That Time My Brain Turned to Radio Static Mid-Biology Final
It was spring 2019, second year at community college, I’d pulled three straight half-nighters (I fell asleep on my flashcards at 2 a.m. two nights in a row) cramming for that intro bio final. I drank a large iced coffee on the walk over, it was 50 degrees out and my fingers were numb through my thrifted gloves, but I needed the caffeine to stay alert. The exam room was in the old science building, smelled like faint formaldehyde and lemon floor wax the janitor had mopped with that morning, the proctor was the TA I’d grabbed coffee with after lab a few weeks prior, the one who lent me a pen when I forgot mine. I sat down, flipped open the exam, aced the first multiple choice about cell membranes, got to question two: Name the four main stages of cellular respiration.
And then nothing.
I’m not talking like I mixed up the order, or forgot one name. I’m talking full, total blank. My brain went as empty as the crumpled chip bag I’d finished on the walk over. I blinked, rubbed my gritty eyes, double-checked that I’d read the question right. Yep. Four main stages. That’s it. I’d repeated those four names walking around my dorm kitchen the night before, while my roommate burned microwave popcorn and complained about her statistics homework. I’d written them over and over on a scrap of paper until my hand cramped. I could even picture the neon pink flashcard I’d made for it, tucked into the back of my notebook. But I couldn’t get a single name to pop up.
The whole row next to me was scratching away at their papers, the TA leaned against the front desk scrolling her phone, and I could feel my palms starting to sweat through the exam paper. The ink on the question smudged a little where my hand was resting. I sipped my iced coffee and it was already warm, tasted like bitter cardboard, and I almost choked because my throat had gone tight out of nowhere. Everyone says just breathe, right? Just breathe, you know this. I breathed in deep. All I could think was I don’t know this, I don’t know anything, I’m gonna fail this class and have to retake it and pay another $500 for nothing.
I’ve had this happen so many times, it’s not even just big tests. Last month my manager asked me for the last name of the graphic designer we’ve worked with for a year, the one I text with at least twice a week, and I stood there by the copy machine staring at her like she’d asked me to name all the moons of Jupiter. I couldn’t even remember my own last name for ten whole seconds. It’s the weirdest feeling, isn’t it? Like someone snuck into your brain while you weren’t looking and cleared out all the files, left nothing but static.
I sat there staring at that biology question for 15 minutes, I think. Finally I got up to go to the bathroom, splashed cold water on my face, stared at my red-eyed self in the mirror and tried to yell at my brain to get it together. No luck. It was still just static. When I walked back to my seat, I thought, whatever. I’ll just do the rest of the test, maybe it’ll come to me. I skipped question two, moved on to the matching, the diagram labeling, the long answer about photosynthesis. I was halfway through writing about chlorophyll when suddenly, there they were. Glycolysis, Krebs cycle, electron transport chain, oxidative phosphorylation. Just popped into my head, uninvited, like they’d been standing behind the door the whole time waiting for me to stop knocking. I almost laughed out loud in the middle of the silent exam. I scribbled them down as fast as I could before they hid again.
It doesn’t always work out that way, though. I failed my first road test because of this. I’d practiced parallel parking every afternoon for two weeks, in my mom’s old beat-up minivan, she sat next to me yelling “turn the wheel the other way, goddamnit” until I got it perfect. I could park between two cones first try every time, no problem. Got to the test, the instructor just nodded at the empty spot on the side of the road and said “pull in there.” And I forgot. I forgot which way to turn the wheel. I’m not exaggerating. My brain just went blank. I turned the wrong way, tapped the curb hard enough to make the whole car jump, and he marked me as a fail right there. I walked back to the waiting area and my mom asked what happened, and I just said “I forgot how to park.” She thought I was joking. I wasn’t.
People always say it’s because you’re too anxious, or you didn’t actually study it enough, right? If you really knew it, you wouldn’t forget. I call bullshit on that. I knew cellular respiration better than I knew my own phone number that day. I knew how to parallel park better than I knew how to make toast. It’s just… when you need it so bad, your brain panics. It’s like when you’re looking for your keys and you tear the whole apartment apart, and they’re sitting on the kitchen counter the whole time, right in front of you. You’re staring right at them and you can’t see them because you’re too busy panicking that you lost them.
I used to be so embarrassed about it. I’d never tell anyone I blanked, I’d just say I didn’t study enough, that I blew it off. It felt like admitting I was stupid, like I didn’t do the work. Now I just… I don’t know. I still do it. Last week I had a grammar quiz for my English class, and I blanked on what a coordinating conjunction is. A conjunction. I’ve known what that is since 8th grade. Sat there staring at the question for five minutes, started wondering if it was a type of rock or a constellation or something. Turned out I got the question wrong, even though I knew it. It sucked, but I didn’t cry about it or anything.
I still don’t have a trick to fix it. All that “visualize success” or positive self talk stuff just makes me more annoyed. The only thing that ever works for me is just walking away from the question for five minutes, do something else, stop yelling at my brain to give me the answer. Sometimes it shows up, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes you fail, you retake it, you move on. It’s just my brain being that annoying roommate that hides the car keys when you’re already late. Annoying as hell, but it’s just what it does. I stopped taking it personally, mostly. Most days, anyway. (Word count: 1182)
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