My Habitual Late Nights And What I Plan To Do Regarding Their Cessation

Last night, I went to bed at approximately 3:20 am Mountain standard time.

This was fine, because I didn't have church until 1 pm today and I woke up around 11:30, so I had plenty of time to get ready and stuff some food down my gullet.

On Friday night, I think I went to bed around two, maybe two-thirty. This was less okay, because I got up at eight the next morning for work at nine and I was basically a zombie when I was there. But did I come home and take a nap when I was done? No. No, I did not.

You see, once I'm up, I find it very difficult to take naps... unless I'm sitting in a chair with a desk attached, trying to take notes to a teacher's monotonous voice and cramming Sour Skittles into my mouth in a futile effort to stay awake.

I end up staying up late, then, because I sleep in a bit in the morning and sometimes I have to rush. And I'm always looking at the clock and calculating exactly how much time I'll have to sleep if I go to bed right now. It usually starts around eight hours, then moves to seven and a half... seven... six... five and a half...

But I usually go to bed around the five and a half mark, at least. Two, three in the morning. Before two on a good night.

It helps that I only work every other day, and on the days I don't work, I don't have class until 1 pm.

And my classes! Let's talk about my classes. My New Testament class is great. I'm learning all kinds of crazy things, when I don't fall asleep. Russian is also a lot of fun and now that I've learned the genitive plural case I think I can eventually master the language. I am much better at reading and writing the language than I am at speaking it. But you can't fall asleep in Russian, because if you do then you'll be woken up with a question in another language. My English/Women's Studies class is a lot of fun and very interesting- you have to love the feminist readings and discussions and angry nuns- but it is a late afternoon class, early evening even, and I've been to two classes that day and I'm tired and it's discussion-based and I never have anything interesting to say about the readings, so I just sit there... and nod off. Intro to E-Lang is much the same. I have it earlier in the day, but I work on the days I have that class, and usually I buy myself or pack myself a lunch between work and class, and the carbohydrates plus running around turning on ovens for two hours makes for a very sleepy Sarah. I do manage to understand the ideas, though. Such a fun class. I occasionally nap in Shakespeare, but that class is so awesome that it takes a great deal of effort to stay asleep.

Long story short: Sarah has problems with staying awake when she should be awake and with going to sleep when she should be sleeping.

This has a long, long history. In my sophomore year of high school, my friend Tuba-Viola Girl and I had biology together first thing in the morning. Seminary was at my house, which was nice, but I tended to fall asleep in biology because I put so much effort into staying awake in seminary. Tuba-Viola Girl wasn't Mormon and had no compunctions about drinking coffee, so she took notes and I copied them later and we might have studied together once or twice but I honestly forget.

The next year, my morning class was Trig and Pre-Calc. I think. I wasn't fantastic at math to begin with, but I did try to stay awake. And because I had issues with that class, they haunted me into senior year, when my first class of the day was AP Calculus. Looking back, if I hadn't slept through many of those classes, I could probably have gotten a five on the AP Calculus exam. As it was, I got a three, so I'm really okay.

But even in high school, I got proper amounts of sleep. Seven or eight hours a night, because I was fastidious about going to bed on time.

It's harder and easier to go to bed on time in college; on the one hand, you can really sleep whenever the heck you want, and on the other hand, you can stay up as late as you want.

It's harder and easier to stay awake in college; on the one hand, you're actually learning stuff that is interesting and relevant to your future (for instance, I haven't used the quadratic equation since I graduated), but on the other hand, there is less of a fear of getting in trouble if you fall asleep, because a professor is paid to lecture and often couldn't care less if there are students nodding off in their classes.

This probably all relates back to some bigger life theme about how, you know, growing up means you're responsible for your own bedtime and stuff, and how you can learn lessons and stuff- but I'm just going to say this. I have already given my lovely roommate Superwholockmarauder full permission to tell me to go to bed if I'm up too late. I now extend this permission to the entirety of my readers. If you notice me on a social media forum past 12:30 am, you have my express permission to yell at me and tell me to go to bed. It's better for me, and I'm not going to get mad or anything.

Thanks for reading. I'm going to hunt down some bagels and jam now. It's not bread, but it is actually bread, and it will do.