#masterthoughts

Hari ini udah mulai Quarter 4, dan aku udah beresin 45 ECTS (ada 2 courses yang nilainya belum keluar, tapi kalau udah keluar dan lulus semua berarti creditku udah 55/120 jadi udah gak perlu ambil electives lagi yay - dan yang jelas aman dari deportasi). Berhubung di sini sistem kuliahnya adalah quarter dan bukan semesteran, dimana 1 quarter itu terdiri dari 8 minggu doang, jadi nggak heran kalau rasanya kok cepet banget semua ini berlalu. Tiba-tiba white week. Tiba-tiba exam lagi. Tiba-tiba break. Tiba-tiba mulai quarter baru. Tiba-tiba tahun pertamaku di TU Delft udah mau beres lagi??

Cepet banget gak sih rasanya waktu berlalu????

Kelas pertamaku di Q4 adalah Inter- and Intra- Organizational Decision Making yang sepertinya akan seru banget. Sejujurnya tiga quarter ke belakang ini menurutku begitu-begitu saja. Rasanya kayak disuruh ngambil ulang courses pas Teknik Industri dulu, tapi dengan motivasi yang lebih benar. Nggak cuma mau lulus tapi juga belajar supaya mengerti dan menguasai dengan baik.

Q1 kemarin aku dapet courses Leadership & Technology Management (mirip banget materinya sama Organisasi dan Manajemen Perusahaan Industri dan Psikologi Industri), Financial Management (persis Analisis Biaya), dan Technology Dynamics (this one is something new, I enjoyed learning how to write an extended abstract on things that I liked reading - my first steps in writing scientific papers). Selain itu aku juga ambil Patent Law dan Patent Policy yang menarik banget karena diajar oleh praktisi, 2 orang patent lawyers. Sangat-sangat membuka wawasan tentang per-IP-an, setelah kemarin di LPIK sempat belajar juga sedikit-sedikit. 

Q2 kemarin courses wajibku adalah Economic Foundation (persis Pengantar Ilmu Ekonomi), Social & Scientific Values (ethics campur decision making dan critical thinking - learnt to write an ethics essay, so that was also interesting for me), dan High Tech Marketing (didn’t really take something like this during my bachelor’s but it was just an okay subject - nothing really mindblowing). But I got to did a research and marketing plan on a super interesting phenomenon of smartphone scene in subsaharan Africa so I liked that very much. 

Q3 yang baru beres ini isinya adalah Business Process Management & Technology (belajar bikin prosbis dan aku teringat kelasnya Pak Budi juga modul-modul PPST dari LIPSP), Technology, Strategy & Entrepreneurship yang juga cukup meh ya tapi paling nggak bukunya Melissa Schilling yang jadi sumber utama itu bagus banget, dan juga Research Methods yang sejujurnya sangat menarik banget. Belajar tentang dasar-dasar riset untuk social sciences, sesuatu hal yang aku pengen banget kuasai. But the exam was too hard and I just hope that I passed it. Selain itu juga ngambil Business Development Lab yang menyedot begitu banyak waktu dan lumayan merepotkannnn huks karena kelompokku dapet topik yang susah.

The things that I liked the most is the fact that I get to write an extended abstract that analyzed the LASER predictive policing program in Los Angeles, wrote an ethics essay on gestational surrogacy in India, and made a marketing plan on Tecno in Subsaharan Africa. I enjoyed reading articles and keeping up with interesting yet problematic technological issues in emerging countries and it felt so nice to get a grade out of my personal interests. The rest of the courses were okay although the faculty could’ve designed MoT in a much more interesting, and challenging way instead of being a super academic, rather on the surface, and too desk-research-focused.

It's simple, really.

Him, or you.

Idiot magician clearly didn't know you very well if they thought there was even a choice implied in that sentence.

Your stomach is clawing in on itself, tearing up your throat, like you've swallowed acid and hollowness, but you push it down, new teeth slicing through your bottom lip as you bite down. You can keep your voice even, stand straight for a few minutes more. Just long enough to convince everyone you have a plan.

Just long enough to get the ship parked in front of the largest star in the sky and toss the doors open.

Him or you, when it's always been him.

At least this time you get a clean death, don't have to see him trying to kill you. Not the war, not Rassilon, not anything. Just burning.

There's a world of difference between appearing to be something, and that being true.

You're fine.

Or, at least, you will be. You're doing the mental equivalent of spring cleaning. Carefully, slowly, you crack each memory up and scatter the pieces. 

Your first reaction, when something goes wrong, is to tell everyone and demand pity.

Your first reaction when things actually hurt, however, is to wrap up that bundle of memories and shove them far back in your mind.

It works, until someone drags them up again - and then you get all of it, the tangled half-strings of remembrance and chunks of emotion that nearly knock you sideways.

You were just done tying down and wrapping up - give or take - that nasty thing with the asylum, when this one clawed back up.

Again.

It's a bundle of blonde hair and stupid jokes and half-eaten lunches and for a moment it's not even a bad memory, it's something good, and then the rest of it hits with all the class and subtlety of a machine gun.

You can't care for people without laying claim on them, you just can't. You can't protect people when most of the dangers are your fault.

A crack, a mental chisel, and the memory snaps.

Carefully, you prise away the good bits, separate them out. "The Good Bits Box", as you've mentally christened it. Lunch dates and personal planets and calm understanding go there, slotted in between Ailla's laugh before it all went to hell, and a giggling Aleena throwing cookie mix at your head. 

Your shatter the bad parts with no particular care for where or how they break. Arguments cut off mid-sentence, the tail end of a particularly guilty moment, your fingernails biting into your palm and how dare you. Painful fragments that hurt less as half-remembered moments.

Like glass shards, you swirl them into the rest of your worse moments. A heavy Brooklyn accent telling you to leave slides into fire on your skin and skips straight over into a quarry, a punch, eight years old and father is saying, "regenerate" he begs and you smirk, body falling apart, body falling apart, the whole in the sky where it was and  -

You jerk back, gasp. It's done, it's fixed, the bundle broken and swimming heavy in your head, tangled up with the rest of your memories into a dark river too far down to do anything but fall into. You push, one last moment, and the whole thing slides neatly behind the drumming. 

Out of sight, out of mind.

You'll do the rest later, you promise yourself, sit down and pick your own mind over the other bundles. 

Later.

Not now.

It's Latin all over again, clumsy Oxonian accents lumbering over ancient Roman letterings.

It's - if you're honest, that's a good way to compare your Gallifreyan to the Doctor's. Yours is messy, trick tenses and complicated verbal games. It's the kind of speech you hear in three places: the Fae courts, the lowest slums, and in either high politics or contracts. 

(And really, fuck the Fae. Their language is as stolen and cobbled-together as English is by the 21st century, and that not-lying part comes straight from their dealings with Time Lords. Pansy language thieves, they're amateurs in lying compared to you.)

The Doctor, now, he speaks in round vowels and enunciated letters, and he never lies.

It's hard to lie in a language created for a massively psychic race, but there are ways. You can omit things, use metaphors, play with probability. He never lies, not once. It's a personality flaw that actually works out pretty well for him. He presents you with everything bad that can happen, and you don't really listen to his words until you're trapped in another dimension, or on the Valiant, or when he's apologizing and wiping your mind.

You, though, you lie. Every single letter, every language. You know how to maneuver and cheat and deflect questions. 

It evens up the playing field, really. He's so trustworthy, so good he nearly shines, and that gives him the element of surprise. He is black-and-white, grand and quick in his gestures.

You work from a disadvantage, or what is marketed as one. You're expected to lie, and cheat, and break promises. Which really only gives you the finer shades of the psyche to work with. Soft brush-strokes, more suggestion than flat colour. 

You're not a stupid man. You're used to hearing sounds no-one else can, used to the heavy resignation of insanity.

There's a chance. There's a chance, isn't there? That in-between getting shoved into a padded cell and pumped full of drugs, there's a chance that - 

You can't say it. You have to force yourself to think it, to think around it.

What if, just now, they finally hit a dosage that let you see everyone as human? What if, a tiny not-there but still-there if, they're not lying? You are just deranged?

You've got John, who cries about demons. Bex, who doesn't seem to know what she's saying. Lilly, who - Lilly, who sounds as charming and insane as ever.

What if you were just a violent man who couldn't grab onto reality? Time travel and intergalactic friends and a best friend who understood you through everything and forgave you, and... You can remember coming back from a slaughter and being rewarded with cakes. That's not how it works, is it? The logic is, the logic is very shaky.

Beanpole here, and wow, the wonders that is doing for your mental grasp. 

Maybe you are mad.

Maybe you are human.

Maybe there's a reason only you can remember it and hear Messy and -

You stamp down on that, run away to a different corner of your mind.

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