“All things being equal or parsimonious, the simplest answer is usually the correct one.” This is Occam’s razor - the famous 13th century logician who I love quoting mainly because I like the word parsimonious. It comes to mind in this anecdote regarding an event that occurred before a final exam during my fourth year of college at the University of Minnesota. I was studying to be a doctor, the MCAT exam was less than a year away - August 16th to be exact. I was finishing my classes of my 4th year with a plan to extend into a fifth but mainly because I wasn’t prepared to apply for Medical Schools and spend my summer finishing classes. In the first couple of years of college my grades suffered and I spent the next 2 trying to bring up my GPA. It is so much easier to erode a grade point average than to improve one.
On this particular evening I was cramming for a final exam the Introduction to Personality. I was doing well in the course and had the material pretty well mastered but nonetheless I was reviewing my quarter of lecture notes and I’d of course made myself flash cards, because I am a flash cards type of guy. I started to doze off in my bed studying and knew I needed to get rest for the 8am final which was early enough to sleep through. I put my notebook down next to my bed, turned off the lights in my apartment and set my alarm for 6:30am.
After a couple of hours of sleep I awoke startled, it sounded like someone was in my apartment. All of the hairs stood up on my neck. My light was on in my room, which I specifically turned off before bed. The clock read 3:30am as I stepped out of the bed, and my lecture notebook was not where I left it. I ran into the living room ready for anything completely freaked out. I called out, “hello,” and I went to the door which was unlocked to the outside hall. I had locked the door, turned off the lights and gone to bed, I was sure of it. Someone had been in my apartment. Every light was turned on, and my cat sat on the back of his chair and my notebook was resting on the kitchen table. That was when I had to sit down. None of it made any sense.
After a few minutes I laid back down in my bed. I checked the clock and the alarm. It wasn’t set for 6:30am, it wasn’t turned on at all. There seemed to be two likely competing explanations. The first was that I’d fallen asleep and dreamt that I set my alarm, maybe even I created the studying inside my dream - which is pretty awesome if you think about it. Thankfully I woke up to lock the door, set my alarm and go to sleep. It was just so strange because it would have to have been the clearest and most vivid dream to have done all of those actions only to wake to have them undone. I remember practicing the flash cards, turning off the lights, setting my alarm, even having an internal dialogue with myself about what time to set the alarm so that I gave myself ample time to get to the test.
The second and more likely explanation is that I was trying to send myself a message from the future. I know this sounds odd but hear me out. We all make choices in our lives, go left or right at the intersection, eat here or there, every choice takes us along a path to our destination. I was studying personality, prepping for medical school entrance exams. My final was at 8am, easily could have been missed; all of these events culminating on this one evening - maybe this one evening, or the following morning was a singular point in the space time continuum. It is possible I came back in time to prevent some devastating maybe even catastrophic disaster from happening to our civilization. My exam, my apartment, my cat all the simplest and mundane of nights could have had the gravest of consequences. Granted, there is a load of hubris in that thought but still, you never know. My future self couldn’t just show himself that would be crazy and obvious, and certainly couldn’t have tried to manipulate events such as change my exam score or something dramatic like blow up a building, my car, or steal all of my pants so I couldn’t take the test. But what he could do was enter my apartment, turn on all the lights, change my alarm clock and move my notebook and then leave making a loud sound as the door shut on the way out. All of these actions could be masked as a sleepy student. The sound clearly woke me up so that my destiny changed and possibly the disaster was averted.
I know the previous example seems more probable in an Occam’s Razor sort of way, but the second explanation feels more right to me - I felt someone had been in my apartment. The only thing I can’t explain was whether I was supposed to miss the exam or take the exam to avert the history that needs to be changed. I guess time will tell. I will keep you posted.
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