Article

Protecting our inalienable right to sleep

Many of us are studying so much that sleep has become the fundamental issue, You’ll find people actually holding lengthy conversatons on the subject.
Lindsay Kennedy -

All I want to do is go to sleep.

We all want to go to sleep. Midterms and exams and those never-ending group projects from hell are upon us. Exams roll by as though they are on conveyor belts, and we take them, and that’s that. It looks like a neat little package to the outside observer, but really, it’s just plain tiring.

And this is what higher education is - just one test after another, one more exam that you have to pass in order to make the grade. This wasn’t how most of us looked at it at the beginning of the semester, when we were all glad to be back at school and filled with the normal feelings that come with starting a new fall semester - joy in a new living situation, excitement at making new friends and even, for some of us, the possibility of finding a love interest.

But somehow - and we never do know quite how - it gets to be November, and the new semester isn’t quite so new anymore. The classes, which once gleamed with possibility, become routine. Your new friends are no longer new, they are just plain friends - and they are just as frustrated as you are. The love interest you hoped to find? Non-existent. Or if you did manage to find that special someone, he/she magically morphed into a stressed-out psycho mid-semester, just as Cinderella’s carriage turned back into a pumpkin at midnight. And then the exams appear.

No matter what you do, no amount of studying is enough to prepare you. The library is packed with students either hunched over their textbooks in a mad race to acquire as much knowledge as possible, or sleeping on the good old books, defeated by frustration and giving in to the inevitable desire to use that nice thick art history text as a pillow.

Is this what higher education is supposed to be about? I never used to think so. When I was young and idealistic (about a month ago), I believed that the college experience was about honing your talents and skills, and most importantly, preparing you for that feature career that you’d hopefully love. But a lot of people don’t even get the chance to develop these talents: they just don’t have the time. I have a friend who loves to paint but never practices that art outside of her obnoxiously long, bi-weekly painting class because she has too many other academic committments.

The majority of us are walking zombies during this point in the semester. This is what exams and projects and higher education have brought us to. Most of us come to college wanting to learn for learning’s sake, but nobody does that anymore. Most of us are learning right now just so that we don’t see an “F” as one of our final grades.

Many of us are studying so much that sleep has become the fundamental issue. You’ll find people actually holding lengthy conversations on this subject. No one is sleeping anymore, and for those of us who are, we can’t sleep enough. I find it next to impossible to wake up in the mornings. Oh, I can make it to class, but my brain is usually still at home, tucked away under the covers.

One evening, in a fit of exasperation, I tried the following experiment. I went to bed at 11:30 (which is difficult for the average over-worked college student), hoping to wake up the next morning refreshed and ready for class and all the challenges that lied therein. My roommate (whose professor always began her 8:30 AM psychology class with the cheery bellow: “Welcome to the wonderful world of cognitive psychology! Hold onto your hats, everyone!) agreed that she would also try the experiment. Nine hours later, alarm clocks and all, we were still asleep. Naturally, she missed out on that wonderful world, and I narrowly missed being late for a lecture on post-modern literary theory. Yay.

Is this what education is meant to be? Are we all supposed to be tired out of our minds, frantically studying for the next exam, fanatically pursuing the next A? We all want to be a success in our chosen field, but this should not come at the price of our mental and emotional well-being, and not at the price where one is cut off from friends and social life, which happens to way too many of us at this point in the semester.

I think we should complain. Yes, complain. I don’t know whose idea it was to make college this way, but whoever they are, they probably sleep 10 hours a night. Someone should go and wake them up, and tomorrow we can all meet in some central location on campus, where we can bury them underneath a pile of horrendous midterm exams. I don’t think we’ll find that person, but if someone does, please come and find me. I’ll be in the library, asleep on a textbook.