Last fall when I started graduate school my sense of proportion seemed healthy. I took the required number of courses and earned straight As. I completed two freelance jobs. And though I always seemed to be working on papers and reading, there was time to spend with the people I love. Maybe the seven years I spent in the “real world” free from school strengthened my immunity to the guilt I witnessed in other grad students, who seemed to take school much too seriously. But it had been a hard summer: too much death.

I won the fellowships I applied for in winter while I watched what I didn’t know about Italian and Russian literature eclipse what I knew exponentially. Questions multiplied like rabbits. Answers, on the other hand, bloomed like yuccas: beautifully, slowly.

It seemed logical to call upon my experience working on set and behind the scenes in the film industry, where no alternative to getting the shot exists: on set, “impossible” is not an option. I would tackle the challenge of learning an immense body of knowledge as anyone on set confronts a film production dilemma. As on most film sets, I threw personal safety and well-being to the wolves. It seemed to follow that I should be able to learn more if I could devote more of my time to my studies. I sacrificed my time away from my books. And the quality, and amount of work I accomplished, remained the same as it had the first quarter.

Now I face down the last two weeks of spring quarter with what seems to be an insane pile of work. The time stretching ahead of me appears inadequate, my brain too slow. Will I complete it? Will I decide to forfeit perfect grades and request an “incomplete” in order to spend the first weeks of summer finishing spring course work? I can sit for hours in front of my computer screen, trying to outline a paper that will write itself. The time left for writing the paper is slipping away.

On my birthday, death and seven years of life outside academia melt away. Guilt rises at the thought of abandoning my books to see my family. It’s absurd. Where did the perspective go? When did it vanish? My family planned an ambush for my birthday: I succumbed. I didn’t crack a book this afternoon, but I ate two kinds of cake.

Is it failure I’m facing, or courage? I persist, clueless as to whether I’ll get everything done this time or whether, for the first time, I’ll come up short. With twice the required courseload, I’ve raised the stakes. What do I call what I’ve been given today? Family? Love? Perspective? An immunization against guilt?

All I know for sure is that I wouldn’t trade it for a bigger, better brain.