When it comes to me and studying, studying stares me in the face, and I look at the stapler on my desk. The nail in the wall. My phone. I tap my fingers to the beat of the fan sucking condensation out of the bathroom. I sit in the computer chair, in the proper study-position, repeating phrases you hear in self-help books: I am an achiever. Determination is key. Then the pen falls out from between my lips and I stare at it for a while. Get a glass of water. Look at the sheet of terms I need to know for tomorrow by 2pm. Think about a couple names. Lakoff: women do all the work in conversation. No, that's Fishman. Lakoff made a list: tag questions, hedging.

On Fear Factor tonight they had to wade into a tub of cow blood with their partner, dive into it, grab a cow heart, and shove it into their partners mouth to spit into a container. I was watching this to avoid studying.

Exams are the worst. I remember once I thought I was schizophrenic or something. In high school every time it was quiet and I had to concentrate my mind would go into hyper-drive and speak so loudly that I could not think. Although the voices weren't loud. More like urgent whisperings, a tapping on the glass from the inside from a thousand fingers. I remember an instance with a friend, at some gathering at a museum with a train blowing, and children running, where all the noise occurring reminded me of my head and I had to leave.

Daniel tells me when he works sometimes he doesn't think. I mean he's thinking, about work. I'll try to catch him. We'll be driving in silence and I'll yell: What are you thinking about?  

Nothing, he says, you? And I will have a three-page essay to account for the previous minutes. I can't believe he's achieved zen without even trying. Maybe that's the point.

It's the worst when I'm trying to sleep. When my dreams are all words jumping on top of another to get to the top. It usually happens nights before I write exams. Information trying to make its way out. Tonight I don't know if I've learned anything to repeat.

It's amazing, really. That sometimes I can have five projects on the go all due next week and thrive, and then when I get a bit of time to relax it all shuts down, and when I need to boot up the brain for one last kick it fails me, and at 9:30 at night I'm ready for bed.