As I sit and type away, my computer brightness is irrationally low. I keep it that way because my eyes can’t take it anymore. My eyes can’t keep up with how much I’ve been typing and clicking and reading. My pupils glaze over from the sentences stacked on sentences. Those baby browns dart back and forth as I organize the overabundance of files on my desktop.
They water up and pulse, begging for a break. Only I have to tell them to keep going because this assignment is due at midnight. Once I’ve finished that assignment, it’s time to work on the other assignment, which is due before class tomorrow morning. That assignment will take me into the late hours of the night, and then I can fall asleep with the fluorescent white light of my screen still imprinted on my eyelids.
I look up from my screen, and my eyes take their break. Only now, my gaze sees that it’s 11:00 pm. It’s an hour to midnight, and there’s so much more to do. I tell myself not to break down and to finish writing this piece. I watch my cursor blink for me to type my next few words. It taunts me, disappearing then reappearing. I’m going to be staring at that teasing cursor for the next few hours as I finish my midterm projects.
If the sporadic writing isn’t enough to gather my current state of being, my midterms this year have left me with a certain mania. As an art student, my midterms manifest not as exams but as art projects. One art project went from designing a full concept for the past month to constructing three different presentations with two days of preparation in between each. Another project calls for three individual InDesign documents spanning over 100 pages each. All this to exclaim that for weeks now, I’ve been staring at a screen.
I’ve never realized how violent the white page could be until now. Now that I’m scrolling through 100 of those white pages and checking my grammar mistakes. I just try to remember it’ll all be over soon. I take a breath, then take a drink of water, and type my last sentence. I look up…for 15 minutes before I go back to my desk to finish formatting my last ten pages.