Published in The Siskiyou, November 28, 2005

It would be easier to study if life didn’t get in the way. If nails didn’t need trimming and clothes didn’t need washing and naps didn’t need to be taken to get through the next 10 hours of the day. It would be easier to study if professors didn’t schedule 8 a.m. classes while you can’t become a morning person for the life of you.

It would be easier to study if you remembered to put the water in the add-water soup so your microwave wouldn’t catch on fire and turn your entire studio into a smoky haze. It would be easier to study if your toilet didn’t decide to turn on you by dumping gallons of water onto your bathroom floor and the living room carpet and out into the hallway. Easier still if the water didn’t continue its unwelcome journey through your floorboards and into the shop below where the owner loses a $6000 sale because your toilet ruined his merchandise.

It would be easier to study if you didn’t have friends, if your run-on mouth didn’t insist on hour long conversations to your girlfriends about the 8 a.m. classes and the fiery microwave and the water pouring out of your apartment. It would be easier to study if your friends didn’t have crises of their own, if your best friend didn’t wind up with boyfriends who turned out to be sex offenders and drug addicts and alcoholics and newly-transsexuals who find they’d rather be with men.

It would be easier to study if you could get your head out of the clouds, if your mind wasn’t constantly engaged with events from the past and hopes for the future. It would be easier to study if you could let go of things you wished you’d said and things you plan to say when the time is right.

It would be easier to study if the first snow didn’t lovingly christen your pea coat or the fall leaves didn’t crunch under your feet, if pizza and the next DVD of Six Feet Under didn’t call to you on a Friday night. It would be easier to study if you weren’t juggling four instant message windows and listening to your new favorite CD and cooking dinner while remembering to add the water this time.

It would be easier to study if you didn’t save all your term papers for finals week and have to stay up for 72 hours straight to write a 10-page Neo-Aristotelian analysis of a rhetorical discourse, a 10-page analysis of a literary text, and 10 pages on who-knows-what since you haven’t yet bothered to look at the syllabus.

It would be easier to study if you didn’t have to work, if you didn’t end up staying an hour after the end of your shift to sit and chat with your supervisor. It would be easier to study if you didn’t have to register, apply for graduation, buy supplies, find library books, log onto computers, meet with groups, and find extra-curricular activities to supplement your application to grad school or your resume for your next job.

It would be easier to study if you weren’t reading this column. But what fun would that be?

Copyright © 2005 Shannon Luders-Manuel