After the Storm

The calm has finally arrived, my friends.
In my last post, I gave you an intimate glimpse inside the often frightening world of the Studying Teenager. If anyone (not including my sister - I know you're reading this) was reading this blog before that post, they certainly aren't anymore. But today, my friends, is a completely different day than then. Today I am well-rested, calm and worry-free. How, you ask?
Yesterday I wrote my last exam. It's nearly impossible for me to wrap my head around that fact, but there you have it. I've finished four courses! Whatever happens next, happens, and I'll save the freaking out over my marks for later. Now is the time for cleaning my room, shaving, doing my hair, getting back on my diet, reading, and socializing. It's a wonderful feeling, to be able to do all the things you want to do. I fully intend to get the most out of my four-day break. On Wednesday, a new set of classes begins, but for now, I am living the life.
iris

Brain Sprain!

All day, my friends, studying has been me. I say this because to say "I have been studying" would imply that I was the subject of my day's activities; this is not true. This day has not been about me reading my notes and memorizing lists and terms and theories. Rather, it has been about the material devouring me, digesting me completely and letting me become part of it. I have morphed into the study. The study has morphed into me. I AM the studying.
This may sound a little melodramatic, but let me tell you: I have studied for eight hours today, and while I love all the subjects I've been studying, there comes a time when memorizing 300+ verbs, their four principal parts and respective translations, can become a little mind-bending. That kind of intensive brain work should be credited with a little melodrama. Not that I'd rather be studying anything else, but I feel so wrung out by studying that I don't feel I can do it for one more second. This is a problem, of course, because I only got through about half my material today, but I have studied it so thoroughly that facts just keep popping randomly into my - genetic variation is when a gene controls variation in hereditary traits.
Hmm? Sorry, what was I saying? Oh, yes. I am so afraid of forgetting what I've studied that it's been repeating over and over in my head on some twisted, thought conveyor belt. Even now, I feel I should be cramming in some more studying, but I felt I had to write instead - for the sake of my health, not that it's in such good shape, anyway.
This is the result of my day's labours: I have a pounding headache, I haven't showered, and I really should go finish the laundry. My diet has crumbled under the stress like a kiddie chair when I sit on it, and my hair is indescribable. I am paranoid, OCD, a complete mess, and the acronym BEVGAPSH is on a continuous loop in my head (don't ask what it stands for - no, don't - don't! - *there is a scuffle* - Biogeography, Embryological Development, Vestigial Structures...)
This, my friends, is the plight of the Smart Kid. Other teenagers have horror stories about hangovers and failed report cards and breakups over text message with their dirt-bag boyfriends; I deal with none of that. There is no such drama in my life. I have a pretty OK relationship with my family (it's a little rocky, but it works), I love my friends, I am responsible, well-behaved and don't attract too much attention to myself. But the sight of me after a day of studying would frighten any parent into picking the lying, green-skinny-jean-wearing, booze-a-holic drug addict over me. Those nerds you see at work or school with the glasses, the shy smile and the neatly organized study notes - those are the ones who go completely ape-shit at exam time, destroying their surroundings and doing things like tripping over lint on their way down the stairs, then grabbing the railing with just two fingers and somehow managing to break their nail while they're getting up, only to slip again because they're wearing those socks with the frogs on them that make them giggle in the brief, manic periods between study hours (once they finally reach the bottom of the stairs, they've forgotten why they came down, and blink at family members like they've never seen them before; then they make their perilous way back up the stairs, already going over in their minds what they should study next, their left eye twitching, but it must be okay because that's never happened before - it must just be a brain sprain, if that's a thing - although that's also what they said about that rash a couple months ago, and it's turned purple in the meantime).
The world of the intellectual teen is a frightening one, and don't let anyone tell you different.
Until next time,
Iris

A Cellular Rap

Because my brain is on exam overload and - just for now - can think about NOTHING BUT BIOLOGY, here is a rap about cells which I have pieced together from my unfairly long Genetics unit in my Biology class:

Life uses energy to keep its state
Reproduces, evolves, makes waste
Cells use mitosis to procreate
IPMAT, watch the chromatids differentiate
Why you gotta hate on how cells mate?
It's not up for debate
Mitosis, meiosis, and the DNA percolates
Into our bodies to decide our fate
Determined by thymine and a nitrogen base
Biology can't satiate my brain's estate
But this exam makes me hate that life creates
Such a difficult mandate
'Cause now I gotta learn and regurgitate
All this stuff about why we are animate
When all my brain wants to do is
De-de-de-deactivate

Ahem. So, yes. If you thought you had a chance at the Nerdiest Rap of the Year award, you are sadly mistaken. I have clearly stolen the show. See you after exams, if I am still capable to put together thoughts and write sentences at that point. Otherwise, I bid you farewell, worthy blogosphere! Wish my godspeed on my trip into academic impossibility.
Iris