Laboratory

The most stressful time of the week is the night before the laboratory period. My room ends up littered with bits of crumpled up paper and I have too many tabs open to see, like one of those rainy days when there are too many ominously charcoal clouds dancing above my head so they all blend into a great storm. I've never understood why there are two velocities, or why I should care that igneous rock is the one vomited out by fuming volcanoes. No one has ever baited me onto the hook that some people describe as the pull of curiosity. I don't understand tedious lectures that leave me, pen in hand, mouth open, gazing at the red hand of the clock as it tick, tick, ticks around the world.

Am I supposed to include the data tables? Or are they supposed to make home inside my right brain, pull up a chair and stay a while until they can't pay the rent? Am I supposed to write a page about the discovery of the metric system? Or would it be better to cut the feet off and scamper under my duvet and dream about it instead? Nothing makes sense to me now. It is as though someone has placed a large glass plane between me and the task at hand, and I can only scrape longingly at the image of something that should be tangible. That is, if I even belong here at all.