Searching for that "study" mood

I've noticed yet another interesting thing in the course of my first month of grad school in Austin: here, it's not uncool to study. More accurately, it's not uncool to be seen with your head buried in a textbook. I see it all around me, every day. The guy with the Nowitzki Jersey and the chiseled physique (who'd rather be on the basketball court at that moment) is wrestling with Real Analysis sums . The babe in the next table, whom on appearance you'd associate more with sixth street hopping than an engineering department, cuts her call because she has to complete her homework. This kind of observation seems pretty pointless (a bit like looking on in disbelief at your Tamil Brahmin friend who's helping himself to the meat) but anyone who's familiar with the engineering college scene in India knows the stereotypes and cliches. "Last Minute Study" and "Dress Code", to name a couple. So what am I getting at? The cynic would probably say I don't have a life, I've got nothing better to do than study all day, and now I can actually justify it! Wrong. (Well at least the first part's right - I don't have a life). It's just made me conscious that four years of engineering back home, with its 'beating the system' mentality, has just about finished off my capacity to study seriously. Hard work and organised studying are unfortunately a way of life in gradschool. However hard I try, I just can't recapture the study mood (which i probably last felt back in class XII). I've tried all the stuff that worked back home: coffee (the lousy black variety), ice cream breaks, acronym shortcuts (and other laughable strategies that helped me get through some scary subjects), and have given up. It'll work itself out somehow. It's a throwback to school days, 10th and 12th especially, when aspiring to get a shining report card, if not top the class, was almost fashionable (in a perverse sort of way). Of course, in grad school, your marks are way more significant: they pretty much decide your career. It's still amusing to look back at school when, underneath all the tax-free comments like "What a punter...ready to smash this test are you.." or "Shut up man...you've been belting...you'll tho bloody max this exam..", there was this undercurrent of serious, cut-throat competition. Driven by the enthusiasm you'd only find in highschoolers, it even went to the extent of who could solve sums quicker in class, thus clamouring for the math teacher's attention. The class was an academic battleground. (As an aside, it's pretty scary to think that all this was more than six years back) I had a pretty passive attitude to all this. This was mostly because of my prediliction for subjects like English, Geography and History which were deemed unfashionable by the 'science types'. After all, I was more fascinated by the origin of places with exotic names like Tierra Del Fuego or the Rift Valley than applying Pythogoras' theorem. My passive attitude changed just a little bit towards the end of high school when I realised I was totally at sea in dealing with some of the subjects. From an exam point of view, everything I touched turned to ashes. The irony of it all is that most of the "science types" have got themselves out of the academic rut and are in sales or consulting, while I've just begun my MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering. I won't even bother with further contemplation. The current problem is how to get back on track. I suspect I need the presence of some brazen pricks who'll set a high precedent on scoring high marks and so on, just to stir that old "I'll show 'em" feeling in me. However, this isn't highschool and there's no time for all that. For the moment, procrastination and wotla seem to be my only constant companions.