I wrote this essay just two weeks into my first semester of university and it reflects my experiences and struggles with sleep during that time:
If you ask anyone about sleep, the first thought that comes to their mind is that it’s a necessity, a life-enriching ambrosia. College students, however, will quite heartedly disagree. For college students, it’s a luxury. And staying true to the time honored and in some way tradition for college students, I don’t sleep.
The famous quote, ‘sleep is for the weak’ has become less of a motivation and more of an excuse to justify the lack of reasoning I have during classes, due to the grand total of five minutes of sleep last night. But in hindsight, it has helped me function in a highly inhumane form without even losing my sanity for a split second, for the most part. Sleep as a concept has become so alien to me, that sleep deprivation has become a personality trait of mine.
This adrenaline induced sickness allows me to push the limits of what I considered ‘normal’. This messed up sleep schedule was the direct result of what is known as the ‘Indian Education System’. I was brought up on a fairly strict sleep schedule where my mother tucked me in bed at around nine PM and forced me to go sleep as she sang her usual lullabies. My father would come to check on me to make sure I was not reading comic books under the bed covers and that had been the standard for several years. Until of course, the advent of touch screens and seemingly important need to socialize. In retrospect, these are all just excuses for my dire need of being an acting like a normal, messed up teenager, in order to have a funny, and slightly controversial life story. But keeping my emo side aside, I must come to terms with the fact that after all, the lack of sleep is problematic for me; the fear of falling asleep right as the professor leers at you is a fear every college student relates to.
But jokes aside, lack of sleep has become a part of a bigger problem since, scientifically speaking, I’m legally drunk because of the lack of sleep. It affects social, mental as well as the grades I may or may not get for this essay since all I can think about, now that I have to write about it, is sleep. I realize how much I need it right now because the lack of it is taking over my capability to write. I am trying to frame sentences, but I know when I reread it, they will make no sense.
My want to not sleep has been there for as long as I can remember. The main reason for this is my fear of missing out. I am convinced that the people who have been jobless and boring the entire day will suddenly have terrific ideas and become full of energy the second my head hits the pillow or the cartoon that I liked watching, which was getting unnecessarily dragged will suddenly have Morgan Freeman dubbing for Johnny Bravo which, of course never happened so in hindsight, staying up has been of absolutely no use to me other than making me (legally) drunk without drinking.
Now that I write this essay, I realize I really need to sleep because I need to function like a responsible adult in the next week which probably will not happen if I continue having the sleep schedule of an idiot. But again, I still feel the need to stay up because I physically cannot sleep. Because I don’t think about sleeping unless I have to write an essay about it and consequently coke and caffeine become my lifelines. I actually cannot sleep because I don’t think about it. Now that I have, I think I will hopefully enjoy a good night’s sleep.
In hindsight, Frank Underwood’s quote “I’ve always loathed the necessity of sleep. Like death, it puts even the most powerful men on their backs” resonates with me, at every cell and fiber of my body and soul, because same.
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