What is it about staying up ’til three and awakening at the crack of seven that is so frustrating during finals week? The fact that I can’t keep up with (or get too far ahead of, I don’t know which) my own body. Last night–or rather, this morning–I was at the top of my mental game. I was typing at the speed of thought and comprehending the words on the pages. The juxtaglomerular apparatus and the loop of Henle alike were under my mastery. Except, well, when it came to getting rid of all the sugar I ingested yesterevening. As I lay miserably awake in bed at half past three, the refrain that kept drumming through my inner ear was “one hundred percent of the glucose in the blood is reabsorbed into the blood after secretion into the nephron.” One hundred percent. Which meant that no matter how much I knew about the kidneys (sorry, Anna), they wouldn’t make it any easier to get to sleep. I was doomed to be restless.
And so it was that when my roommate’s alarm sounded at six, I also awoke. I cocooned myself in my blanket, turning away from the sound and the light, but it was too late. My heart was already racing, my sugar-infested blood feeding all my hungry little mitochondria until they, too, were bouncing off the walls like toddlers after a chocolate milkshake. “It’ll be time to get up soon! Wake up!” And, of course, they wouldn’t leave me alone, not even after I actually did get up. Even now, three hours later, I can’t shake them.
But neither can I be productive with my consciousness. In just over a half hour I begin the first of two final exams for today, and I cannot concentrate at all on either of them. There’s no time to sleep before then, nor is there the willpower to focus my mental efforts until then. I suppose I’ll just have to cras$&*@#%$%
