Why sleep is so underrated

There was once a time in my life when "severely procrastinating" on a project or assignment meant staying up until 2:00 AM to finish it and then bragging about getting only 5 hours of sleep to awestruck classmates. This was in the 6th grade.
And then came high school, where all-nighters became the thing to do when I decided that I would skip sleeping altogether so that I could study/work at a leisurely pace throughout the night. The added benefit to this was that I could be wide awake when the alarm went off at 6:30 and completely avoid the whole annoying "waking up" part. Usually, a dose of caffeine in the form of Bru coffee (or just spoons of instant coffee powder) would sustain me through the night when I showed signs of nodding off.

And here we are now, in college. Our bedtimes are...wait...what bedtimes? We are so experienced at staying up that sometimes, it feels as if we don't even sleep anymore. We are so good at all-nighting that we don't even use caffeine. The training wheels have come off. We are PROS.

Here, now, is the greatest irony. I actually did NOT procrastinate in studying for my Physics 211 and Chemistry 112 test. I didn't. In fact, I was completely done studying at about 1:30 (a very decent bedtime) though I was in a room with Moksha, Ramya, Arthi, and Shivam. Tension levels were peaking at about 2:00 as the girls crammed formulas into their caffeine wired brains and poured information into their short-term memories, only to have it leak out 5 to 6 seconds later. Moksha was having several mental breakdowns about the physics exam (and talked in her sleep while taking a nap), while Arthi had basically just given up on life itself, knowing that she had 4 hours to study for 3 separate exams. Ramya and Shivam were just being themselves: loser and loserer respectively.

The irony is that while the others fought off sleep to continue studying, I actually tried to go to sleep and couldn't do it. Okay, maybe my sleep schedule was a little off at 2:00. I tried sleeping again at about 3:00. Nope. At 4:15, I shut off all the lights, made everyone in the room shut up, and sincerely tried to descend into slumber. Didn't happen. I was so desperate by 5:00 that I went upstairs to Arthi and Moksha's empty dorm room to try and sleep...to no avail!

As pathetic as it sounds, that's what happened. After trying to fall asleep several times, I ended up all-nighting (against my wishes) before taking my last two final exams. Fearing that I'd fall asleep during the Physics, I gulped down a double-shot espresso and had jitters throughout the entire exam, as if the tough problems weren't already making things difficult. So for the rest of the day, I suffered for that unnecessary caffeine with an upset stomach.

Moral of the story: Don't use caffeine. SLEEP WHILE YOU CAN.


You are probably wondering what I am doing making a blog post when I said that I probably wouldn't get a chance to make one before leaving the country. Well, my bus to Boston got postponed due to crappy weather until 10:00 AM tomorrow, so I am choosing this as an opportunity to rest and to give you all an update of my life.

On a much, much lighter note: my first real semester at Penn State has successfully come to a close. :D