Should I be worried by the fact that I'm essentially brain dead?

Next month will mark 21 years since the last time I was officially a student (that's how long it has been since John Carroll University, in a stunningly ill-advised move, conferred upon me a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and History).

I was a pretty darned good college student. And that's because I learned the system.

I learned the secret to getting an "A" in every one of my courses while working nearly full-time and juggling the other everyday responsibilities of life.

I'll let you kids in on what that secret is right now.

(I'm not even sure I'm supposed to be telling you this, but what the heck.)

The secret to academic success and getting good grades is...do the work.

If your professor assigns you reading to do before the next class, do the reading. If you have a paper due next Wednesday, write it and turn it in on time. If you're attending a lecture, pay attention and take notes.

Amazing, right? Like, I should put this into a book and sell it. I'll make millions!

The point being that there IS no secret. There's absolutely no substitute for hard work in school. So work hard and you'll be fine. Don't cut corners. Is that clear? I hope so.

Of course, that assumes your mental faculties are reasonably sharp. And mine were sharp in my late teens and early 20s. I could absorb new material at an astounding rate and spit it back out perfectly in a two-hour exam or 20-page paper. I was just good at it.

But now I'm finding that's not the case anymore.

I know this because I've been taking review classes in an attempt to gain my APR certification through the Public Relations Society of America. APR stands for "Accredited in Public Relations," and as I've explained to people who've asked about it, earning it is the equivalent in my field of saying, "Yes, I know what I'm doing."

The APR process consists of two major elements:

* A one- to two-hour "readiness review" in which you present a PR plan to a group of seasoned professionals to show you understand the elements of research, planning, execution and evaluation.

* A three-hour computer exam in which you answer multiple-choice questions about the art and science of public relations.

I'm not sweating the readiness review, really. That should be fine. It's that darned test that has me a little worried.

Mostly because I am stunningly good at selecting the wrong answer on multiple-choice questions. It's like I have a God-given talent for being wrong. I defy the Law of Averages and all of its corollaries.

And you just know they'll throw some tricky questions in there. Like the ones where answer A and answer B both sound right, and one of your choices (answer C, the one you should apparently always default to if you're not sure) is "Both A and B." I HATE THAT! DARN YOU, TEST-MAKERS!

Then there's this: As part of the very helpful series of review classes I'm taking, we have to read significant chunks of a textbook called "Cutlip & Center's Effective Public Relations." This book is something of a bible in my industry, and it's pretty comprehensive.

It's also, as I say, a textbook. It has been two decades since I've had to read and retain material from a textbook. Let's just say that my abilities in this area have slipped in the interim.

Quite a bit.

There was a time when I could read a 20-page chapter once through and tell you all of the salient points, including what was most likely to be on the ensuing quiz.

Now I read a 20-page chapter (twice), and if someone asks me what it was about, I'll say, "Well...it was kind of....you know, the chapter really covered....basically....I think it was about public relations. Or something business-related. One or the other. I think."

I can't retain anything I read. And I can't tell you how much this distresses me. Is it because I'm 43? I mean, 43 isn't really old, right? It's early middle age. One should not be exhibiting symptoms of advanced dementia at 43.

But then again, I can never remember why I walk into a room anymore. So why I think I should be able to read a textbook at 43 like I could when I was 22, I don't know.

We have two more review classes, then I'll probably have my readiness review in June and take the computer exam before the end of summer. In the meantime, I have a lot of material still to go over and absorb. And I'm not sure I'm up to it.

I just read a chapter from "Effective Public Relations" earlier today, and the only thing I can tell you is that it was generally about public relations.

Or business.

One or the other.

I think.

I'm an old guy in training

I am 42 years old, which puts me pretty solidly into the category of "middle age," I suppose. It's early middle age, but middle age nonetheless.

There are actually some advantages to this. For example, the only people who think of you as a dumb kid anymore are the ones in their 80's, and there are fewer and fewer of them left to worry about anyway. You also command a little respect from your co-workers, who are forced to acknowledge that while you are clearly a dope, you are a dope who has managed to survive for four decades, so you must have at least a few smarts in that head of yours.

Of course, the early 40's are also when most of us start to experience the physical signs of aging. There are crow's feet, some graying at the temples (and more than just the temples in my case), flab around the middle...that sort of thing. My favorite moments, though, are the memory lapses. Yes, they're frustrating, but they're also hilarious.

I regularly do that thing where I walk into a room and then have no idea what I'm doing there. I'll be strolling through the house thinking about the 1979 Cleveland Indians (I often think about the 1979 Cleveland Indians...in some future blog post I'll explain why) when suddenly one part of my brain will ask another part why we're in the basement. And the brain section being tasked to formulate an answer will instead freeze up.
"The basement? I'm in the basement? Why am I in the basement? Was it something to do with laundry? No, no, that's not it. How about the treadmill? Was I coming downstairs to run on the treadmill? Well, no, I've never once run on the treadmill, so that can't be it. Did I come to get extra rolls of toilet paper? Maybe to get something out of the freezer? How about the kids' old McDonald's  playset? Did I come to spend a few minutes pretending to be a minimum-wage fast food worker? No, no, probably not."

And so it goes, sometimes for a solid two or three minutes, during which I'll stand helplessly in the middle of the front room of the basement trying to figure out the purpose of my existence for that particular moment. Most of the time it will eventually to come me, but other times I have to admit defeat and trudge back upstairs, troubled that my short-term memory is rapidly fading.

Then there's the fact that I'm no longer The Fast Kid. For many years -- from about 6th grade through college -- my main athletic attribute was that I had foot speed. I could run, and I could run fast. These days I'll try picking up the pace when I'm out for a jog, just to regain the awesome feeling that only the competitive sprinter knows. But the gear I used to shift into just isn't there anymore. I search and search for it, but I rarely get past Chunky Suburban Dad on the velocity scale.

Not to be missed for many guys is the joy that is male pattern baldness. Ever since my early 20's, I've been steadily losing hair in a patch on top of my head. I don't think about it often because I don't usually look at the crown of my own head. But when I do, or when I see a picture of myself from the back, I'm momentarily stunned as I think, "Good Lord! Is that Bruce Willis?" And then I realize it's actually me, and I'm a little depressed for just a few seconds before I decide it's not worth worrying about and I move on.

I've never been one to look at other women much, but nowadays I do it even less. This isn't so much because I can't appreciate an attractive women anymore than the fact that I'm just too darned tired to care. "Oh look, is that Scarlett Johansson naked? Yeah, OK, fine. More importantly, do I have time for a nap?"

I don't mean to make it sound like I'm on death's door or anything. If the average life expectancy for men continues to rise, there's a good chance I'm not even halfway through my allotted span of years. Which is good, considering all of the great memories I have yet to make with my wife, my kids, my future grandkids, etc. The only thing that really scares me is that I'll die without ever having celebrated a major Cleveland sports championship, something that's truly frightening and a very real possibility.

This is the point when I generally come to some sort of conclusion and wrap up the blog post, but for the life of me, I can't remember what I was typing about in the first place...