One second you’re driving with the radio humming and your fingers tap-dancing to the tune. The next - boom, blam, kapow -  and you’re under the car wondering where the hell everything went wrong.

The tire has blown. It’s torn to shreds. Your hands shake in the cold as you run your fingers through the backside, trying to find the puncture. You wonder if you might have hit a small army of children with swords. That, or a cat with titanium for claws. And skeleton. And everything else.

“Don’t worry,” you tell yourself while your breath gives evidence of your life. It barely escapes your lips. “You’re in university. You can do this. Didn’t you solve that di-2-pyridyl carbonate synthesis question on your CHEM BIO 3OA3 exam? Didn’t you tread through that mountain of a 5000-word essay from scratch the night before it was due? Aren’t you writing those Daily Doses for the Silhouette?”

You laugh, remembering all you have done over these four years, and you open the back of the car with a smile. You can do this. You’re a machine. You’re a monster. And you can do anything because you have done everything.

Time passes, grease drips, metal clinks, and somehow the car jack has wrapped itself around your leg. You fling your feet around, trying to lose this metal contraption. Meanwhile, ice bites your bare back. Snow tickles your exposed fingers. And your mittens are scattered on the sidewalk like bloodied battle gear.

The laughter has long since past, and what remains is a short, concentrated breath. In then out. Out then in. You look into your heart, bounce around in your mind, and try to move slowly, carefully outward from there.

A single phrase enters your mind as affirmation: You can do this.

But all of a sudden – maybe it’s the fumbling with the tools or the squeak of the spare or the cold nipping you hungrily – you start thinking that’s the problem exactly. You don’t know what this is.

So instead you place the jack too far on the front side, and the car titters and totters. You unscrew the bolts, losing one to sewer. You turn right instead of left to loosen. You turn left instead of right to tighten. You lug the tire around. You lug the spare around. You dirty your clothes. The jack slips. The car falls. And you start again, this time remembering, admitting, and having no other choice but recognizing that you, the fourth year in University, have no idea what you’re doing.

Four years have passed, and this is what you have to show for: a few bits of torn rubber, black stained hands, and a sloppy job for a tire transfer. You wonder what it all means, and you ask yourself if you failed the education system or did it fail you.

But then you look to your fingers and see that some of the grease still hasn’t washed out. So you scrub, and scrub, and scrub again. The day wears on. Class begins somewhere in between.