Education

Battling the books

Here I am, wrestling with these words in my book, the week that I hate the most has arrived. I’m strapped between the covers of my book, trying to make its words penetrate my brain cells.

A book with 242 pages packed with formulas and examples that I need to know for the big disaster, the exam. I see each page as a huge monster looking at me, yet I know that I must battle these monsters, because they have my future hidden behind there big hairy heads, and I must comb through that monster hair to reach my goal.

I then had to battle my chair, to get its permission to get up and get some coffee, because at that moment I felt the need to attack my eyes and fatigued brain with a big caffeine bomb, that drug that comes free inside a cup of coffee.

Every time this period of the scholastic year arrives, a huge current of coffee invades my body. The funny thing is though: my brain seems to work at its best when I’m having a coffee break; but when I return to my desk to study, the books turn immediately into monsters again. Avoiding going back to study isn’t an option, since the monsters and the teacher have teamed up against me; meanwhile, the words of my wise eldest sister keep scrolling in front of my eyes and through my head: “The books will not read themselves, you know” …that’s what she always said.

Like a prisoner being dragged to the execution chamber, I drag my body back to my books, pinning my hopes on the thought that someday soon, somebody might invent some kind of human memory stick that I can just stick in the back of my head to transfer information from the book, like the memory stick I use for my computer. But then again, who wants to be like a computer?

Somewhere between the chapter about distribution function and the one about density function, my brain slowly stopped functioning. I first learned about the sisters ‘x’ and ‘y’ when I was still a child, but I had no idea they’d grow up to be so complicated! And really, right now, I do believe it’d be easier distributing aid in the highest Afghanistan mountains than finding the distribution function of x!

But now it’s time to rest my head on my pillow and forget about the ugly monster, because when tomorrow comes, the monster will be back, watching me carefully and reminding me of all the long coffee breaks I took today. How happy I’ll be when all this is over!

Nadera Alsarras, from Palestine, is a MSc student at the Faculty of Architecture

Here I am, wrestling with these words in my book, the week that I hate the most has arrived. I’m strapped between the covers of my book, trying to make its words penetrate my brain cells. A book with 242 pages packed with formulas and examples that I need to know for the big disaster, the exam. I see each page as a huge monster looking at me, yet I know that I must battle these monsters, because they have my future hidden behind there big hairy heads, and I must comb through that monster hair to reach my goal.

I then had to battle my chair, to get its permission to get up and get some coffee, because at that moment I felt the need to attack my eyes and fatigued brain with a big caffeine bomb, that drug that comes free inside a cup of coffee.

Every time this period of the scholastic year arrives, a huge current of coffee invades my body. The funny thing is though: my brain seems to work at its best when I’m having a coffee break; but when I return to my desk to study, the books turn immediately into monsters again. Avoiding going back to study isn’t an option, since the monsters and the teacher have teamed up against me; meanwhile, the words of my wise eldest sister keep scrolling in front of my eyes and through my head: “The books will not read themselves, you know” …that’s what she always said.

Like a prisoner being dragged to the execution chamber, I drag my body back to my books, pinning my hopes on the thought that someday soon, somebody might invent some kind of human memory stick that I can just stick in the back of my head to transfer information from the book, like the memory stick I use for my computer. But then again, who wants to be like a computer?

Somewhere between the chapter about distribution function and the one about density function, my brain slowly stopped functioning. I first learned about the sisters ‘x’ and ‘y’ when I was still a child, but I had no idea they’d grow up to be so complicated! And really, right now, I do believe it’d be easier distributing aid in the highest Afghanistan mountains than finding the distribution function of x!

But now it’s time to rest my head on my pillow and forget about the ugly monster, because when tomorrow comes, the monster will be back, watching me carefully and reminding me of all the long coffee breaks I took today. How happy I’ll be when all this is over!

Nadera Alsarras, from Palestine, is a MSc student at the Faculty of Architecture

Editor Redactie

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