Despite my lack of being a math major, I am more than familiar with tangents.

A tangent is a straight line that touches, but doesn’t cross through, a curve at a particular point. At least, that’s what Wikipedia says, and I believe everything on that website. That mad cow disease sure is scary.

Tangents aren’t exclusive to geometric equations, however. They’re also prominent in my brain.

As one thought enters and leaves my brain, so often it reminds me of something completely off-topic but is just barely related. The process repeats until I’ve gone from talking about what to eat for lunch to complaining that I don’t shop at Hollister because I’m never confident that I’m still in the men’s department. Then my friends act like I’m weird.

And no, I didn’t try on women’s clothes at Hollister.

My tendency to stray completely off topic can be very harmful in the classroom. I often miss important notes in class because while listening to the lecture, I notice how the professor’s tie is off-center. This leads me to wonder how many different knots there are to use when tying a neck-tie; I know there are more than a couple but I know nothing about them because I have to look up a video tutorial on YouTube and tie whatever that video says to do. YouTube sure has gotten big all of a sudden. That reminds me of an early episode of the Office, when Michael Scott said, “I hope YouTube comes down to film this,” one of my favorite quotes from that show. I miss Michael. The show isn’t as good without him, and lately Andy just seems like he’s turning into Michael, which is just wrong.

See what I mean?

It’s a problem.

Luckily my grades haven’t suffered due to my over-working brain. Just think, if I could put all this thinking to really constructive use rather than realizing that I don’t actually like Jim Carrey’s movies (with two exceptions), who knows what I could accomplish.

I know I’m not the only one who deals with tangents outside of the math lab. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not.