Writers 
I remember sitting in a lecture one day in school and feeling like everybody had received a memo that I somehow missed.
The lecturer was explaining something and people around me were nodding.
Someone whispered something to the person beside them.
Another person was already flipping through her notes.
Someone asked a question that made perfect sense and I just sat there.
I had no idea what was happening.
I looked at the lecture slides projected and then back at the lecturer.
I thought probably if I stared hard enough, the information would enter by force but it didn't.
I quietly wrote down the topic and put a small question mark beside it.That question mark became a familiar symbol in my notes and there were quite a few of them.
Resuming late hadn't exactly helped. While everyone else seemed to have already found their rhythm, I was still trying to figure out where to start from.
There were topics I hadn't covered and things people casually mentioned that I had never even opened.
Sometimes, someone would say, “Have you read this?” I would smile and say, “Not yet.”
Meanwhile, inside my head goes, when exactly am I supposed to read all these things?
I started losing grip, the more I thought about being behind, the harder it became to actually study. I would open a book and immediately think about everything else I had not read.
Instead of concentrating on the page in front of me, I would be thinking about the ten pages behind it. There were days I would spend more time worrying about how much I had left than actually reading what was in front of me.
One evening, I decided to stop, not to stop medical school, but to stop trying to mentally swallow the entire course at once.
I picked one topic and opened the textbook. I started reading. At first, it was as if my brain resisted the new information I was trying to consume, but I kept at it. Gradually, understanding came. It wasn't some dramatic movie moment where suddenly everything became clear.
It was much smaller than that.
But for the first time in a while, I wasn't thinking about how far behind I was. I was thinking about what I had just understood and that small difference changed something for me.
I had been treating being behind as though it meant I couldn't catch up, but those weren't the same thing.
Being behind simply meant there was more ground to cover.
It didn't tell me how far I could go.
It didn't tell me how quickly I could learn.
And it definitely didn't tell me that I wasn't capable.
I think that's one of the hardest things about starting something when other people already seem ahead.
You start measuring yourself against their middle while you're still at your beginning.
You see someone answering questions confidently and forget that they probably struggled with the same topic once.
You see someone finishing a chapter and forget that you don't know how many hours they spent getting there.
You see their progress but you don't see the process.
That evening, I didn't finish everything. I didn't suddenly become caught up. The next morning, there were still plenty of topics waiting for me but something had changed.
I stopped seeing every unfinished topic as proof that I was failing. Some things simply needed time, explanation and on some occasions, to be read twice or more.
Medical school did not suddenly become easy. I still get overwhelmed and have days when I read something and think, “What exactly is this person trying to tell me?”
But now, when that happens, I try to remember that lecture, the question mark in my notebook.
I also remember the tiny moment when it finally started making sense.
Being behind can make you feel like you've lost your way.
You are not lost.
You are just still finding your pace.
And there is a big difference between the two.