Tutorial trials

Tutorials. 

I still get goosebumps when I think of some of the tutorials I attended during college. I dreaded them, especially political science tutorials. I had given up on economics tutorials by the time I reached second semester. No one seemed very happy with my questions and I consider it a mistake that stopped asking them altogether. English tutorials were more or less comfortable. I remember that some time during second year, we were supposed to give a presentation in Contemporary India tutes. My turn came, but I had to wait for a month for it. I even attended extra CI tutes, but my internal assessment at the end of semester still said that I had missed one. Tutorials have really mocked me throughout college and I chose to laugh along.

The discipline of political science was new to me. Not that I had no idea about it, but still. I could never feel confident about it and for that matter, I never felt confident about any subject in college except languages. It was just once when I answered a question posed by my professor in class during the first few days of the first semester and it was the end of it. My effort and ability switch went off but his expectation switch didn't and "I don't know" became my usual response. If you know me, you know how frustrating it was and if you don't, let me tell you - it was frustrating. And disheartening. Tutorials were worse. Whenever I didn't read the complete reading ( yes, I admit, my fault) the reading was discussed. But whenever I did, it wasn't discussed or the tutorial didn't happen! No coincidences, this always happened. Always.
In fact, I was confident enough to say this before tutes - " Aaj maine reading padhi hai, aaj tute nahi hoga." And it turned out to be true.

And this particular incident needs a special mention. This :

A night before political science tutorial sometime in second year. When you have a record like me you are bound to be nervous. I really wanted to finish the reading and was ready to bunk sleep too. But I was sleepy.
I looked around the room. A can of red bull. Hmm, maybe I could use some help. It didn't belong to me though. It was Anoothi's ( Hi Anoothiiiiii!! :D ). She would not drink it anyway, I thought. Dilemma isn't enough to describe this situation - it was a clear cut case of 'Dharm-sankat'. Unfortunately, I made the wrong choice. I took the can and promised that I'll replace it as soon as possible. I did that once in a blue moon with chocolates too, took and replaced them. I once accidentally broke her scale and quietly replaced it too and she never found out- until now off course. Or maybe she noticed and very lovingly ignored them. 
I emptied the contents of the can. It tasted like cough syrup. To my horror, it had the same effect as a cough syrup and I dozed off. Without completing the reading.
I woke up next day and knew what the day had for me in store - a bad tutorial. And so it happened. I came back to my room and slept some more to get over it.

It didn't end here.

Days passed and somehow I didn't get a chance to replace it. And then came Harmony. Scavenger Hunt. I participated, so did Anoothi. Different teams. 

A thing on the list read : A can of red bull.

Our room. We are trying to look for things and then she asked -
" I can't find the red bull can, have you seen it?"

Moments of awkward silence.

"I drank it."

More moments of awkward silence.
I didn't have the courage to look up to her and see her expressions. It was bad. 
Somehow I never got a chance to replace it, it was useless. But I tried to compensate for it in other ways and I believe that I was forgiven and the matter forgotten.

By the time second year ended, I had one decent political science tutorial - the last one of the year. I can still not boast of a good tutorial, never had one throughout 3 years, and my fear never went away but I learnt to laugh about it, so it was more or less okay.