One thing I have learned to value immensely over the years is SLEEP. Sleep makes all the difference to a person’s mood and performance. Yet for years, sleep seemed to me to be a dispensable luxury.
From middle school through law school, I always operated under the assumption that I could pull an all-nighter if necessary to finish a paper or study for a test. In high school in particular, I would often go to bed at eleven and get up at three in the morning to study. The first time I actually stayed up all night, I was fourteen years old. I had to write a thirty-page research paper for a mandatory physical education class (of all things!). I felt very macho about the fact that I literally hadn’t slept all night. The next year I pulled another all nighter to write a research paper on the history of IQ tests and whether they actually measure anything worth measuring. I not only didn’t sleep a wink but I ran a cross-country race that afternoon. You should have seen me bragging to my friends. The year I was sixteen, all-nighters were just what you did to get by and, again, I took it for granted that I could always forego sleep if I were in a pinch.
There are several problems with that system: (1) you’re not as efficient if you think have unlimited time because you’ve got all night; (2) life is really quite painful when you’re going and going and going without sleep (your lips get dry, your stomach starts churning, your brain starts to feel strained); (3)by the time you hit your thirties, you physically can’t skip sleep anymore (or at least I can’t) so you’d better not be counting on those all-nighters that you’re no longer able to pull off; and (4) I am convinced I would be several inches taller today if I had slept more as a teenager.
Long story short, I only slept three hours last night after working non-stop all weekend frantically trying to complete a Ginormous Project, involving lots of detail and lots of documents. The thing is my body is just not so good at this kind of thing anymore. I’ve hit a wall and I desperately need my second wind as I try to prepare for a meeting tonight. Waaaah.
Anyway, apologies for not posting so much and abandoning interesting threads around the blogosphere. I am not sure any sure anything I’d have to say right now would make much sense anyway, but I’ll be back. This week is a bit hairy but I’ll try to throw something up every day -- maybe not any deep thoughts, but something fun at least.
Plus, now that I'm in my 30s, on those rare occasions that I'm able to pull an all-nighter and live to tell the tale, I find that it's all I can talk about. I have to tell *everyone* that I've been up all night. Although... that may have been true in my teens, too...
Posted by: Bomboniera | March 06, 2006 at 05:07 PM
research paper on the history of IQ tests and whether they actually measure anything worth measuring.
OK, so I'm a betting man and I bet you used Mismeasure of Man as the source for your report and bought into Gould's Marxist slant. Do I win?
life is really quite painful when you’re going and going and going without sleep
I once had to go 4 days without sleep because I was deep into writing a massive research report. By the 2nd-3rd day I was into a weary fatigue but my mental faculties were still pretty sharp. By the end of the 3rd day and into the 4th I was finished with the writing was was now doing editing and lots of busy work like formatting tables and graphics and that was ok because now the fatigue was quite intense and in the moments when I let my concentration lapse I would start hallucinating. I remember looking up at a window and the window frame started pulsating. Wow, that's quite an experience.
Generally I found that it didn't pay to squeeze in the extra few hours of study before an exam and that I was better served by sacrificing the study time and getting a good sleep.
Posted by: TangoMan | March 06, 2006 at 05:12 PM
I stayed up all night once in college to write the Final Essay for a fine arts class. It was kick-ass paper I finished up about 6am, then I kicked the power cord on the computer and lost the whole thing five hours before it was due. I said some bad words, went to bed, and took my zero.
Posted by: David Thompson | March 06, 2006 at 05:44 PM
Ah, this takes me back to the days when I had a student job (quite good-paying) that started at midnight and finished at 8am, after which I went to university for my second day in a row, without any sleep in between.
It was, in retrospect, quite insane. I used to keep myself awake by drinking intensely strong cups of coffee, until the day I took it just a tinsy bit too far and gave myself caffeine poisoning. (Threw up for three days.)
And there was this pig of a lecturer who I always had first thing in the morning, who always switched out the lights to show slides. It was always fatal. (We hated each other anyway, but this didn't help any.)
Luckily I'm a quick writer, so I never pulled an all-nighter to write an essay. My usual operating hours were, however, about 11pm to 3am - 3,000 words in that time was about right. Still could do that one if I had to ...
Posted by: Natalie Bennett | March 06, 2006 at 08:38 PM
Holy moly - I didn't know there was such a thing as caffeine poisoning!
That's intense.
For my part, I find I can still stay up, but I become pretty useless. Unless I get that sacred second wind. When my mind starts to go, I get up and start doing chores. For some reason, doing chores wakes my mind up. But after about half an hour of sitting still again, sleep becomes irresistable. So get up and clean a little more. I wish I could somehow write a paper while folding the laundry.
Posted by: h sofia | March 06, 2006 at 09:25 PM
Voice-recognition software?
Posted by: Natalie Bennett | March 11, 2006 at 08:24 AM