LifeFiles: Tossing My Brain Overboard

In pirate movies, there is almost always a naval chase scene. Since you can't have a clipper tear through a fruit stand or narrowly avoid a slow-moving truck, naval chase scenes generally involve a lot of running around on deck and staring through telescopes.

And there always comes that point when the protagonists, in an effort to pick up speed, decide to throw all unnecessary items overboard. Over the side go the cannons, cannonballs and treasure chests. Then not-all-that-heavy things are abandoned, like silverware and the Heart of the Ocean necklace.

This is pretty much what's going on inside of my head right now. But instead of the Royal Navy, academic stress is the thing that's hunting me down.

I'd much prefer the Royal Navy. They've got rum.

Like venereal disease and that Soulja Boy song, stress is something that I try to avoid. Sometimes I can't avoid it, though, and my brain starts to panic. In the pirate ship of my psyche, I start running around and screaming, desperate to get away. But instead of cannons and tea sets, my brain starts sloughing off information.

As mental pressure builds, I forget more and more things. It starts with whatever I've learned most recently. That's not always bad -- I didn't really need those 16th century Welsh-language poems taking up space in my head. But if the anxiety continues, I start to lose more important things. My vocabulary lessens, I forget dates and writing tradition says I should put a third thing here, but I've forgotten it.

I'm guessing that there is some kind of subconscious strategy to this -- the less I have to think about, the more I can concentrate on running away. My brain did something similar when I was dating my wife. But rather than jettisoning knowledge for the sake of escape, I was singularly focused on getting her alone.

Actually, I'm still very much focused on that, which is part of why this "run away" reflex is so frustrating. Also, I'm determined not to give up, so I'm only making things worse with my forgetfulness. I'm stuck in a vicious cycle of forgetting things due to stress and then feeling more intensely pressured to relearn them.

By this point in my semester, the dialogue in my head has reached the stage of being little more than sustained screams of panic broken up by forgetful pauses: "AAAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGHHHH! Uhm ... what was I ... Oh, right. I remember. AAAAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHHH!"

It has occurred to me that perhaps I should be trying one of those fancy stress-relieving techniques that we're always seeing news stories about. Perhaps hot stone massage or acupuncture or cat juggling would do me a world of good. But it has also occurred to me that anyone who has enough time for these activities isn't really all that stressed in the first place.

If I had the spare hour necessary for having someone jab me with pointy things, I'd be a happy chappy. I could use that time supplying rum to the pirates in my head.

Or perhaps it would be moonshine. With Christmas now fast approaching, the cinematic chase scene of my subconscious is also starting to resemble one in which there is a race for the county line.

Of course, in this scenario, the stress increases: Not only do I have to avoid the dogged sheriff of academia, but I must also maneuver around the roadblocks of gift-giving. The requisite washed-out bridge that I must leap is the ordeal of finding a gift that will encourage my wife to spend some alone time with me.

But if I can manage to make it to the holiday break, I know I'll be all right. I'll be able to finally relax and perhaps stop comparing my mental processes to film cliches. Christmas in Britain involves putting booze in everything, so I'm not sure how much remembering I'll be doing, but at least there will be calm. After a few weeks, I'm sure I'll be ready to start the chase again.

Chris Cope lives with his wife in Cardiff, Wales. His column appears every other Tuesday.