More productivity equals less brain power

The brain is definitely a muscle. Okay, not literally, but at least figuratively. The more you exercise your brain, the more useful it becomes. Like a muscle. Also, if you stop using your brain, it atrophies and then takes work to get it back to where it used to be. Like a muscle. And finally, if you overuse your brain, it starts to get tired and act funny. Like a muscle. At least, that's what happens in my case.

Today was my day for catching up on school work. I did some editing on a group lab report. I completed a quiz for my astronomy class. I rewrote four-and-a-half lecture's worth of notes on how to condition your muscles. It was all very productive, and it felt good to finally get caught up on all of my studying. But today was also my day off, which meant I spent the morning sleeping in and my early afternoon catching up on the internet, followed by the required procrastination time. I didn't get started on my school work until 5pm. Not so good.

At first I was powering through it, but as the hours passed my hand-brain coordination was slowly waning. The words I was writing out took a bit more effort to process, and I kept adding random g's in places they don't belong (seriously, where did I find a g in "creatine kinase"?). Just as I was deciding that maybe it was time to call it a night, my boyfriend sent me a text letting me know that it was "tim" to make some tea, and he was just going to put his clothes in the laundry and call me in a "non". A SIGN! I giggled at his autocorrect fails, and sent him a quick text asking why Tim was making him tea and how long a non was before packing up my school work. As I happily put my books and pens away, a thought slowly dawned on me. When he said it was time to make tea, he also said something about studying. Why would he be studying? He doesn't go to school. My brain struggled to process what had happened. Eventually, I went back to the text message and confirmed that niggling thought. He hadn't sent that text. I had.

I had a good laugh at myself and went to clear up the confusion. The hand-brain coordination continued to remain at an all time low as I talked about "tra" instead of "tea" and typed symbols instead of letters. When my boyfriend called a few minutes later, he listened quietly as I stumbled over my words trying to tell him what happened (the mouth-brain coordination also becomes compromised). At the end of my story, his only response was "you should probably take a break from studying for a while."

We are now at 2 hours since I stopped studying and brain function is almost back to normal. Only the occasional errant letter or two. Lesson of the night: 4 hours of straight school work is probably a few hours too many.