Sleep?

sleep [sleep]   verb, slept, sleep·ing, noun

verb (used without object)

1.      to take the rest afforded by a suspension of voluntary bodily functions and the natural suspension, complete, or partial, of consciousness; cease being awake. 

I decided to begin this post with the definition of the word “sleep” (courtesy of the oh-so-helpful dictionary.com), because I seem to have forgotten what it is. It is currently 3am during the week of finals, so I am quite certain that many students have also experienced this similar slight lapse in knowledge. To give you an idea of how distant I have been with this old friend, let me provide a brief summary of the week thus far. I awoke to my always pleasant alarm at 9 am Sunday morning, and began studying for the wretched organic chemistry, which I am pretty sure that I would feel more successful by going down to the zoo and having a nice wrestling match with the lions than I do in this class. I continued studying this abhorrent subject, stopping only to find happiness in food (meals were actually the only thing I had to look forward to all weekend) and to cry (which was even more enjoyable than studying), all the way up until I made the wintry trek over to SidRich Lecture Hall 2 to face the devil himself, at 11 am Monday morning. If I do my math correctly, I was up for about 26 hours at that point. I then remained perched in seat B-13 for a solid three hours questioning everything I ever thought I knew about life. After finally being released from the grasp of Satan himself (organic chemistry, not our professor; he’s actually a pleasant man), my delusional sense of relief of being done with that final was quickly knocked out of me by the bitter cold slapping me across the face as soon as I walked outside.

In zombie-like fashion, I dragged myself back to Sammy Hall to take a much needed nap so that I could at least semi-consciously study for nochem part two, our lab final which was the next morning. Being the social butterfly I only tend to be when procrastinating, I wandered around the hall talking to anyone and everyone for a while before taking a nap. The fact that I even stall before taking a nap astounds me. Finally, around 3 pm, I was reacquainted with my long lost friend, my bed, for a mid-afternoon siesta. Around 5 pm, per-request, I was pulled back into consciousness by my lovely roommates singing and jumping on me, with promises of food. Under any other circumstances I would have grumbled a few very kind words, politely asking them to let me sleep more (…….), but in this case, food.

After regaining at least a small percentage of sanity during our much needed trip to McCalister’s, I began the arduous task of trying to force myself to start studying… At this point my brain was practically kaput and decided to stop doing what I wanted it to, especially anything relating to ochem. Inattentiveness was through the roof, which says a lot for my already regularly scattered brain, and I my behaviors continually shifted from bouncing around to laying on some surface for any period of time. Even with the clearest mind I have difficulties formulating sentences correctly and interacting with others like a usual human being, so you can imagine the struggle I faced in the state I was currently in. Bless any poor soul who found me in their presence at any point within this time frame. I finally forced myself to sit down and begin looking at my study material. And looking I did. Looking was all I did. Did I process anything? Nope. Did I feel any more prepared after this than I did beforehand? Not a chance. This continued for a few hours before I did the most productive thing I did all night by going to bed. And by going to bed, I mean taking a nap during the time most people end their day before starting the next. This two hour nap was just a small break in my never ending day, lasting from 2 am to 4 am, before I woke up to remind myself again how fantastic finals were. So that added up to roughly 4 hours of sleep over a 43 hour period at this point…

I studied until I had to once again face the Texas snow (like that’s an actual term), along with reality, by lugging myself back over to lecture hall 2. This was only about an hour and a half of strongly disliking life, before meandering over to Scharbauer to take my Sociology final, of which I hadn’t even thought about opening my notes to study for. Luckily I had about half an hour before go time, so I had at least some time to crack down. I was torn between studying and celebrating being forever through with the death class, never having to think about organic chemistry ever again until possibly having to go all Breaking Bad if other life plans didn’t pan out (that was a joke…). The final took me about half an hour to take, and I was finally free from tests for the semester.

Finally having the opportunity to sleep, naturally, I didn’t. I was instantly energized after leaving the classroom, and decided to do all the things I haven’t been able to do throughout the week, except sleep. Granted, I was no more functional than a zombie, but for some reason I just didn’t want to sleep. I wanted to be in the presence of other people, but didn’t necessarily want to actually interact with them. It was a conundrum, but I was too tired to think too hard on it, so I just remained sunk in a lounge chair in the study lounge, headphones in and drowsy eyes set on the computer. I discovered how fun Buzzfeed was (thank goodness I did not discover that when I needed to be studying) and somehow three hours passed without me moving any more than was necessary to operate my computer. I definitely felt like a high achieving college student as my eyes burned from a combination of lack of sleep and from them being locked on a bright screen for hours. Around 5 pm (56 hours now?) I finally removed myself from my throne to go sleep. Just kidding, I didn’t go sleep. Got ya. My roommates and I had another wonderful feast, this time of the Chuy’s sort. Delirium had long since set in, and it became very difficult to tell what exactly was real and what was fabricated in my head… It was quite entertaining, let me tell ya. I applaud the people who put up with me at these times of insanity that I often fall to in my life. Bless them, every one.

     Upon returning to the dorm, I could have slept, but, you guessed it, I once again avoided contact with my inviting pillow. I continued partaking in much nothingness until around 5 am. I don’t know why this seemed like a good idea to me, but sleeping obviously didn’t. I then finally did crash. And boy, did I crash hard. I was once again awoken by my parental roommates later that day, for dinner at 6:30 pm. Whoops… I guess that is the low one reaches when they go 68 hours with only 4 hours of sleep…

I would say that I couldn’t believe that I reached that new low and went that long without sleeping, but, unlike any normal, functional human being, that was nothing new for me. All-nighters and two-hour sleepnaps became routine this semester. There was even one week similar to the one I just described, that spanned 80 sleepless hours. That one was way worse, and reached the point that my roommates had to literally force me to bed… Again, bless their kind, gracious, caring souls for putting up with me.

So moral of the story, sleep is good. Sleep is healthy. Not sleeping is not, and without it, you can go crazy. Your body and mind will stop working, and people will begin worrying about you. There are also chances that you may have sleep paralysis, which I did a couple of times. If you have not experienced this terror, just hope that you don’t, because it is scary… We are always told how important sleep is, and by being in a pre-med setting I have seen how that is scientifically accurate and have always stressed the importance of it to people around me. When it comes to taking care of myself though, I have lived life according to the “I’ll sleep when I’m dead mentality,” which seemed to be harmless up to this point. I now know perfectly well otherwise, as I have experienced many negative side effects of not resting. Of all things that I learned this semester, the importance of sleep was probably the biggest, which I definitely learned, first hand, by the lack of it. Over break I am going to get re-acquainted with the luxury of sleep, and will continue that practice through next semester as well. Much of my inability to function as a regular human being is already a lost cause, but at least now I know that I can avoid making that struggle worse by living off of synthetic sleep, and only using the real deal from now on. Who said you don’t learn anything in college? Go frogs.