On Sleep, or the lack thereof
I've got a large essay draft due soon, and one assignment I have is to write up two different introductions for it. I'm putting them here, instead of under separate blog posts.
It's seven in the morning, and my phone alarm goes off next to my head. In a reflex I've developed over the latter half of my life, I roll over and turn it off, still mostly asleep. I'll probably lay in bed for another ten or twenty minutes, but eventually, I'll pull myself out of bed, get dressed, and manage to shamble across campus to my eight AM class, blearily munching on a cereal bar along the way. As lunch passes and the day continues, I'll approach something resembling an awake, functioning human being, though I'll still feel tired until sometime after the sun sets. My sleep cycle wants me to wake up late and go to bed late, which I can't really allow due to my status as a college student. This fatigue that I have throughout the day interferes with my attentiveness during class, my homework and study sessions, and overall my enjoyment of the college life. So, how can I fix this? As an experiment, I decided to try taking a nap every weekday, right after my first class. Since my eight and nine AM classes every day are followed by free time until after lunch, I decided I would head straight home after class and go back to sleep for an hour to an hour and a half until noon, in an attempt to stave off exhaustion. After a few weeks of daily naps, my results have been mixed.
I peel my face off of my pillow and sit up in front of my desk. My back hurts, my eyes are blurry, and my neck makes a mildly unsettling cracking noise as I raise my head. Maybe napping on my desk wasn't the best position for my spine, with pillow or without. Looking at my phone, it says it's just past one in the afternoon- my alarm was for eleven in the morning, which I turned off to rest for "just another ten minutes or so," and my next class, English, is in roughly twenty five minutes. It looks like I've inadvertently skipped lunch due to an unplanned nap extension... again. These naps have been part of my daily routine for the past two weeks or so now. I'd been tired throughout the day because of waking up so early every day, and the exhaustion was getting in the way of my homework, class attentiveness, and life in general. I started napping everyday to counteract this, though the results have been varied. I originally intended the naps to be brief, hour to hour and a half long events in the morning between my first class of the day and lunchtime, though nearly every day that time turned into two hours or even three. These missed lunches meant hasty, ten to fifteen minute instant noodle lunches maybe every other day or so. I even had to buy more bottled water after running out of it making my noodles so frequently. The blurry eyes became slight nearsightedness throughout the day because of my night contacts, but I'll talk about that later. I was also tired right after the naps, among other, longer lasting effects I'll also talk about later. So, the question remains- were the naps worth it?
It's seven in the morning, and my phone alarm goes off next to my head. In a reflex I've developed over the latter half of my life, I roll over and turn it off, still mostly asleep. I'll probably lay in bed for another ten or twenty minutes, but eventually, I'll pull myself out of bed, get dressed, and manage to shamble across campus to my eight AM class, blearily munching on a cereal bar along the way. As lunch passes and the day continues, I'll approach something resembling an awake, functioning human being, though I'll still feel tired until sometime after the sun sets. My sleep cycle wants me to wake up late and go to bed late, which I can't really allow due to my status as a college student. This fatigue that I have throughout the day interferes with my attentiveness during class, my homework and study sessions, and overall my enjoyment of the college life. So, how can I fix this? As an experiment, I decided to try taking a nap every weekday, right after my first class. Since my eight and nine AM classes every day are followed by free time until after lunch, I decided I would head straight home after class and go back to sleep for an hour to an hour and a half until noon, in an attempt to stave off exhaustion. After a few weeks of daily naps, my results have been mixed.
I peel my face off of my pillow and sit up in front of my desk. My back hurts, my eyes are blurry, and my neck makes a mildly unsettling cracking noise as I raise my head. Maybe napping on my desk wasn't the best position for my spine, with pillow or without. Looking at my phone, it says it's just past one in the afternoon- my alarm was for eleven in the morning, which I turned off to rest for "just another ten minutes or so," and my next class, English, is in roughly twenty five minutes. It looks like I've inadvertently skipped lunch due to an unplanned nap extension... again. These naps have been part of my daily routine for the past two weeks or so now. I'd been tired throughout the day because of waking up so early every day, and the exhaustion was getting in the way of my homework, class attentiveness, and life in general. I started napping everyday to counteract this, though the results have been varied. I originally intended the naps to be brief, hour to hour and a half long events in the morning between my first class of the day and lunchtime, though nearly every day that time turned into two hours or even three. These missed lunches meant hasty, ten to fifteen minute instant noodle lunches maybe every other day or so. I even had to buy more bottled water after running out of it making my noodles so frequently. The blurry eyes became slight nearsightedness throughout the day because of my night contacts, but I'll talk about that later. I was also tired right after the naps, among other, longer lasting effects I'll also talk about later. So, the question remains- were the naps worth it?
Comments
Post a Comment