Some Bad Days I Once Had

In his book The Lost World of the Kalahari, Laurens van der Post recollects clearly asking his father once, "Why do [these plains and hills] always look so sad?" His father replied with unexpected feeling, "The sadness is not in the plains and hills but in ourselves."

I think the same can be said of the bad days that we all experience once in a while: that the badness is not in the days but in ourselves.

Yes, we all experience bad days as we journey through this crazy journey called life. I mean those days when we just don't feel like getting out of bed in the morning, become irritable or deadly bored during the day or just lacking in our usual energy and zeal. You must have had such bad days, haven't you?

Don't worry, you are not alone. Even people in high places do have bad days as former U.S. President Bill Clinton made clear in his bestselling memoir. Okay, let me tell you more on that.

In the year 2000 when Bill Clinton was finishing his second term as president and his wife Hillary was commencing her campaign for a senate seat, they went looking for a house to live in after their days in the White House were over. Bill Clinton chose one in Chappaque, New York. And when Hillary asked him why he loved that house in Chappaque, he replied, "Because you're about to start a hard campaign. There'll be some bad days. This beautiful room is bathed in light. You'll wake up every morning in a good humour."

Personally, I have also had my own share of bad days. I narrated the other day on this lovely blog of mine of how miserable I felt when I got rejected by MIT in March 2007, didn't I? Well, I also got rejected by Cornell, Stanford and Dartmouth, the other colleges I had applied for admission in that 2006/07 application round. And that triggered some bad days in my life.

But guess what! I still could not dismiss from my mind my desire to study in America, the so-called land of opportunities, where I could study alongside students of other races and under a renowned faculty consisting of Nobel laureates and Pulitzer Prize winning authors.

So when I matriculated at a local university called JKUAT in May 2007 to pursue an engineering degree, I began making plans on how I'd reapply to top American colleges. As I prepared to work on my college applications, I tried improving my word power in an effort to perform better on the SAT 1 exam which the colleges I was planning to apply for admission require applicants to take.

The colleges I finally decided to apply for were MIT, Yale, Harvard and Stanford. But unlike in the previous round when I really wanted to attend MIT, this time, Harvard was my first choice.

My father didn't approve of me applying to those colleges. Claiming that they were too competitive, he urged me to concentrate on finishing my engineering course at JKUAT. Had it not been for a loan I was receiving for my JKUAT education, I wonder who would have financed the SAT exams I retook in December 2007.

Thanks to the physics, chemistry and calculus that I was learning at JKUAT, I managed to make a great improvement in the SAT 2 exam that I resat in November 2007. But I only improved by a small margin in SAT 1 when I retook it a month later in December. That small improvement in SAT 1 got me worried for a few days but I soon rebounded with hope that I could still get into Harvard if I submitted compelling stuff in other parts of the application.

When we broke for a four-month holiday at JKUAT in December 2007 after my first year was over, I was sanguine that I would never return to the local university but would instead fly to America for my undergraduate studies as it had been my dream.

Quite sure that I'd make it to Harvard, I didn't touch any engineering book during that four-month holiday. Instead, I read books about America probably to learn more about the land of opportunity where I hoped to acquire my undergraduate degree.

Of the few books I read on America during that long holiday, the one I enjoyed most was a collection of essays on the life of Thomas Jefferson, the gifted third president of the United States. The book was titled Thomas Jefferson: The Man... His World... His Influence.

But then came the night of March 15th, 2008. My hopes were dashed when I logged into my MIT account only to find out I had been rejected again. The rejection made me feel miserable.

Somehow though, I felt elated and clear-headed when I turned up for church at All Saints' Cathedral in Nairobi the following morning. I guess that resurgence in my vitality sprang from a hope that I could still get accepted at Stanford where several of my schoolmates in high school had been admitted in the previous years. And for the next two or so weeks as I eagerly waited to hear from the other remaining three colleges, I hang on to that hope as a drowning man clinches on a twig in a mighty river.

Then my eagerly awaited Yale, Harvard & Stanford decisions finally arrived online in early April 2008. I viewed them all in one browsing session at a cyber-cafe in downtown Nairobi. And wa! On learning that I had also not been accepted into any of those colleges, I became emotionally sick.

Imagine I became so emotionally sick that I had trouble getting out of bed the following day. And the gloominess spread over the next few days to an extent that I didn't turn up for church at All Saints' Cathedral as it was my habit. To this day, I don't think I have ever experienced such a series of bad days like I did when I got rejected by Yale, Harvard and Stanford in April 2008.