Wow. T minus 3 days for my comprehensive exams. If I don't know it by now, there's no way I'm going to learn it before I go before the Jedi council on Tuesday. At least now I know who the Jedi council consists of and which exam I'm taking first. I know they wouldn't start me on my comps if they weren't confident I could pass them.
I say that, but last night I couldn't stop my hands from shaking, there was a pit in my stomach not entirely due to the gallons of coffee, and stress has been doing some creative masonry on and around my spinal column. Meanwhile I have developed Teflon-Brain; I see the words, I read them, sort of, but nothing sticks and soon I realize I can't remember reading the text on the facing page, let alone thirty pages ago.
And although studying isn't working anymore the only thing that makes me feel better is more studying. Every once in a while I have a breakthrough and manage to really learn something new, which in turn makes me nervous because it only calls attention to all that I don't know and could learn if only I had more time.
And here's the really fascinating part: maybe it's all the crazy living inside my own brain that's creating this illusion, but there's some kind of creative explosion happening in me at the same time. Like I'm seeing through the chinks in the cosmos, seeing the connections that hold the Whole Damn Thing together. It's like the intellectual equivalent of runner's high. I fear they're like those genius inspirations you have when you're super-drunk and then they turn out to be basically vapid. I'm afraid I'll never have time to attend to them before I forget them, or else they'll seem really stupid and obvious and not worth it when I finally do have time.
I am definitely cracking up. It's no wonder so many academics are totally barkers or, at best, incapable of relating to normal human beings. It's hard to get through mundane tasks like ordering a sandwich once you've seen through the chinks in the cosmos. Serious.
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