Academic Bulimia

For the past 24 hrs or so, I've been binging on every scrap of SLP-related material I could find. It was a crazed, driven need to consume as much knowledge as I could stuff into my brain. I barely slept. I lay in bed last night, thinking about where I could get another fix. I woke up this morning with a buzz from all the words and concepts I'd consumed. I was so full but I knew I wanted more. I needed more.

I scrounged in my desk for every learning addict's favorite tool...my #2 pencil. I found 2...but no sharpener! Feeling anxious and rushed, I added a stop at Allen's to my itinerary. I hurried through the aisles and in the bad, yellow lighting, I felt like I was in some Napolean Dynomite horror-flick. I grabbed premium grade pencils..the ones that were already sharpened, and headed to the cooler for a juice. From there, it was to the bakery for a convenient breakfast donut. I realized that my 2-day binge on communication disorders was hitting critical when I passed a tottering old woman shuffling by me with her cart. Patient displays tremor in the neck and shoulder areas. Gate seems unaffected. How's her speech? Oral-mech. Assymetry? Weakness? Dysarthria? type...Degenerative. Parkinson's? LSVT. Motor-speech. Dr. Dromey!

On my way out the door, I passed a girl about my age, hovered over the trash can. As I passed by, I realized we were the same. She was hurridly sharpening a handful of #2 pencils. "I bought the pre-sharpened ones," I said. "Oh. I thought about that, but they were more expensive," she replied. "I know, but today I decided to go for conveience instead of cost." I got in my car and drove away.

After circling all the faculty and staff lots like a vulture waiting for the lions to have their fill of the wildabeast, I finally settled for the long walk up the hill. I wanted to get out and find my testing center, my desk, a place to organize my #2 pencils, but I couldn't get out of the car without one more fix from the large blue book of SLP knowledge sitting in my front seat. I kept flipping pages. One more fact. One more scrap of knowledge to get me through the test.

Mentally licking my fingers from the quick fix I just had in the car and literally wiping chocolate frosting off my face, I trudged up the hill to the Praxis. The lobby was buzzing with elementary ed teachers, health ed, chemistry majors, and more. I found the only other aspiring SLP and we engaged in nervous small talk until we were ushered in to take the test. I lined up my #2 pencils and waited to vomit my knowledge into 120 small ovals in varying columns of A-E. Two hours later, after having regurgitated what felt like everything I had pumped into my system, I walked out, came home, and crashed. Now the 3 week wait begins to see if I passed my standardized intervention or if the binge will start all over, again.