Whew!

The past couple of months have taxed me. Tell me, when is the last time you went through three highlighters in ten weeks - from juicy to crackly dry - and lit up a textbook like a Christmas tree?

My class on the U.S. role in foreign affairs was interesting, I'll give it that, but it was way beyond anything I've ever been exposed to before. Usually, I proceed through my school terms accompanied by a low-grade panic - you know, the kind that's sort of healthy and serves to keep you on your toes. But this one! The constant looming of pages and pages and pages and pages of foreign policy-expert blabbity-blah week after week after week finally wore me down to the point where I'd find myself drifting off every few minutes during my readings to the brain places where pad thai recipes are stored or a desperate need for new brown boots suddenly comes to light. Bringing myself back was akin to floating up through a pool of mud.

And one day I even had an out-of-body experience when I printed what I had completed of my research paper and realized that it was much more complete than I had thought it was. And then I wondered who had actually written all of that, because I did not remember doing it.

It was a very strange quarter, that one.