Just Make it to the Kitchen...

After surveying the notes I took in my Organizational Behaviors class today, I realized the severity of the hold caffeine has over my academic performance. I got out of my Hydrogeology class early enough today to stop by the Nest and pick up one of their crappy mochas before my Org class, sucked down half of it before class, and gently sipped the rest during class. I ended up making complex sketches and diagrams that put most other uncaffeinated days to shame. This same thing happened for when I took my first art history course, where I would just slide into a slump without coffee, but sketch out the facades of cathedrals if I had made a trip to Caribou right before class.

From where I stand, there's a few ways to take this:

1. I gain caffeine superpowers that allow me to do the impossible, or at the very least, do regular stuff really really fast and with surprising accuracy. I usually stand by this theory.

2. The material is such that it cannot be handled without the effects of some sort of stimulant. I usually don't like giving thigs such an external locus of control, but you try and sit through multiple lectures about groundwater movement and then we'll talk.

3. Because of my lack of an addiction to drinking, smoking, or drugs, my body decided it would just take a more socially acceptable addiction in the form of caffeine. I mean, these days, who isn't addicted to one thing or another? It might as well be something glamorized by hipsters, high power executives, and the stylishly busy.

I know when I was younger, I scoffed the idea of drinking that cliché coffee every mom and dad seemed to need to function, and even worse was my opinion of tea as just warm water that tasted like plants. So I went without and did fine. But once my tastes changed along with my needs, I found out that I am very much a coffee person. In fact, so much so that the very act of brewing coffee triggered a response in me to be more productive. Even if I wasn't really craving the taste, the process of brewing coffee in my (then) dorm room combined with the smell gave me the strength to face a few hours of writing a paper in a foreign language.

I've since evolved from my little four cup coffee maker and industrial sized canister of Folgers. My ($30!) coffee/espresso machine, bean grinder, five kinds of coffee in various states of use, three kinds of espresso in a similar situation, and silos of creamer and sugar can attest to this.

All that said, this year my beverage of choice for when I'm about to get into the long haul of studying has slowly morphed into tea. I'm not exactly sure who or what I can blame for that turn of events, but all I know is that it's happening. Though for the sake of argument, let's blame Chrispy for the hot tea. Cold tea is a different beast, since I got hooked on one form of green tea or another since I kicked my soda habit.

In any case, I'm quickly becoming much more of a fan of the effects of tea's caffeine. When I'm just sitting in one place and trying to read, I can either be thrown into the deep end with coffee, or I can wade my way there with tea, and my body is favoring the latter as of late.

But what all of that boils down to is that I've accidentally become (or am on the slippery slope towards becoming) that adult who "can't function without that first cup of coffee in the morning," and it scares me a bit. I don't like the idea of being dependent on something to achieve normalcy. It's a frightening world where a beverage is the difference between success and failure in any given organization.

With that said: Coffee? Tea? Let's have an open relationship. I can choose to see you from time to time, and you can be with others as well. I know that I'll be prone to wanting you, needing you, or just having you because it's convenient, but I just don't feel up to setting this relationship as anything concrete or going on indefinitely. It's for the best.