Adventures in Academia

The day began yesterday, when I started earnest work on a ten page research paper that was due earlier today. The slog through the night was relatively uneventful. One hundred miles away, sitting in front of a web cam, Zoe scoured the school databases for relevant articles while I crashed myself through cognitive psychology and animal behavior.

I was flipping through The Cognitive Bases of Human Learning, awkwardly avoiding eye contact with the four other psychology texts and hoping they wouldn’t notice that there were only 11 hours left to work, when suddenly it hit me. Right in the eye. It was a moth. I glared across at Learning: Animal Behavior and Human Cognition, who pointed at the youngest one in our group: About Learning and Memory. This whippersnapper was only 21 years old. Compared to the other saggy spined bastards, the Indian publication was sprightly, if slightly discolored and oddly odoriferous.

“Just for that, I’m going to make some ridiculous shit up and claim you said it,” I grumbled, wondering if I was bluffing to flush out the moth-casting culprit. That would have been clever.

The night passed uneventfully after that. Musty pages dutifully yielded up their relevant quotes, many of which stopped being true after the invention of magnetic resonance imaging. My oil lamp flickered and a white fuzz-heavy moth tapped out a message in morse code:

“You know you don’t know Morse code,” it tapped, “and that you don’t have an oil lamp either. You know I’m not real…”

There was a hatching pause, and I knew deep thoughts were being thunk. Or that a moth was lost three inches from its light source.

“But I think I’m real. Descartes validates my existence.”

The moth was obviously very good at Morse code.

“No,” I said, sagging slightly, “you believe you’re real. You can’t think.” I tapped the book. “Thinking is the use of retained information in problem solving to determine the appropriate response to a given stimulus. You can’t do that. You can’t even remember what I just said.”

“…”

“…”

“..What?”

“Huh?”

I glanced down. Somehow, a copy of An Introduction to Educational Psychology that was older than my father had hijacked my hands. It had nothing to say, and it said it in the worst way possible. I creased a brutal dog ear into the page that had so gravely disappointed me.

“Let that be a lesson to you. Next time, do better.”

At this point, I feel compelled to point out that I study English, and I’m writing to fulfill my University Writing Program requirement. I’m failing this writing class for a variety of reasons, many of which I would like to discuss. I won’t, but I really would like to.

I faded in and out of carelessness, and every hour was really really unproductive. When I awoke, I was Ryan the Title. I’d been sent back. My task wasn’t finished.

Well, it very nearly was, actually, though I’m not rightly sure how it happened. A little careful page editing put me near enough to the page requirement that that horrible woman could dock me an entire letter grade anyway, and with that, I was ready to begin my grand adventure.

At 10am, I celebrated my 24^th consecutive conscious hour before uploading my finished paper and several online articles, to be printed at the office. My place of work is great for free printing, lifting boxes and counting shit all day, should the fancy strike you. I was actually scheduled to do the latter two, but instead, I showed up to use office supplies.

But wait. I’m getting ahead of myself. That’s what happens whenever I write about the internet. It destroys my unity of place and the chronology of my plot. Anyway, after uploading the files, I stacked the books together and gathered them under one arm. I grabbed my keys and looked around for the pants I’d worn yesterday. I needed my wallet for my ID card so I could ride the bus, which would be pulling up at the stop around the corner within minutes. No pants. Well, lots of pants, but not yesterday’s. No big deal. I dumped a changeful of pocket into my hand and left, locking my bedroom door.

Wait. Books. Need the books.

Unlocked my door, collected my books, kicked around paper and pants once more for good measure, and left, locking my bedroom door. At the bus stop, I got to stand and stare down the street, counting seconds to myself, probably out loud.

Shit, wait. I forgot my drafts, and my topic proposal. I need those too. If I run, maybe I can…

The bus pulled around the bend and I walked away. You’ll have to ask someone else if I was cursing loudly and kicking the air in front of me.

Went back inside. Gathered the papers, stuck them in a folder.

Books. Folder. Wallet. No wallet. Keys. 30 minutes to deadline. 25 minute ETA for my bus. My bike is still on campus, no good to me here. Car! I have a car. I’ll pay for parking, print my shit, zoom over to the other side of campus.

And then I noticed that my car was lopsided, the front tire was completely flat. At that point, I recall heading back out toward the bus again before realizing that I didn’t have a full hand of pocket in my change, and twitched back toward home. I called Zoe to explain my situation, though my explanation went something like this:

“WHERE THE FUCK DID MY PANTS GO?”

Of course I was still walking up and down my block. Of course there were people around. Of course I was loud.

I drove my car an incredibly long half-block to the gas station. I was sure I’d shred my tire. I started to smell rubber. The groan was heart-rending.

I filled up the tire, which held air, and sped to work. I left my car without paying for parking because there were no meters, and I had no wallet. When I’d finished printing, Xeroxing, and collating, it was 2 minutes until deadline. My bike was at work, ready for use, but my bike key was no longer in these hippy-made pockets. I tried cutting my lock—we have monster bolt cutters in the storehouse—but it didn’t work.

So I ran across campus. It’s ¾ miles, and I opted for bare feet over slower flip flops. I flew like a barefooted guy who hadn’t run in three months or slept in 24 hours who had a term paper due for his last class before graduation.

Arriving at Voorhies, I lept up the stairs to the third floor and jogged to her office, where the door was soundly shut. I shrugged, dropped the folder on the floor, and gave it a smooth, well practiced kick under the door. Almost. The folder was too thick and needed a good toe-stuffing to get in.

“She’s still in there,” a girl across from me said, appalled by my assault on the door.

“Too late now,” I said.

I ran back to my car.

On my way home, I found my bike lock, which I’d left in a cup holder. Once in my room, I immediately discovered my wallet sitting right where I always leave it. And then I realized that I forgot to include my process log in the project folder. She’ll probably dock me half a grade for that.

And then I wrote this, and then I went and bought a sandwich and a six pack and played GTA IV until sleep took me.