Everybody lies

Oh my gawd. I did it.

I just quit this damn molecular biology course.

And that’s all because of Tim Ferriss and his book, the audio version of which I have been listening to obsessively over the last week.

I still can’t believe I really finally did it. I have been fantasizing about making this call literally for months. I was so very close to doing it about a hundred times - basically every day while I was sitting in class and dying a little inside I made my mind up to call as soon as I got back to the flat. But for one reason or another, I always found excuses not to.

Until today.

The main reason holding me back was a little clause in the contract, saying that if I quit the course for non-significant reasons I would have to pay back a substantial amount of the course costs. I figured that hating it all, feeling out of place and being driven batty with boredom wouldn’t count as a significant reason in their eyes. The problem was, I had no idea what kind of amount that would be. Probably something in the thousands, but in any case more than I could afford, what with being broke an’ all.

But in the last few weeks things have gone so far downhill here that I got up every morning with a raging headache, feeling my stomach turn over as soon as I even stepped into the class room, my only thought being “I have to get out of here. Now.”. So I finally decided it just wasn’t worth it to waste 5 more months on this just to save some money.

This morning I made a list named “What’s the worst that can happen?”. Well, and it turned out that even though the worst case scenario did look pretty ugly at first glance, nevertheless all the things that could happen were not the end of the world. Yes, there will be consequences and some of them won’t be nice . But I can live with that. Life will go on and I will work things out, one way or another.

So I did make the call and the woman from the foundation that finances this whole thing turned out to be very understanding and nice about it. I told her my reasons for quitting and I told her I was prepared to do (or pay) whatever was necessary to get me out of here a.s.a.p. And what do you know, she talked to her supervisor and called me back 10 minutes later, telling me that as long as I gave her all these reasons again in writing they would not have to claim any money back (well, apart from the sum the have already transferred for next month - but naturally I intented to give that back anyway). I must say I find that very decent of them. Maybe I sounded even more desperate on the phone than I actually was?

Anyway, now the only dragon I have left to slay is my mom, who will go ballistic when I tell her tomorrow. This is going to be a very uncomfortable weekend (thank god we still have enough work to do because of our renovations, so she can’t kill me right away). But eventually she will calm down again. I just have to stay out of her sight for a while… Probably until Christmas or so. ^.^