Academic Impotence
Join me as I stand here petrified, methodically placing pizza rolls in the toaster oven, row by row, column by column, even as I realize that I am getting nauseous at the thought of eating even one more pizza roll tonight. Yet I continue carefully placing the frozen pizza goodies on the metal rack until a baker's dozen is lined up in a gridlike formation, and I let the empty pizza roll bag drop into the garbage below, and I gently slide the rack back into the oven and close the glass door and turn the dial clockwise to 425 degrees. I look into the miniature oven, my face just an inch away from the glass, and I marvel as the long tubes lining the top and bottom begin to glow, and then blaze as the heat emanates through the partition and onto my cheeks. And I realize that anything would be better than pizza rolls. Damn the frosted strawberry Pop Tarts that went missing yesterday, somewhere between the checkout line and my tiny efficiency apartment -- they would be perfect right now. I look around the shelves at my roommate's many boxes of cereal, cereal that I would quickly steal if any of the boxes contained Cheerios. But there are no Cheerios. Cheerios would be perfect right about now, I think, and a vision flashes in my mind of me sitting at the kitchen table eating a delicious bowl of Cheerios and milk. Resigned to another night of pizza rolls, I turn and walk slowly into my room.
Conscious that the most important thing for me to do right now is study, I force myself to do anything but that, because as soon as I begin trying to prepare in earnest for the Cybercrime final that is just six days away, the nightmare that I have been repressing these past few weeks will become real, and terror will dawn as I face the sheer enormity of the truth: I have no idea what I'm doing. It will take a miracle to prepare me for the five tests that stand in front of me, blocking my path. From somewhere in my mind I hear a droning voice, the same voice that has been chanting at me since November. My voice, repeating the involuntary mantra, "I am so fucking screwed, I am so fucking screwed, I am so fucking screwed." My conscious mind attempts to push the voice away, to think about anything but the voice -- and that only makes it louder. I am so fucking screwed, I realize. Masochistically, I type the phrase into Google, and add the word "finals." I hit Enter. Hundreds of people now face me, their blogs shouting the same mantra that has taunted me for weeks... for months... ever since I got word that my application for transfer had been accepted. I am not at Case anymore.
I begin to read some of the sites. Students -- at least, students in title -- doing everything they can to avoid the marathon study sessions that stand between them and a passing grade in whatever class was clearly above their head. I smile in recognition, and my heart goes out to these people, even though they are Internet strangers whose posts were dated months or years before today. My heart goes out to them because they and I are the same, at our core. And I realize that I am not a masochist. I am merely lonely, and looking for those like me. Those who understand. Tiny souls trying to prove to ourselves and to the world that we can and will succeed... even as we come to understand that success will require a strength we're not sure we have.
The toaster oven buzzes and I turn away. Don't think that way. You do have it -- just focus. I walk into the kitchen, and hear the pizza rolls sizzling in their little glass prison. I open the door and behold thirten deformed rolls, little doughy monsters with cheese dripping out and hanging down between the metal tines. Carefully sliding the rack halfway out of the oven, I reach in and grasp each roll gingerly between my thumb and forefinger, acutely aware of the instant half a lifetime ago when I accidentally lifted my hand too high, scorching my knuckles as they made contact with a blazing heating tube. Now, I carefully drop each pizza roll into a blue disposable plastic bowl, and as the gooey cheese coalesces into a little orange puddle on the bottom, I try not to realize that it is almost 4 a.m., and my last Corporations class of the semester starts in just five hours, and I don't know anything about that topic either.
