By Ahad Khatri
While listening to the musical “Hamilton”, a rising sophomore at the Georgia Institute of Technology was able to form a relationship between Alexander Hamilton’s uncanny ability to write rapidly, as if he was “running out of time” (“Non-Stop”), and the student’s own ability to progress through a specific midterm, as if he had very little time to waste. One could call this student Habib; however, one could also think of Habib as a procrastinator on the day before his exam, because he waited until he had as little time left as possible to study.
Hamilton’s ability to write and act impulsively ruins the lives of the people, such as Eliza, central to his life. To elaborate, Hamilton does have an affair with Maria Reynolds, the events occurring in “Say No To This”. Eliza discovers the happenings behind this scandalous event in a pamphlet and chooses to erase herself “from the narrative” (“Burn”). Even though Hamilton had gained so much popularity and support from his friends, one mistake was enough to lead to his disastrous end.
After listening to these songs, Habib can only think of the BMED 2210 midterm he had the day before, the one time he woke up and showed up late for his exam, when he had perfect attendance and a high A in the class. He took the test as if he was trying to write his way out of it; he just wanted to go home. A few days later, Habib was woken up to screams from his mother and father, showing him the 70 that he received on his midterm. He came back to Georgia Tech the day after with a feeling of despair, a feeling that he had just ruined his own life (his GPA, in reality), and not necessarily the lives of the people around him.
But like Hamilton, Habib was always a man of willpower, so he knew that one single midterm was not going to let him get in the way of three more years of potential success, and a diploma he wanted to hold in his hands in 2021. Likewise, Habib thought of Hamilton’s dreams of rising from the bottom, rising from a world of apparent failure to success and support.
Even after the death of Phillip, Eliza forgave Hamilton (“It’s Quiet Uptown”), because Hamilton was regretful for his actions, for the one time that the story he wrote for himself was not perfect. Habib took inspiration from this story, and connected it to his present state; he was confident that his parents would forgive him, and that he would forgive himself if he did better on his next midterm. So Habib, like Hamilton, decided to take his failure as a lesson, improve his writing skills, build a stronger relationship with the time he has, and move on to a better place.
