I decided, pretty early, that just as I'd master Tiffany's Table Manners for Teens or Edith Head's Dress for Success!, so would I learn to control my temper.
And I was tempted to join them, once I'd mastered the basics.
After all my online reading, and my early mistakes and two full days of concentrating, I'd begun to think I'd mastered this and promptly let my guard down.
Even I, a natural sciences student, was able to say "I hate maths" in 3 different languages well before I'd mastered calculus.
By the end of camp, I'd mastered the fun part of surfing -- and could catch a wave on my own.
I'd mastered the art of nudging the monstrous phones off my head as I launched into deeper stages of sleep, and I'd wake to find them crammed between the mattress and the wall.
It took me dozens of deaths before I'd mastered the opening rooms, stuffed with unexpected nasties and up-close encounters, but each time I got a little quicker and took a little less damage.
Within a week I'd mastered the art, and was utterly triumphal – only to find that, within my house, there was a very limited audience for my sex skills.
For me, it started in medical school when, over many months, I dissected skin from muscle, sinew from bone until I'd mastered human anatomy through the precision flaying of a human corpse, but had been forced to wall off something primitive within me that would, from now on, temper empathy with new-found detachment.
