Thank Me Later

Studying is like that that person you invite over to your house for a party just because you "have" to.  You don't really know why, but you just know that you have to.  Its like an unwritten code of ethics for all social gatherings: Regardless of how many people thou chooseth to inviteth, thee must invite enough kill joys to keep everyone from havingeth too much fun.  So this kill joy, I'm going to name him Maxis.  He has a funny accent and you never quite know what he is saying but you know you don't like it.  He also kinda smells funny but that really doesn't matter because he always shows up after the guy with the stinky feet has decided to take his socks off but that's a different story.  The thing with Maxis is that he always shows up late.  So late that you usually forget that you even invited him.  You're having a good time, enjoying yourself, and BAM! Maxis shows up.

Now when Maxis walks in, he always tries to play it cool and does this really pathetic moonwalk entrance where he basically just ends up walking in backwards.  So since he walks in backwards, everyone says his name backwards and calls him "Sixam".... okay, so I've been writing under the false pretense that Marxis backwards would somehow spell "exam."  Obviously, that didn't work out as planned and I've already made the poor guy try to moonwalk through a doorway so there's not turning back now.  So anyways, finals tend to creep up on you.  Undoubtedly, you find yourself stuck with the inescapable "kill joy" called studying.

So inaptly named--there is nothing studly about studying--studying is what gnaws at our precious minutes of sleep, heartlessly carves our schedules into unrecognizable abominations, and eventually massacres our sense of free time until every moment is stained with a sense of guilt that even the strongest bleach won't rinse out.  There's something really perplexing about this beast.  Dare I say it, its paradoxical but more on that later.  This beast has mastered the art of deception.  Just as you get into a natural routine of skipping classes, making up numbers for homework problems, and telling yourself you'll catch up on the reading next week, this naughty little beast raises its disgusting face from the deep canyon that lies between the binding in the middle of every textbook.  If you look at where two pages of a text book meet together, right in the middle, you'll find a bottomless chasm where the binding lies.  Behind layers of bread crumbs and the occasional stray hair, studying lurks, waiting to spring up when least expected.  Although its mastery of choosing bad times is legendary, when it comes at you, you have to face it head-on.  The battle is a tough one but one you must face.

Okay, cut!  Stop the epic music.

Studying is still kind of crazy though.  When you get ready to study for something, you usually sit down with an idea of what you need to do--what concepts you need to go over and when you need to go over them by.  You usually allot a certain amount of time for getting this job done, and, if you're really organized (or you're just looking for another way to waste time before actually picking up a book), you might even plan out when you were going to go over the specific parts of whatever you're studying.  Then you sit down and start actually doing what you planned.  Undoubtedly, there comes a point very early in the process where you realize that its taking you way too long to get through this.

It always happens.  You could give yourself 3 weeks and you'd still find a way to not solve 15 divided by 5.  It might involve breaking a calculator, losing some appendages, and who knows what else but I guarantee you that I could make it happen.  But after all that fun stuff, the really crazy stuff happens.  The longer you spend on something, the less you seem to know.  Once you finally get what's been going on in class all these weeks, you have twice as many questions about the how's, the where's, and the when's.  Its like when you were a kid and decided to run up the wrong side of the escalator.  The faster you tried to run up the wrong way, the faster the elevator seemed to go as it forced you right back to where you started from--ignorance.  Exercise makes us stronger.  Eating makes us fuller.  Everything that we do as people seems to helps us reach the means we hoped for, at least to some extent.  Studying doesn't seem to work that way.

For all those still struggling: 15 / 5 = 3.  In Drake's words, "Thank me later."

But maybe we're looking at it wrong.  Maybe the purpose of studying isn't to simply be able to cram in a bunch of random facts so that you can rub a pencil in the little printed bubble on a multiple choice scantron.  Maybe, just maybe, the purpose of studying is to just come up with more questions.  To be more confused, to recognize how little we know, to become truly lost in the sheer vastness of knowledge... maybe that is what learning is supposed to lead us to.

Now, only if someone could get this to my professors in time.

I'm hoping if enough people leave comments, use the follow blog function, and repost this post on their facebook/twitters/etc, I might have a chance of that happening.