It's That Time Again...

It's come down to the last two weeks of the semester for me and for MLC.

She had a paper due today and one due Wednesday.

I have a paper due on Thursday. It's the one about the neurogenic hypothesis for depression. It was interesting. It was exciting. Until about 1 PM today, when I realized that I still have about 5 pages to write and I am absolutely sick of the subject! I will be glad--glad!--when I hear that the hypothesis isn't so hot after all!

I have reached that point where I find myself dreaming about French Polynesia in the middle of a sentence about how SSRI's up regulate adult neurogenesis in the granular layer of the hippocampus. Soon I will be asking myself the existential questions:

Where do we come from?

What are we?

Where are we going?

And I know that I will truly have had enough when begin I answer them in neuroscientific jargon (with apologies to Paul Gauguin):

Where do we come from? Our memory for location appears to be formed in the posterior portions of the hippocampus.

What are we? Neurons that fire together wire together.

Where are we going? A genetic predisposition for depression can be triggered by environmental influences such as stress.

But my questions will continue with the one that plagues all graduate students as the final weeks of the semester loom large before them:

What was I thinking, anyway?

But no, I refuse to even try to answer that one!

French Polynesia is looking better and better. Sun. Sand. Palm trees...

...and no environmental stress.

I wonder if I have enough frequent flyer miles?

Hmmm. I'll check that out, as soon as I finish discussing the problems with the neurogenic hypothesis.