mmmm, how i love wads of foam in my ears

so during finals of first semester last year, i saw people studying with earplugs. and i thought they were freaks. neurotic, weird, pathetic freaks. and then i tried it. and ooooh, how i loved it.

it only got worse during finals second semester. somehow there was something about shoving little balls of re-expanding foam into my ears that said it was finals, but i was ok b/c i was blocking out the clacking of keys and the loud breathing of everyone else around me. and then, at some point, it brought me peace. i'm not quite sure why. perhaps it has something to do with the fact that they kinda provide their own white noise, b/c they don't really block out sound and they kinda reverberate what's in your head, which was what i initially thought would be awful (there's a lot going on in my head), but then i guess is what came to be so reassuring about them. i even wore them sometimes during the summer.

but i hadn't returned to them this semester. until today. i was trying to use my iPOD, but the thing about the iPOD is that it doesn't block out any of the external distracting noise, and then it provides more distracting noise. so i can't do it. at least not always. so now i have re-discovered my earplugs and i have a sense of peace. not a sense of knowing anything about first amendment law. but a sense that at least the freakishly loud air vents in the klaus reading room are muted by my earplugs. and at least that's something.