the girl who said ‘we’ll see’ until she didn’t.

deeandwho — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 17:26:35 GMT

I was never a person who could sit with anything for more than 30 minutes. Ask anyone who knew me in dental school- I was the queen of "we'll see it later." And later, of course, never came. Delaying work was my second favourite thing. Not doing it, even after the delay, was still my first. :) No jokes. I was *that* person, and I had a whole group of friends just like me-all of us running on *dekhi jayegi*, the quiet belief that we'd figure it out when we got there, instead of doing the actual work. But final year, before my internship, told a different story. I was done with university exams- passed all ten subjects, actually studied for those, which sounds contradictory to everything I just said. There was always something inside me that knew better. Because despite being the cool kid 24×7, when I came back to my room and there was nobody else around, I met *me*. In person. Without any masks. And she was not, in any way, the cool kid. I was pretending to be someone I genuinely wasn't. Turns out the real flex was never the coolness- it was the consistency nobody saw.

Then came the last stretch of college- my internship. Three months in, and I found myself questioning my entire existence, sitting at a round table in the canteen, surrounded by at least ten people. Everyone had their own plans for what came next. It all felt vague, and if I'm honest, none of it matched the life I actually wanted for myself. Nobody handed me a roadmap, and I never went out and asked for one either. So I built my own. I found out what courses existed online to prepare for NEET MDS- the entrance exam for a Master's in Dental Surgery, a three-year postgraduate degree. I asked my father for ₹27,000, told him I wanted to buy an online course, and that I was starting my preparation. In my head, the plan was simple: sit for the exam, get into a government college. The ideal case scenario. I ordered the books. Started taking lectures, making notes, hearing terms for the first time- after four years of dental school, somehow still for the first time. :) I used to send my friends snaps of my books captioned *"studying is a privilege."* People around me weren't ready for this drastic a change. I was mocked. Smirked at. Judged. Nobody took me, or my potential, seriously. Let them smirk-smirking doesn't clear exams. ;) But somewhere inside, I was just waiting for the right time to answer back. I was convinced this was going to be the plot twist of my life. <3

Deepali, who couldn't hold attention for 30 minutes, was now sitting with full focus for 8 hours straight. Character development arc, unlocked! I started talking to myself more. I started praying, consistently, for the first time. Everyone was laughing. I was laughing too- just so you know. And somewhere in that laughter, I learned something I didn't expect: when nobody takes you seriously, you start to take yourself very seriously. And once you do, nobody else's opinion has the login access anymore

There were nights anatomy won anyway. I remember sobbing because it kept slipping through my fingers, because mock exams kept haunting me. But every single time, I told myself -*you've got this, D.* I learned to listen to that voice. I'm no special case. I don't have some incredible academic record to point to. What separated me from every other aspirant in that race was the sheer, stubborn belief in myself, and the ability to persist despite failing ten thousand times. They laughed in the present tense- I was busy writing my future tense. I persisted on the days the pages blurred from tears. I persisted on the days I skipped family gatherings I actually wanted to be at. I persisted on the days I wanted to throw every single book across the room. Here's the part people get wrong when they hear a story like this- they assume it was torture. It wasn't !!! I'm left with zero regrets, because every single choice was mine. I was actually *having fun*. I waited every night before bed just to put a tick in front of my to-do list- genuinely, one of the best feelings I've ever chased.

My biggest win wasn't the exam, or the college, or the degree waiting at the end of it. It was that I was enjoying the process instead of holding my breath for some finish line to reward myself. Nobody clapped in the beginning. I made sure they wouldn't have a choice by the end. That's why I'm here. Not because someone believed in me first- because I chose, on the nights nobody was watching, to persist anyway. ✨