As the night dragged sluggishly on, sleep became an elusive dream for both Felix and I. Lying awake in our bed, our sunken eyes fixed on the ceiling. We observed a weird thing; the previously white surface of the ceiling had taken a different color. A weird one. I couldn't exactly pitch figure out what it was, but it seemed really weird. The heat of the night did little to ease our discomfort . It felt like someone had escaped from the death of hell to earth, and the devil in turn decided to punish him and everyone else on earth. There was no light and we'd been fanning ourselves with a plastic fan we made locally. We’d left the windows open, but that still wasn't enough to dry our sweats.
“When should we start reading?” The stillness of the night was finally broken by Felix’s voice. He asked me this question while still staring at the ceiling. The question sent me into a long range of thoughts, pierced my heart and tore them into tiny pieces. “I wish I could stop reading, Felix. I wish I’d never come here in the first place. I wish I’d never come to this hell hole called university.” I whispered to myself, making sure not a single word escaped my mind. I longed to voice the truth, to share my pain and ease the burden of my soul, but I could not bring myself to speak those words, for fear of shattering Felix’s heart.
“When should we start reading?” Felix asked again. Like a persistent thorn, his question pierced my heart. I got up and started pacing round the room. “This is just 1am. We still have a lot of time.” I said. Deep down, I knew I had just uttered the most stupid thing ever. I knew time was not on our side and we shouldn't be wasting a second not studying. We had been pulling all nighters all week, flipping through one page to another. Our eyes red and sunken. I remember the previous night. We had tackled a course that required us to revise over 30 books. We studied and prepared for the exam, reading for a whole day with some breaks in between, of course.
We were both weak, Felix and I. Every atom of energy in us eroded as the weight of our studies crashed against us. But we couldn't give up. Not even when we have come this far. Not when we had the toughest course the next day. “Discuss analysis and pragmatics” the course kept ringing bells in my ears. Not only was it wide, it was also complex. To worsen the case, we had three different lecturers teaching the course, and none of them were able to explain it well. The whole class didn't understand a thing in the course, so it was up us to go extra miles, read other books and resources online. We had to teach ourselves.
Now, it was on us to cover the whole syllabus in one night. And there I was trying to convince Felix that we still had time.
“Favour!” He called out, his voice seeming distant even though he was right beside me. The weight of the course, the awkward silence and the sweltering heat had dulled my senses.
“Okay, okay. Let's start reading now.” I said, not wanting him to go on about the countless PDFs we had to cover . I turned on my lamp which I fully charged during the day with plans to tackle the course at night. We sat down on the floor, surprisingly the most comfortable spot in the room for studying. But after about 20 minutes, nature won the war. Nature claimed its victory. You really cannot beat nature. We crashed. My hands felt like they were glued in place, and my eyelids refused to open. I didn't even bother to fight it, I just surrendered to sleep. Felix had the same experience too.
We slept for about 8 hours, and when we woke up, our body was ready to tackle the course. After eating breakfast, we started reading at exactly 10 am. We tackled the course till the next night. I realized that as a student, our body needs rest. Especially after long study sessions, all you need is some good rest and good food, and you'll be ready to take on the day.
This is my submission to the Inleo prompt suggestion for the month of April. The topic is: Studying techniques are very important to learn in an efficient way, what are yours? Do you know unconventional learning methods?