I worry sometimes

Actually, I worry a lot, but that's just my nature and I no longer worry about the fact that I worry all the time. This particular worry is something I only worry about sometimes and consider it worthy of further worry... I worry that I'm getting dumber.

When I was in Korean class long, long ago, I noticed that I would have trouble thinking of simple words in English. This wasn't too surprising considering the level of intensity in the Korean program; if I was dreaming in Korean, surely it'd seeped into my brain enough to affect some pretty basic parts of my thought process. But then it started to spread into my writing. Suddenly, I'd be unsure of how to spell things - words I hadn't had a problem with before - and my grammar was even worse. I had to seriously think about where to put commas and quotation marks. I'd never in my life had to think about a comma!

Wednesday I was reading in a textbook about some important thinker. I'd had a class in the anthropology department that covered similar topics so I was rather surprised that I couldn't seem to recall a single bit of information about him or what he did. The name sounded familiar enough though that I went through my computer files and found a five page essay I had written on the dude! Now, not remembering the paper in and of itself isn't too big of a deal. I recall writing every paper in that class in the middle of the night before it was due, finishing barely in time to print it out and pull on a pair of pants before catching the bus. What concerned me is that not only did I not remember any of the content, but I had trouble understanding it. Look, I've never been a genius, so it's not like it was a really high level, mind blowing critique. My past self shouldn't be able to write above the reading comprehension level of my supposedly more-educated present self, right?

And so, I worry.