In Continuum.

The recent negligence of this blog is not intentional. The summer semester has been coming down on us really hard. It's not that I haven't got the time to sit here and write something about the events that have come to pass. But when you are experiencing a burn out, you realize that you haven't got much energy left to brainstorm anything at all. You find yourself sitting in your chair, looking at a blinking cursor and wondering what happened to all those words that used to come forth like tidal waves and with such ease. I pride myself for the ease at which words come to my mind, or ideas for a blog entry. Every once in a while, I admit, I do come to a dead end, and I experience a dry-spell just like any other writers would. I try to blog something everyday, but then you know how it is - you simply run out of gas at times. This time around, it isn't the ideas and the thoughts that came to a grinding halt, but the energy to translate them into words into this edit box that decided to call it quits. I've just been tired, mentally tired for the most part, after going through back to back to back lessons this week. The worst part is that it is not going to end anytime soon, and this will carry on until the end of next week. It is an encouraging thought that for this summer, Thursday is the new Friday. But still, when you are working harder than office workers, something is seriously wrong.

So Mondays, they are supposed to be my longest days. Three lessons back to back, from nine in the morning till five in the evening. We have two breaks in between three classes, one for one hour and fifteen minutes, and the other for one hour and forty-five minutes. I think it has got something to do with the fact that summer semesters are shorter, which is why everything has to be packed in and crammed up. I'm not sure how long a normal semester is supposed to take, but let's just say that it takes thirteen weeks to complete. We don't have that many weeks this time, so the extra lessons would have to be built on top of what we already have. As a result, this week and the next is going to involve extended lessons, and we are not talking about ten or fifteen minute extensions either. On Monday itself, I had lessons all the way from nine to five forty-five in the evening with forty-five minutes of break. Yeah, that is how little break I got on the first day of the week, and that turned the blues on Monday into a dark shade of indigo. It wasn't fun, going through all the lessons back to back like that, because you start to experience burn out a quarter of the way through the second lesson. So by the third lesson, you are not mentally there in the classroom any longer. I know I was physically there, but I really wasn't, you know.

I usually like the classes, even if they are back to back to back. But lately, without the breaks, I've been having difficulty doing just about anything you are expected to do in class as a student. You know, the note writing, the concentrating, and the part about you participating in class and being a good student. I couldn't do any of those properly, and I was just a corpse that talked. I wasn't even a zombie at that time, which would have made my time a lot easier to bear. I don't think zombies actually know how mundane and boring their lives are. They stroll around cities trying to find human brains to suck on, and that is pretty much all that they do. They don't have backyard barbeque of human brains, or they don't even go to concerts or whatever. They just roam around streets and do roaming all day long - not very fun. But without a conscious brain, I suppose it makes things a whole lot easier for them to bear. But I was there, with a conscious mind, and I knew what I was going through. I knew how much time I'd have to endure before the day was over, and I only wished for a switch in my head for me to switch things off. You know, a zombie-switch or something. I could zombie-fy myself and I won't have to know what was going on to my brain - degradation. I rot in my seat all day long in class, and I haven't a clue on where to pick myself up.

I remember something I read on George Carlin's book, and he mentioned a curious little observation about clocks once. He mentioned how he noticed that the hands of a clock always seem to move faster on the first half of the clock than the second half of the clock. It is as if the pulling of gravity makes it easier for the hands to move from twelve to six. From then on, working against gravity, the journey from six back to twelve just seems so much longer. I couldn't help but notice that fact in class on Monday, or everyday ever since Monday. The long dark journey from six to twelve, the longest journey that a clock hand takes. As you can see, I was that bored. No, I was not bored - I was exhausted. There is a point in exhaustion when you feel like breaking something or punching someone. Or, if you can break something in that person's face while punching someone, that'd be great. Anyway, you get to that point in exhaustion, and I felt it on Monday and Tuesday. I wanted to break something because I was so tired, and I was angered by how unable I was to process my thoughts. Points were brought up and questions were posed in class, but a part of me was simply unable to voice my own opinions on certain issues. I wanted to scream, but even doing that sounded like some kind of a marathon.

I think we all need breaks, you cannot expect humans, or average humans, to go on and on at something. That is especially true when you have to engage your brain for an extended period of time. Maybe for the first half and hour to an hour, maybe you can power through with no problems. Maybe you might need some effort at the forty-five minute point, but you can still push through till the end without a problem. That is why most of our tutorials and our lectures are at an hour or one and a half hour long for the most part. That is as long as an average human can concentrate for without much of a break, but not anything longer than that. Anything longer is going to invite a concept called diminishing marginal returns. It is an economics term, but it applies to this anyway. There are times when, the more you work at something, the less you gain in return. Like, if you keep studying for six hours straight, you are going to remember less and less and less. You won't be able to concentrate much because your brain just throws his hands up and say "I cannot take this anymore". That is what happens, and that is what happened to every one of us in class. Sure, Lance is all cool and funny, and he shows us really hilarious videos. But when it comes right down to it, our brains were elsewhere. I know mine was.

You feel so helpless you know, when a question is asked and you know that it isn't a difficult question. It is one of those times when you know that you have it in you, but it's just not coming out. Think of it like a terrible stomachache, and you know that something is tumbling around in there. But nothing is coming out, not even after jumping up and down, and not even after nine times in the toilet - it's not coming out. In my mind, for numerous times, I had the answers in my head, but something between the brain and the vocal chord decided to disconnect. I couldn't voice my opinion because in my head everything went as far as "Yes" and "No", "Agree" and "Disagree". Everything else after that was a blur for the most part, and I couldn't get pass that - and that was really frustrating. So, on top of wanting to break something because of the exhaustion, I wanted to break something because I couldn't bring myself to say something substantial in class. On one hand, I kept telling myself that it's okay, that Monday would be the longest day and it'd all be better from Monday. But Tuesday was worse, and I was so bored that I started pulling eyebrows in class.

And that is the case, not just in my classroom, but all around the world you know. People being overworked, people working their heads off just to squeeze everything into a fixed timeframe. But you know, the longer you work, the lesser you get out of it. The input does not equal to output most of the time, but then it's not like the employers care so much. I mean, of course they'd want you in the office for the whole day, because supposedly that will make you produce more, more, and more. That is what they'd like to think, and they just keep pushing you and wanting you to do more within a fixed period of time. This part of the summer semester is going to end by the end of next week, but it is still going to be a long way ahead. I am not halfway through this ordeal yet, and it is so annoying that I haven't even got time for a proper lunch. Which was why I was so glad by the end of today, since I was done before noon, I had some time to hang out with my friends. We haven't done that in a while, only because we haven't had time for food, much less some pointless talking outside of the canteen. At the end of the day, we just want to make our ways home as fast as possible. We are all worn out and tired, and we can't take it anymore. OK, I can't take it anymore.

So yeah, burn out, it sucks. The army didn't understand that concept either, and they required us to go on hours on end without sleep. I think I went forty hours without sleep once, and that was not fun. You start to hallucinate, and I am not even kidding you. Your visions start to blur a bit, and you start to hear voices in the forest. It wasn't the voices of my friends, but it sounded like something else altogether - no, nothing supernatural. It became hard to think, and it really takes a toll on you. I think if you want to win a war, aside from all the weapons and the training, you have to feed your men and give them enough rest. Especially when all we are doing is to shoot at wooden boards with paper pasted on the front. We all experience burn out, I suppose, and we all know how frustrating that can be. But when we are studying and experiencing that, we could stop and give ourselves a break. In class, you are kinda stuck at where you are, and you can't go anywhere for the most part. I guess it makes me feel a little bit better, knowing that my friends are going through the same with me. My days usually end at 5.45 these days, and think about traffic at that hour. Anyway, here's to the days ahead - dread.