If Life Deals You Lemon, Make a Lemonade

I am not talking about recipes today.

I am not really talking about lemons or lemonade either. I just don’t know how else to say this: I think I chose the wrong path, and it feels like it is ruining me, slowly.

I am a seventh-semester student at Universitas Indonesia, majoring in Metallurgical Engineering. Two semesters left. Just two. Everyone says it like it’s nothing. But every day feels heavy. Seven semesters of staring at metals, equations, and things that never quite make sense to me. Sometimes it feels like a foreign language I keep trying to learn, even though I know I will never speak it well.

This major requires math, chemistry, and physics. I know that. Everyone knows that. I’ve tried to accept it. I’ve tried to like it. I’ve tried to understand it. I read until my eyes hurt. I study until I feel sick and tired and empty. I stay up late, do the assignments, finish the lab reports.. putting all my effort into everything. But the grades stay bad. The understanding never really comes.

It hurts because I am not lazy. I am not careless. I am trying. I really am.

But somehow, I am always behind.

Sometimes I look at my friends and I feel smaller. They talk passionately about corrosion, extractive metallurgy, heat treatment, future plans, careers. They sound so sure. In those moments, I feel like I don’t belong there at all. Like I’m just sitting in the same room but living in a different world. In their eyes, I feel like the stupid little person who can’t keep up. I envy them. I envy how confident they are. I envy how clear everything seems for them.

My GPA is a mess, and I know it. I don’t need anyone to remind me. With only two semesters left, I don’t even know how much I can fix. The future feels blank. Empty. Like a screen that won’t load. Everyone else seems to know what they want to be, while I’m still stuck asking myself the same questions over and over again.

Metals, polymers, ceramics, composites, nanotechnology.. these words fill my books, but my head feels full of nothing. I read and reread, but it slips away so easily. Sometimes I honestly think maybe I’m just stupid. Maybe I’m not meant for this at all.

People say if life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade. So I try. I really do. I sit here with my pile of sour fruit, forcing the sugar, hoping it will somehow taste better. But right now, everything just tastes like rust.

I’m tired. I’m stressed. I feel like I’m failing. There are days when I don’t even want to step into the lab anymore. I feel like I’m drowning there, surrounded by experiments and reports, learning how materials break under pressure while I’m the one who is falling apart.

I know I have to keep going. I don’t really regret the past. I just don’t know what to do with the future.

Graduation is getting closer. Instead of feeling relieved, I’m just scared. Sometimes I ask myself what I’m even doing here. What happens when I graduate and everyone expects an engineer, but all they get is.. me?