To sleep or Not to sleep...

Hello All! Yet another week of the semester has past, and I am living to tell the tale - even if my "living" is rather zombie-like this morning. After giving serious thought to the matter, and even jumping in the water for a test-run, I've discovered this week more than ever, the pure bliss of having a bedtime... or rather the pain of lacking one. As a young, energetic child, I threw the customary tantrums a time or two when the fun-annihilating bedtime rolled around. Now that I have acquired years of irreplaceable wisdom, however, I realize the stupidity of whining about that wonderful gift of required rest. Allow me to explain.

You see, on my course schedule this fall there has been this column inhabited by a so-called "research" class - a class consuming 3.0 credit hours of my life, I might add. A quiet class, it seemed to be for the first 3 months of this semester as I daintily gave not so much as a strawberry seed to it's whisper of a demand to receive attention. That is until Monday, November 10, the day I discovered a peculiar marking taking up more than its fair share of space in my planner. The marking, appearing rather smug and ominous said simply, "research paper rough draft due." .......uh-oh......And so the story of the week I completed a 3 credit course research paper in a week's time takes shape.

What I had so blissfully avoided for 3 months came back to release its fury on me. To fight the storm, I put aside thoughts of studying for all other classes this week and proceeded to immerse myself in the ever-confusing, problematic analysis of Class II Giardia Fructose-1, 6 biphosphate, that is, the chosen enzyme as a drug target for killing the little devil of a parasite causing giardiasis, a form of diarrhea. The outcome of such an intense endeavor proved to be a lack of sleep, a couple of significantly lower homework grades in organic chemistry, initiation of auto-retreat of focus to thoughts of days of recess and snowpant-clad, carefree snow angle making during cell and molecular biology to save my brain from incomprehensible knowledge, AND a complete exploit of every pebble of motivation I have. It was like a microeconomics screenplay of diminishing returns coming to life. As the week wore on, I spent more and more time looking up song lyrics, randomly checking facebook updates, eating (it was out of control), and staring blankly at my computer screen. The week culminated in completion of the 19 page (20 with the title page), 1.5 line-spaced, 12-font paper at 4:00 a.m. this morning, Friday, November, 2008, a.k.a. the due date.

So, task complete, I weakly collapsed on my bed at 4:10 a.m. and preceded to dream of a parasite, portrayed as a very ugly, scary looking man, chasing me. The details are a bit hazy, but I recall it being frightfully dark. I sought the help of a couple of friends, who also happened to be up at at odd hours of the morning, crying frantically something about killing the enzyme. Sadly, I don't think they saved me, as I woke up 3 short hours after so gratefully drifting off to sleep to my alarm, creepily coordinated with a scream in my dream.

And so, my 8:00 class was torturous. I made a valiant effort at reading and note-taking in physics to save me from drifting off to sleep, and I listened through a fog to the organic chemistry review for our test on Monday. I think I was caught up in some sort of second-wind at 11:00, that I'm banking will keep me alive and thriving until 2:00 when my classes are complete for the week and I can take a nap, which sounds heavenly right now.

Three cheers for procrastination. Enjoy sleep while you can, and if you chose to skip bed-time, know that you are not alone. :)