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Wednesday, November 15, 2006

spinning heads


I’m so stressed out these days, I don’t know whether I’m coming or going. I think the only thing that keeps my head from spinning around and around like something out of The Exorcist, is the fact that it can’t decide on which way to go first. I have a gazillion papers to write and final exams from hell looming on the horizon.

As usual this time of the year, I’m chronically behind on everything that I’m supposed to do, sleep deprived and trying very hard (very, very hard) to deny the approach of Christmas. My whole head is programmed completely wrong. When I’m studying, I want to go back to bed. When I go to bed, I can’t sleep because my brain keeps chewing formulas, equations and whatever insane theories Freud came up with.


In an attempt to somewhat lessen my workload, I decided to hit study hall for a few hours the other day. So I swung by the store and picked up one of their sorry excuses for a lunch (the kind that’ll fill you up like a peg in a hole right there and then, but makes you feel like you ate a brick a little later in the day). But the goal was not culinary delight, but to hold out at my little desk for as long as possible.

The first problem with my brilliant plan reared its ugly head almost right away. Seeing how I was as sleep deprived as ever, it took almost two hours for my brain to kick into action. After that, I got about half an hour of work done before it decided that it didn’t want to perform anymore, because it had already been in study hall for two hours, and enough was enough. Then I spent another half hour trying to force it to work, before my brain finally told me to bite it and shut down completely. All in all, I might as well just have stayed in bed.

Everyone keeps telling me that when I’m out of grad school, and working full-time, I’ll miss the days when I was a student. Personally, I’m not convinced. I’m quite looking forwards to the whole not-working-my-ass-off-24/7-thing. Not to mention the living-off-of-something-other-than-cheap-pasta-thing. And I especially look forwards to the checking-my-bankaccount-and-actually-finding-something-there-thing.

Until then I guess I’ll be having my heart attack in instalments.

7 comments:

Tim Rice said...

Studying can be grueling; but cheer up. If you didn't have too much studying to do, there would be other challenges. ;)

Wish you the best in your studies.

Jazz said...

I don't miss it. Course work is also a stressful load of crap, but there you go.

Hageltoast said...

if it makes you feel any better, I work full time and still have to deal with studying for an exam on friday. eeep.

choochoo said...

Tim - lol. Yeah, there's always something, I suppose:)

Jazz - However, you do get paid. Money is good.

Toasty - glad I'm not the only one:)

Mike said...

I've finished college a year and a half ago and I still lose sleep over physics problems... They should really invent an off switch for the brain.

Jocelyn said...

Naw, I wouldn't go back to grad school over doing the work I do now. No way. Money, autonomy, chosen stresses--all make non-school life so very sweet. Gawd, girl, just hang in there and chip away at whatever you can. Threaten your profs with dead mice, if they don't pass you.

choochoo said...

Viking - I'm sure I could find a way to live with that, just as long as nobody was grading me on my results.

Jocelyn - seeing how they're all biologists and stuff like that, they'd love dead mice. Actually, there's an extensive collection of dead things in our biology lab. And they made us learn how to identify different types of mice by looking at parts of their sculls. But maybe I could bribe them with dead mice. Hmm...