On sleepless roads the sleepless go

Sighing I shut the lid to my laptop. Done, I say to myself. That last homework assignment only took me 12 hours to complete. It wasn’t hard exactly, just long.

Who am I fooling, it was hard.

‘The first part of your midterm will be posted online tomorrow, there will be both a written part and a project requiring the use of MATLAB,’ Dr. Adams foreboding voice rings through my mind with a hint of dread. I slip my contacts out and feel the instant relief.

I’m sure I could have written better code for that last problem, I think. A for loop maybe? I’m sure I did it the hard way. Maybe I should redo—stop! I shake my head slightly in an attempt to clear it. It’s done. The matrix images turned out correctly. It’ll be ok.

The soft hum of the electric toothbrush is soothing while it massages my gums. I will need to be familiar with all 3 ways to project a vector onto the range of A. The SVD is easy enough, QR factorization, and then, uh, does that other one have a name? Of course all of that depends on the matrix having full rank.

Back in my bedroom I slip on my favorite chemise, the white one with blue flowers printed on it. Then there was that one homework problem on the eigenvalue decomposition of a matrix, why didn’t we cover that in class? It sure helped knowing U and V are unitary. “Ugh,” I hiss under my breath as I sit on the edge of my bed. I’ll never get to sleep like this, I need an ‘off’ switch.

Glancing down I see the one thing that will save me. I slide off my bed and onto the floor grabbing my electric guitar conveniently sitting on its stand just feet away. The smooth white surface is familiar to my fingers; a small grin appears on my face. Playing a handful of chords I test the sound before jumping into my most recent song project. A very simple song but the beat just makes it fun to play.

All thoughts of math and homework are quickly slipping away. I wonder to myself, where is my music for that Jimmy Eat World song I love so much? Switching to the acoustic guitar and grabbing my capo I play through the chords, my smile increasing as I go. I can almost hear his voice singing,

May angels lead you in.
Hear you me my friends.
On sleepless roads the sleepless go.
May angels lead you in.

Before long I gently place my guitar back on its stand where she waits to save my sanity another day.