Anything but listening to this man. Anything. Even if you don't read this, or if it isn't interesting. Or both.

This morning, I woke up to a very closed-off throat and a very stiff neck and a very foggy mysterious e-mail from a Professor Kramer, in which he reminds my Writing About Literature class that we're meeting in the library today. And it's required. That's all he says. Huh? Where in the library? Where are we meeting? In the library? In the room with the books? Do you have a room number? The library is very big, you know. Did he talk about this last class period? Was I too distracted by the incestuous chewing of the boy with the hamburger sitting in front of me last class period? Obnoxious boy with flippy hair. I swear, I'm missing a lot these days. Big details, like which of the 4230698w32740968702948620957609 rooms in the library my class happens to be meeting in. And why, for heaven's sake, is it required? That makes me nervous. Itchy. Like the lesson is going to be about something I don't know quite know how to grasp. Like research.

I came to campus on time and followed a tan girl who I recognized from class down into the bowels of the HBLL to a locked door, which someone from inside had to open after we banged on it. So, I'm sitting in a locked room. That feels comfortable.

This mysterious class period in the library turned out to be a class period in one of 56392934871293847 big gray box rooms in the bowels full of computers with a guy at the front of the class who is sweet and pale and mustachioed and earnest who is teaching us how to research on lib.byu.edu. Again. So basically I drove to campus to dink around on Facebook and Cake Wrecks for a couple hours. I don't really mind. I almost died when I was driving up the side of the Marriott Center, because my right contact lens popped out spontaneously so I had to stick it in my bubblegum-y mouth and swerve around construction and itch my left thigh and sneeze while holding my right eye closed so as not to impair my vision. Then I had to park, one-eyed, which is not as easy as you think, and then I suctioned the lens back onto my eye with the help of some water from my bottle as soon as I had steadied myself.

I have had several classes arranged for me on this subject, in this room, where the teacher had us meet here, in this room, and lined up one of these cute gray little instructors for us, in this room, and I probably should have paid attention in at least one of the lined-up classes. I should probably be paying attention right now. But I'm not. I'm pretty sure it's impossible. I don't feel too guilty, because I'm in the second row and looking up onto the first row I see five out of eight people either on Facebook or on Gmail or moving their hand slowly in and out in front of their face and giggling despairedly. Me, I'm reading mommy blogs with obnoxious layouts and smacking my gum and my palms against the desk and admiring the watch I'm wearing and wondering why I spent the good part of my morning watching The Others on Oxygen instead of reading about eight hundred chapters. The girl next to me is playing Sudoku, and I'm pretty sure everyone on the back row is hating their lives right now and staying far, far away from the library website. I hear a little bit of tortured moaning from them. One girl has wrapped her gold braided headband around the head of the boy next to her and is flicking the elastic on the back of it onto his ear, repeatedly. A girl with a ponytail down to the backs of her knees is just kind of staring into the nearest fluorescent ceiling light. Staring right into it.
I like Heart of Darkness, I just start to feel stifled and like I'm breathing through a piece of wet cloth when I read it for too long in one sitting. Meaning, I've read it before, meaning, I've only read like forty pages this time around but who's counting?
I hate research.
We've been here for an hour, and people are beginning to crawl towards the walls and climb them, or bang their heads against the baseboards if they're too tired to climb. The door is locked.

If Heart of Darkness is breathing through a piece of wet cloth, being in this room is having my head wrapped in gray itchy felt that smells like my grandmother's coat closet when she used to put mothballs in it. And I can't get it off.


Save me.