Getting my Masters degree marked the end of homework for me. I was naturally overjoyed at the idea of leaving behind that method of learning and revision that was so premised on obligation and the threat of punishment. Homework was something you carried with you in a notebook that served as an indelible link between two spaces — school and home. Just because you had left the classroom didn't mean you were relieved of the task of learning. Like most, I hated it. It was something on a to-do list; a job that had to be performed before you could enjoy your leisure. While I don't have nightmares about it as an adult, at least not in the same way I do about exams, the subject of all my recurring, stress-induced ones, I still had some residual panic when it came to the notion of homework. Recently, though, because of an upcoming bout of travel, my therapist suggested we double our sessions per week.

This in itself was not a daunting prospect, except my therapist loves to give me homework, which compelled me to reconsider my conflicting relationship with it, because her recommendations are always rooted within the realm of the imaginative. For the last session, for instance, I had to consider writing a letter to my 23-year-old self from my 33-year-old one. For the next, I'm supposed to construct a short story chronicling my journey from childhood to now. "You always seem to need a muse," she rightly pointed out. "I want you to put yourself at the centre of your own story, especially since narrative is so important to you." It's unsettling when someone who was, up until then, a complete stranger to you, offers you compelling insights into your behavioural mode.