Relief broke out across my face as I found the top step. Never before had those three flights of stairs seemed so torturous. Then again, never before had I faced them with only four hours of stored energy to spare. I trudged into the room for my psychology class – the object of my sleep depravity. The classroom was still empty – despite my glacial ascending – which did not come as a shock. Seeing as the report was due today, I doubted many would show.

I fell limp into my chair and sprawled my arms and head across the desk. The silence of the room was numbing and I was going to savor it. Nothing but the clock, the rhythm of my lullaby. Tick. Tock. My breathing slowed to match the clock and everything else slowly began slipping away. Tick. Tock.

The assignment was routine. At the end of each chapter, we wrote a paper assessing and reflecting on what we had learned. This last week had been centered around the Perceptual Consideration Theory. The basic idea was that people needed to be in tune and perceptual to other’s ways of thinking in order to function as a group. You have to be mindful of your own thoughts, as well as others. By studying and writing a paper on this theory, though, we were witnessing it in action. No one in this class had birthed the theory yet they all took it in and considered it. They listened and learned from what others had to say. The teacher had made the comparison that you should have your mind open enough to let ideas flow in and out but not so wide that your common sense fell out.

I was distantly aware of others in the room now, but I did not open my eyes. I was still savoring. Tick. Tock. I listened more intently to the clock as more of my classmates shuffled in. I counted as the steady seconds pass away. At sixty, I heard a a new sound – the minute hand moving forward. I counted again. I paid more attention to the sounds of the seconds this time and noticed they did not match. The “ticks” and “tocks” were still there but in between, there were new sounds, neither “ticks” nor “tocks”. Perhaps I was hearing the muffled clocks from the adjacent classrooms. Maybe the Road Runner was our substitute for today. No matter the source, the silence was gone. My head filled with the noises surrounding me. Tick. Tock. Beep. Beep. Tick. Beep.

I surrendered to the impromptu be-bop symphony that had broken out around me. I raised my head and when I did, I found the source of the beeps. The classroom was full, – something I was not expecting – and everyone’s thumbs were busy typing away on their cell phones.Their faces were focused, zoned into their little hand-held world – unaware of anything that was not their own acronym infested conversation. Beep. Beep.

Below me, in my bag, I heard the agonizingly piercing beep of my own phone. I opened it to find a message from Shandee, who was waving at me from the next row of seats. The message read: did u no we had a papr do 2day? on wut?