Illustration by Cody Angell

Ah, yes. Midterms. The last stop before spring break. Time to fill all those empty synapses in the brain with busy little biochemicals building rickety bridges of short-term memories. Fill the coffee shops, pack the libraries, get fiercely academic for the first time in two and a half months. All to sit in a quiet room for an hour, fill in bubbles, write essays, crunch numbers; tell them everything they told you - but faster. Take a breath, shake out your wrist, do it again.

So, what are we learning this semester? If you flipped through my notes, you'd never know. Some of us take notes better than others. You might. But never ask me for class notes unless you want a page or two full of non sequiturs and elaborate doodles. Very elaborate doodles. Maybe, technically, not even doodles but snippets of modern art on a medium of loose-leaf and hand-outs. I toil over these notebook creations because I feel that the way I spend my time is an important indicator of personal success. And I didn't come here to fail.

Of course, if you watched me closely in class, you might be inclined to say, "Hey, that guy's gonna fail." But despite my preoccupations, such as filling entire pages with interconnecting spirals or trying to bend a paperclip with my mind, I am actually paying attention. And I can prove it.

If the monotony of studying for your exams has left you unstimulated, here are some highlights from my classes. I hope they color your day.

Victorian Literature: the word 'aessofus.' It was used in lecture, but I can't find it in any dictionary. It was used in the context, "Is Oscar Wilde being aesoffus?" Presumably, the answer is yes. But I may never know what that means. Or maybe it was "Aesopic." Huh. Well, I'll never know... Later in the course, I learned about a valuable lexicon called Partridge's Dictionary of Sexual References. So, if I'm ever at a loss for innuendo, I'll know just where to look. My favorite quote came in a lecture about "The Story of an African Farm." It's best used when taken out of context and applied maliciously: "Despite the fact that he's saintly, he's a failure in life." Ah, biting irony at its best.

Native American Literature: I can pronounce the words, "y‡'‡t'ŽŽh," and "shœœh ahdŽŽ." No I can't - I don't even know what they mean. But I thoroughly enjoyed the stories in which I found them. Coincidentally, it struck me as an oversight that one can graduate with a degree in American Literature and never take a class in native authors. I've also learned more than a few details about American history that have been conveniently overlooked in my previous 16 years of education. I would say this class should be a requirement to fill in some serious gaps in cultural understanding, but someone else can just as easily take a class in accomplished Norwegian civil engineers and say the same thing, feeling equally enlightened. So I'll leave it as a subtle recommendation.

Plant Genetics: I learned about mitosis and meiosis for the fifth time in my life and am still amazed by my incapacity to retain such information. The professor is rather obsessed with baseball and claims it's an analogy for all things in life, big and small. I agree with him, but I'm still bitter that little league outgrew my pitching skills, so I don't go to class.

Contemporary Biology in Human Affairs: I abbreviated it "Bio Ethics" on my notebook, but when I talk about it, I like to use the full title because it has 14 syllables. In class, we talk about issues like genetically modified foods and figure out ways to educate the biotechnologically ignorant public. Pop-quiz: Do you buy food labeled "organic"? I hope it tastes better, because all "organic" means is that it contains carbon. Oh no! Carbon! I heard it causes cancer!

Intermediate Poetry Workshop: I'm still marveled by the fact that I get college credit for this class. We sit in a circle and talk about poems we wrote. Last week, I wrote a poem about a tree, but when it came time to workshop it, I freaked out and tore it into a thousand pieces. Which is perfectly acceptable, but at some point, I'm going to have to turn in a poem. I'll call it "Ode to my midtermless poetry class."

I'm not quite sure how this applies to you. But then, I'm not sure how any of this applies to you. In fact, in retrospect, this entire column seems to me a self-indulgent, pretentious rambling. Well, I was short on time.

I had studying to do.

For midterms.