neurogeeks

I got down to class today about five minutes late and sat down in the back at the nearest empty seat. We have a class of 83 so everyone knows who everyone is, so needless to say it was a little weird seeing a face I didn't recognize. I thought for a second I might have walked into 'Introduction to Law' by accident like I did last week, but when I pulled on my first swig of coffee and things started to fall into place, indeed we were talking neuro.

I didn't think much of it as I struggled to understand descending inputs and how they regulate spinal reflexes. I have this block in my brain somehow that leaves me unable to easily process the motor system - perhaps due to years of trying to understand input and perception has lead me to forget that we do take our internal representation and access the world with it. It slips my mind that sometimes it's not so much about thinking but that there's also action on the end of it.

Dr. Yang reaches the midpoint of her lecture and tells us to take our break. The girls are sitting on the far end of the room and Mankeen is a few rows front, so I'm left where I am playing with my iPhone. I turn to the side and my eye catches the paper of the student next to me, the stranger who has invaded our class. She is reading a review on representation of music in the brain so naturally neurogeek in me kicks in and I ask her if this is her thesis because I wrote a paper on auditory-motor integration in musicians for my Current Issues in Cognitive Neuroscience class in my last year of undergrad.

She begins to talk about how she is under the tutelage of Dr. Westbury, a noted language researcher, and my brain immediately shuts off because a) I'm not interested in that field and b) she's really pretentious. I find it amazing because here she is in a class full of PTs with the uncensored belief that she is better than all of us. "I took this course to get an easy A+; I would be extremely upset if I got under 90" comes out of her mouth, and I have officially tuned her out.

My fellow neurogeek, I am one of you, yet you see me as one of them. When I am with them, they see me as one of you. So here I lie again, on the lam, neither neurogeek nor PT, but straddling the line between both worlds.

Nothing is black and white. Or is it nothing is black or white?