First it was the holidays, then it was ALL the snow but finally, I am now, officially in revision mode.  In my previous incarnation as a student,  I would have told you I was studying for my finals.  Calling it exam revision makes it sound somewhat foreign and exotic.  I assure you, the sensation is a strange melange of both with hints of procrastinative panic.
How is it possible that I find myself rewriting notes from lectures that I can't remember actually ever having sat in now?   I believe memory is the ability to store, retain and recall information.  I have evidence of storage.  I recognize my handwriting and that fact somehow helps to calm me.  There are even suggestions of retention, when odd, random flashes of recognition occasionally flit across my memory banks to cheer me.  But I'm afraid that recall may be dangerously compromised.  I can't say with any confidence that much has affixed itself to the necessary lobes of of my frontal cortex. The kids are wildly impressed with how much time and effort they have watched me expend.  It has definitely taken the pressure off of all of them.  I am chronically otherwise engaged and they are loving being off my radar.  Everything is still getting done around the house, only less often and with less vim, vigour and laser beam scrutiny.  Meanwhile, I am fearful that they are mistaken in applauding my apparent busy-ness.  I  suspect they may actually be witnessing what can only be described as flawed, outdated and desperate technique.  I started off with a Gatling gun approach.  I used a spraying of all available surfaces with information approach to see if something might stick.  This effort has succeeded in making me more than mildly anxious. I have now narrowed the eleven plus weeks down to some one hundred pages of typed and now annotated notes.  I am massaging reams of data into my brain in every possible second available in the waning hours before exam day dawns, this Thursday.
 Still I have survived, thus far and will have to be ready. Bring it on.
-- Deborah Gale