to you seem to be causing the most harm in moments of doubt.
Surviving nights on innumerable cups of coffee and desperately solving question papers from five years before became routine. My once bookmarked Coelho and Brown novels on the desk now collected heaps of dust. The last pages of the notebooks now had formulas instead of open mic verses. I was focused completely on my work. Poetry, for the first time in my life, was in the backseat.
It wasn’t easy. I went from composing whole verses to scribbling a single phrase to not even daring to use my pen for anything but questions from The Contract Act, 1872. (Two years later, I am still good at my taxation laws. Ask Mickey.)
The Memories
My writing transformed me from that shy girl in class that barely existed to the best orator in school. It gave me the confidence to be myself and to try out new things regardless of what the result would be. Sharing my work online and reading comments from people, including published poets, became the highlight of my days.
Through books, I have loved and lost, cried and rejoiced. I have felt the pain of a character and fallen in love with another. Words on pages have given me the power of imagination and I have used the same to create a world of my own by threading these letters, words and phrases into haikus, limericks free verses and acrostics.
But because someone who doesn’t feel the same way about poetry told me that it was getting in my way to success, me believing them was a bigger mistake.
No wonder it didn’t work out. I became a loner. The shy girl who had no clue about anything in the world started to come back. The writer was gone and with it, so was the confidence.
The Learning
Sure, I studied hard. Even with the dark clouds and rainy days, I gave it my best. But did I succeed? No. I failed for the third time. Although that made me sad and I realised that CA wasn’t for me, with it I also realised that it wasn’t my poetry that was holding me back. CA just wasn’t for me.
A few more months of despair and discouragement followed which lead up to me joining a different course altogether. But the most important lessons that were learnt were that:
- Poetry was never a hindrance. In fact, it was because of poetry that I kept myself sane after 20 balance sheets (that never matched) and 20 different Income Tax sections that benefit manufacturers.
- It’s very important to know what you desire. You may choose a life path that is generic and guaranteed to give you a secured future but as long as it’s something that doesn’t share a Ted-Marshall bond with you, you can never have fun doing it.
- The advice to give something up because someone said it was your weakness should always be ignored. Nuff said.
Like I said, poetry was never my weakness, it was always my strength. It is because of poetry that I am here typing this almost-autobiographical article.
To all the poets and bloggers out there that have second thoughts – never give up, you are better than they give you credit for.
This article was written by Sienna Thibault. If you want to contact her for feedback, send her an email.