Friday, 15th of November, 2024.

This morning, my heart feels somehow. It’s neither beating too fast nor too slow but I know thete’s something. It's full of questions I can't quiet, and the pressure sitting on my chest is almost suffocating. It's this mentorship thing…It has me deep in my own head, and I can't stop turning it over and over. I don’t even know how to put it into the right words, but here I am, trying anyway.

When I think about my first days at Edo State University, it honestly feels like both yesterday and forever ago. I was lost. Completely unsure of myself. Just this girl who had somehow landed in medical school with no clue how to survive it. Now I’m in my third year, and that still feels surreal. Medical school didn’t wait for me to catch up. It just came at me full speed. Every day felt like I was trying to walk blindfolded through a maze.

Back then, everything was too much. I couldn’t keep up with classes, with life, with myself. I was drowning in expectations and self-doubt. I made mistakes. Plenty of them. And I started to believe I’d never get the hang of this. Then things began to shift.

I found help. I found someone who saw me. Dr. Abel. He was running tutorials for some of my classmates, and I decided to attend. At first, I was just looking for a lifeline. Something to make me feel like I wasn’t completely lost. But those sessions became more than that. They gave me clarity. Stability. Hope. And then one day, Dr. Abel looked at me and said I had potential. He made me a mentor. A tutor. Just like that, I was on the other side. The side that guides others.

But here’s what I haven’t told anyone. I still don’t feel like I’m enough. I’m trying so hard to become this medical student who knows what she’s doing, who rises above everything. But the truth is, the road here has been rough, and it still is. My first two exams? Total disasters. I put in the work. I prayed. I pushed. And I still didn’t make it as I would have loved to. I had target scores, none have I beaten yet. Now mock exams are around the corner, and the MBBS exam next year feels like this massive shadow hanging over my head.

It’s not just an exam. It’s everything I’ve worked for. And the thought of failing, of not making it despite all the sacrifice, scares me so much I can barely breathe.

It’s strange, really. Because I’m a mentor now. People look up to me. This morning, I stared at my phone, looking at the WhatsApp group I created for my mentees. They trust me. They see someone who can guide them. Someone strong. Someone who knows the way. I had resources ready to send to them, everything planned out, but suddenly I froze. That wave of doubt came crashing in again.

What if I’m not who they think I am? What if I’m just another scared student, barely keeping it together? What if they see through me? What if I fail and become proof that I never deserved their respect in the first place?

I want to be worthy. I really do. I want to live up to what they see in me. But most days, I feel like I’m standing on the edge, hoping I don’t fall. The fear is always there, whispering that I’m not enough.

So I write. Because that’s the only way I can deal with all of this. Writing helps me let it out before it eats me alive. It’s my way of surviving the chaos, of making sense of the noise in my head. And this morning, it’s the only thing holding me together in this biochemistry class where things are starting to sound like mandarin.