The cramming phenomenon

I often like to think of my brain as a computer with only a limited amount of processing power. And as such I have to allocate the processing power to things that really matter at the current moment, which is cramming and finding whatever gaps I have in my knowledge before the exams that are only a mere few days away. And as such I see my periphery starting to fade away. Such examples can include the blog, where I will probably post less often to reallocate time for studying (it does take a bit of time for me to think up about such content) for the past month or so. However other things are obviously my social life (where my phone has been inactive for weeks) as well as my health, which is a problem as I am finding it more easy to stay at home and study rather than go outside to work. 

However the phenonmenon is not this. Rather it is something much more amazing. Because of my lack of movement around the city, the world has suddenly closed in on me to the point that the world is my home, and that everything around me is just a backdrop that I can't reach, with laziness and time the only thing holding me back, the latter being more potent. Often when I do have to go out to eat, everything in between starts to become gray matter to me and the only parts of the city that are part of my world is the malls and the restaurants that I usually go to. This is the phenomenon that I see. 

Whenever I think about this I can't help but recall my English teacher's evaluation of the book entitled Room written by Emma Donoghue. This was based on a true story where a boy's mother is trapped in a room where she would be raped by a man that came in from time to time. Of course in reality the man was the woman's father, and it is at this point that makes me wonder what it is that drive people to do such, not only evil, but sick things for such evil motives. However I digress.

What makes me recall this book is that the child starts to think of the room as his world, and whatever is outside can never be reached, as if it was some sort of backdrop. Similarly, I see the world start to close in, although not to such an extent that I think of a place such as the room as my home. However finally for once in my life, I can finally see how the boy can comprehend the room as a home, as I could never have done so before. 

Alas, I have much to do again and I must leave. I will try to post whenever possible (or not at all) for the next month of which my examinations take place but afterwards I will be back to regualar posting and probably more often as I start to invest my time (processing power) into more extra curricular activites.

Cheers,

Matthew Tan