Lesson Learned

Next time I decide to drink two cups of coffee at night, in order to "get some studying done," anyone and everyone has the unalienable right to ask me, "Haven't you learned your lesson already?"
As Peter Dennis wisely suggested last night on the phone, being awake does not necessarily guarentee that the mind is engaged. Here I was, trying to learn all the different muscles surrounding the knee joint, when all of a sudden, I could not distinguish between them. The lower extremity all became one huge muscle, and the printed text, which was gallently trying to separate it out, refused to traverse the path from my sensation to my cognition. I put it all away relatively early.
Since I could still feel my heart racing from the caffeine overdose, I decided to calm myself with some Adrienne Von Speyr, a 20th century female theologian. One page, then half a page more, then incomprehension. I put that away, too.
And I was still awake.
I turned out the light at midnight.
During the course of the next hour, my mind shouted incoherent noise: "gracilis muscle-!!-medially rotates the knee-...-no, laterally-!!-no, biceps femoris-!!-attaches in two places...etc." It was almost painful. Now I know what people mean when they say they're tired and can't sleep. But I have no excuses; my experience was due to very poor judgement, and not a pathological condition.
I woke up exhausted, still maintaining a pulse rate of 80+.
"I swear by gingko," Peter Dennis declares.

I could swear by something right now....