Sometimes sleep occurs during the most opportune times, like when the latest N’Sync or Britney Spears videos bombard the television. Yet other times, sleep becomes our most vigilant accuser, tormenting us at the least advantageous moment, making us bow before it, as if sleep would actually help us in the middle of a lecture or an exam.
Scientists have advanced the claim that sleep is nothing more than a biological function, a sort of memory organizational mechanism or tool. If so, that would not even begin to explain the tortured nightmares that haunt most college students.
“Is that paper due tomorrow or today? … Oh great! It was due today … Will the professor accept it late? … Were those financial aid forms filed on time? … ” and the enchanted list seems to grow at a pace unmatched by Pinocchio’s nose. Ah, how the truth comes out at last: Ignorance is bliss!
If not, then what is sleep? I would rather think of it as alone time, the only minutes of the day where our isolationist tendencies are allowed to take control of us.
Think of it this way: from the moment we wake in the morning to the moment we are allowed to sleep, we are bombarded, nay attacked, by images, thoughts, feelings and personalities we are forced to interact with on some level.
Case in point: when was the last time you had to turn the “War on Terrorism” off, because leaving the reports on would be the equivalent of committing mental suicide.
And then, you still have those 50 exams to study for, which, for some unknown reason, the professors have managed to assign on the very same day. And just when things couldn’t get any worse, long-lost cousin Suzie has decided to host her 35th birthday at your house, which of course means picking her up from the airport, listening to boring conversation on the ride back and giving up your room for the week of her visit.
Even if you manage to get in a moment’s rest, you are still active – eating, watching TV, listening to music, surfing the net, cramming for those 50 exams and reading for leisure’s sake.
It truly is a wonder that we don’t short circuit and get dumped in the garbage heap long before we do.
Oh, and catnaps. Catnaps are too much effort for the small amount of relaxation they garner. You become so poised to look like you weren’t asleep that the slightest rustling of the wind will send you into a wild frenzy. What a delicious irony it is in that the minute you give up and actually try to get some sleep is the very moment someone comes and wakes you up from the nap!
So, after sheer exhaustion, you finally stagger into bed at the typical late hour, mind still clouded by the several hours of intense binge drinking and fraternization you partook in, hoping desperately against hope, that maybe now you can actually get some rest.
Well, that is until your roommate’s alarm clock blasts that tired old local weather forecast, the same one you pray won’t be the same one you’ve heard many times over the course of your studies at ETSU … “ETSU will not be out despite heavy ice and accumulating snowfalls,” promptly followed by a chorus of crying, screaming and bemoaning.

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