The Alaska State Writing Consortium
Northern Lit - ASWC's eZine

Open My Eyes, Open My Mind

Laura

It’s a Monday morning in Biology class and like every other sleep-deprived teenager I’m struggling to keep my head up above snooze level. Suddenly the weight of my eyelids seems to have grown from half an ounce to 100lbs and I’m sliding down in my chair. (What a better time than to exercise the other four senses-the ones other than sight-to maybe better enhance my learning ability?) It's moments like these when I really wonder if this class is really that important, why I stayed on the phone until one in the morning and am I drooling? If so, is it really that unattractive? Other questions that cross my mind are along the lines of why didn’t I just stay home from school and sleep today? How and when in his life did my teacher inherit this monotone voice? And is it I who is letting out these monstrous snores or is it really my sleeping desk-neighbor?

Since my eyes are obviously of no use to me at this point, I decide to put my other four senses to use. My first instinct is to inhale deeply through my nose to, in a sense, promote relaxation and also prevent drool from seeping out of an otherwise open mouth. I’m naturally a mouth-breather (or so says my dentist who practically drowns me while rinsing my teeth) and so up until this point I hadn’t realized the amount of classmates I have who take gym class before Biology. Trust me, I realized pretty quickly.

So my sense of smell is definitely in tact, (even more so than I had realized) but I still had three more “neglected” senses left to test. At this point, I give up on taste-believe me, peanut butter crackers are great at breakfast, but dwelling on the after taste that remains for another four hours is not on my agenda. So now I move to the sense of touch. I let my fingers crawl across my binder. Ok, item number one: a binder. Feels like: a binder. No big surprise or revelation there. Item number two: a desk. Feels like: a desk with a few small drool puddles-that I have to claim because I’d rather have to admit to sticking my hand in my own drool than that of my classmates-that feel like a few small drool puddles. My senses grow bored.

My experiment, mainly due to the body-odor-stench and drool puddles, has left me a little more alert of my surroundings, and farther from sleep than I’d expected. But I still have one more sense to exercise. I listen closely to every monotone syllable uttered by my teacher, and for a few seconds it sounded somewhat English to me. However, every second beyond that is Greek to me. No matter how hard I try, all that I can hear is a drone of connected words that in every way resembled the teachers’ constant “Mwa, mwa mwa mwa mwa,” in Charlie Brown. I can’t help but be distracted from the mumbo jumbo by the rhythmic tapping of a pencil on paper, and the clapping of a sneaker on the slick waxed floor.

Finally I decide to use my eyesight once again (the one sense that I’ve felt I use more than anything)-although it does take some brain power to force open from their sleepy state-and suddenly, the teachers’ words become English and I understand very well the correlation between his lecture and the jumbo-sized bacterium on the screen behind him. So the use of my other senses didn’t quite enhance my learning experience as much as I’d imagined (a sudden super-sense being quite like Hellen Keller had been forming in my head.) Before this day, I have never really realized how much of a visual learner I am, how for some reason I have to be able to see the person speaking to understand what he or she is saying. By opening my eyes I am opening my mind, and by opening my mind I’m readying myself for new information.

It’s a Tuesday morning in Biology class and I slap myself awake. I’m aware that my sudden swift movements and “smack, smack” sound effects have awoken my neighbor who abruptly stops snoring and wipes the slobber off his desk in one smooth swipe. I realize that sleeping through class is just as good as staying home from school-and since I can’t stay home from school I might as well be awake during class-in which case, my neighbors might as well be awake too since their snoring distracts me from my studying. Call me rude, but I value my education and I know that by opening my mind and my eyes I am opening the doors to my future.