Who Needs Sleep

Sleep and I haven't really been friends. I mean, we met and things started out okay, I guess. That was before I had conscious memories. Then, things changed. We changed. We drifted apart.

In 2002, still a freshman at UH, I was growing accustomed to the whole not having to go to class thing. Staying up late and sleeping in were pretty cool. What wasn't cool was the insomnia I sometimes got. One week was particularly bad.

I arrived back at campus Sunday evening. Feeling unusually tired, I called it an early night. All of a sudden, I shot up. It was around midnight and I was feeling hungry. I went down to the convenience store, waited for it to reopen, and got some chocolate milk and a candy bar. Booyah, the healthy diet of a college freshman. Anyways, I went back to my dorm, sat at my computer. I was playing a game I was enthralled with at the time and wasn't feeling tired. 6a rolled by. 7. 8. 9. My first class was at 10, so it was about that time to get ready to go. I didn't always go to my Intro to Psychology lecture but I went that morning. That Friday we had our term paper due. The prompt was something along the lines to write about an approved psychological topic citing academic sources. My thesis was effects of sleep depravation on academic performance.

I went to the rest of my classes that day, setting up a time later in the week to meet up in the library with my friend who was also in the class, and lived 4 doors down from me on campus. That night, we played pool and I ate an unhealthy dinner of chicken strips from the dorm cafeteria. Around midnight, I tried to go to sleep. I laid in bed for about an hour and realized that I wasn't tired enough to sleep. I mean, I was tired, but just couldn't sleep.

Tuesday, I went to my classes, ate, and didn't sleep again. Laying in bed pointlessly wasn't a good idea so I sat at my computer.

Wednesday, didn't make psychology, went to my afternoon classes, ate, and went to the library. Didn't sleep. Wednesday was when I started to notice the heavy psychological toll I was paying. During the morning my cognitive abilities were far duller than I was used to them being. At the library, if my mind wasn't actively engaged, I'd be unsure if what I saw or heard actually happened or if it was just in my head.

Thursday, I only made my history lecture. By that point I was feeling like a zombie physically in addition to mentally. And not one of those Dawn of the Dead remake zombies, but more along lines of Dawn of the Dead original zombies. It was Thursday night when my friend and I started on our papers. We had a plan: we'd take turns writing our papers at my computer. My friend had the first shift. It was then I finally slept. It was all of maybe 3 hours. But then I shot up when it was my time, proofread his paper, and started on mine. I only had one draft and there wasn't time to proof mine before having to turn in the paper. So we went turned in our papers and then went to play pool.

We both made B's.

Yeah, college mistakes were made. Passively.