sometimes i have to defend my intelligence

I'm blurry-eyed and possibly on the verge of falling into a coma (and yes, I do like to exaggerate... it comes so naturally). I'm going on about four days of either not sleeping well or not sleeping enough; a bad combination when I've had nothing but exams to study for and exams to take.

But it's done! Done. Done. DONE. Well, for a few weeks anyway. I have three more months of classes until I've completed the course work but I'm off for the holidays. My EMT classes have been way more intense than I bargained for; I don't know what I was expecting but evidently not this. What really gets me is that some of my classmates hardly study and seem to do just fine. They say things like, "yeah this class wasn't hard at all. I barely read the book and I did just fine" and my eyes bulge out at them and I almost fall of my chair.

What? Seriously? Geez. What's my problem then? It has me wondering if I'm taking the class too seriously. But If I didn't study like I do I wouldn't be learning a thing.... or maybe I'd be learning just enough to scrape by but have that constant nagging feeling that I was missing large chunks of knowledge. I hate that feeling. Reminds me of high school and all the other things I've done in life that are half-baked.

So I guess I'm doomed to be one of those students who has to work really *really* hard to get an A... while other people (like my brother Cami) just nonchalantly study or write or take exams and breeze right on through.

I bring Cami up because in college Cami and I were in the same writing class, which was pretty amazing because Cami was a freshman and I was a second year senior. Of course like good siblings, we ended up competing for the best grades and of course there was *no way* I was going to let my little brother fresh out of high school beat me. We were good-natured about it all but I was determined... and so was he but in a much more casual sort of way. He just did what he would normally do, nothing special or out of the ordinary, but I worked really hard. And there we were head to head on almost every assignment.

It was pretty annoying actually. I didn't seem to have an edge at all even though I had been in college for four years already and was that much more mature and intelligent. I "won" in the end because he missed one class too many and ended up getting a few points knocked off his final grade. Of course I still gloat about this because that's what siblings do and he still defends himself that he got a B on a mere technicality.

After that I decided it was too dangerous to be in the same class as Cami. He was too... diligent? smart? a natural student? Yes, well all of the above and I had my pride to defend.... and my intelligence too.

Not that I'm not intelligent, mind you, I'm just a wee bit slower at processing certain things. If I'm to remember *anything* and really incorporate it into my knowledge base then I'm going to have to take some serious time to digging into it. The good news is that I'm not likely to forget it if I do it right.

And I'm just going to have to be okay with that....