My unlimited life...

It is just another excruciating day of school life when you wake up to realize its 8:30 and you have a 9 o’clock class and the only restroom at your place is occupied. If the thought that crossed your mind is when you will improve, let me tell you I have improved. This incidence occurs only once a month and I am better than many people. I know a guy who woke up at 10 for his exam at 9.30 which he missed third time in a row.

So I wake up at 8.30, somehow rush to class, reach 5 minutes later but the professor is still trying to fix the electronics in the room. Before entering the class, in the elevator, I have already stripped off my heavy jacket and took my notebook and pen out of my bag. By the time I settle down in the class, the professor is still struggling with the laptop and projector and then powerpoint and powerpoint slide changer. I take two deep breaths, relax my muscles, and immediately start feeling sleepy. And this is the very moment the professor decides to begin the class. Next one and a half hour is a torture one minute and pleasure the next. Torture because I am sleepy and my brain refuses to concentrate. Pleasure because the topic of the class is very interesting when my brain can process the information. By the end of the class, possibly the last 15 minutes, it is sheer torture, because I want to understand what is being taught but by then I have lost the thread of the class. So what did I learn in the class? NOTHING. What did I learn from the morning? Set up an alarm tone which tells me the current time and the time my class is.

Now that the class is over with I open my task list of the day. This is a list I religiously prepare and follow. I took up this habit after I forgot to submit my completed term papers twice, simply because I didn’t notice that the last date of submission was that day. When I look into the task list (mine is in excel), I see I have a doctor’s appointment in 20 minutes. I hurt my leg more than twice in the same spot in two weeks and now when I walk I can hear my knee pleading me not to torture it as much as I torture my brain. So I go to meet the doctor for which I have to rush again because it is at another end of the campus. I reach there, sign in and after 15 minutes the nurse asks me to step into an examination room. She asks a set of questions, leaves me with a paper shorts (I had seen paper towels, paper aprons, paper shorts is a first) and goes to get the doctor. The doctor comes examines my leg and smiles at my entire narration. Then she says give your leg a little bit of rest, walk slowly if you have to and apply ice to it, after all there is no fracture or sprain. I smile at her and think if I didn’t have a sprain, I might have after this morning’s exercise.

I again check my task list and find I have to be in my lab before my mice start missing me. So yet again, I rush from clinic to the lab. In front of the lab, my lab mate has his laptop open and a country song playing. I go up to him to ask what is going on. He says nothing, today insecticide has been sprayed in the lab, so there will be no work done until 2. At 2 I have another class, so I end up requesting him to look after my mice too when he takes care of his own. After all, both were plugged the same day. He agrees and I sit facing him with my laptop for the next few hours. I shuttle between Gmail, my school mail account, and Facebook account for quite some time and then begin working on something I had left unfinished the night before. The 

moment I get the momentum to get things rolling it is 2. I again run to the other class room.

In this class, I am awake but my mind still refuses to understand. The reason this time is it is tired after 4.30 hours of continuous work ;). I still grasp the straws of thoughts I can gather from the lecture, wonder about it, and grab a coffee after the class. This is my food of the day, if you consider coffee to be food. The moment I take it in my mouth, the insides of my mouth tingle. And when it hits my stomach, my stomach burns.

However, I have time only for this coffee, when I have to run to attend a special seminar.  Throughout the seminar, I wonder are they talking in English or Spanish. And there comes these few milliseconds interspersed in an hour when I hear words that feel like music to my ears. When the speaker asks do you have any question at the end of such seminars, I invariably have one question in my mind. “What exactly was your goal and what were your results? Can you please give me the answer in 100 words?”

Well that done, I have to run to my lab again. At this time of the day, my favorite protein is awaiting me. I reach the lab, go through many protocols, and design the best one that will work for my protein. I spend the next 3 hours on my protein to only find that the extract had bacterial contamination. I swear loudly in all the languages I know swear words and I walk home.

I walk really slow remembering the doctor’s advice. I reach home in 30 minutes. I am damn hungry and look into the refrigerator. Not a single vegetable which is not rotten is there at home. There is one really ripe apple and all kinds of sauces; cheese and butter but no bread. I think for several minutes what do I eat and end up cooking rice and eating it with curd. My mom on reading this will obviously react with words like “Now you know…”

Then I open my books (essentially my laptop) and continue my work from where I left in the afternoon. I do some of it and fall asleep in the middle of it, without even setting an alarm, this time for a 7.30 meeting in the morning. I am pretty sure next day will be as tough, I think in my dreams and there flies another day of my Master’s life.

I plan each day to set limits. Limits to what I will complete during the day, limit my pathetic food habits, limit my sleeping in class, limit running all around the campus. Yet no limits have been set and I have a totally uninhibited life. J