Far In Debt

I've gotten 8 hours of sleep (or close to it) for the past two nights. Yet, I'm finding that it's near impossible to get through the day without wanting to sprawl out on the couches at school for a nap.

I know that you build up sleep debt whenever your body doesn't get enough sleep, or at least the amount that it wants. I know that I seriously deprived my body of sleep while working on my paper and during some of the time leading up to it. Who am I kidding? I haven't had a real block of days of uninterrupted quality sleep since . . . . . .

Have I ever?

I didn't like to sleep as a kid. My parents said I never took naps. I didn't like to sleep at night. My own memories of when I was a kid are few, but I do remember weekend mornings waking up and reading books while waiting for my parents to wake up. I remember my red and blue fold-up mat from kindergarten (which I subsequently used as an exercise mat in college) on which I would rest, but never nap. I didn't take cat naps in the car until I turned double digits, at the earliest. I would bring enough stuff with me to keep me busy for the entire car ride. I would look at the license plates of all the cars, all the street signs, read books, anything.

I don't remember much about sleep and elementary and junior high school. I don't remember if I got enough, if I wanted to sleep... completely blank.

But high school, oh, high school and sleep. Those two go together like oranges and spicy mustard. (No offense to people who like eating oranges doused in spicy mustard.) There were the days freshman year when I was up showering at 5:30 am with the radio blasting. But there were also the many days when I barely made it to lab on time at 7:15 because I couldn't drag myself out from under the covers. And all the days senior year when I either bolted out of the car running to my first class or got a late pass from my yearbook adviser. I think I may have gotten more sleep in high school than in college, but with school starting so early in the morning? There was no sleep to be had. (I'm glad that all these studies say that high schoolers need the most sleep, yet that's when class starts the earliest.)

In college, I slept in on Fridays and tried to never have class before 10:30. College was fantastic, but my journal writing and sleeping habits both suffered terribly. You would think that with no classes before 10:30 and plenty of time to nap, I'd be well-rested. But it's college - everyone's sleep deprived. And you know you must have racked up some sleep debt when people come up to you all the time saying, "you look so tired", even though those were the days when you felt the most well-rested.

In law school, staying up has been more of a necessity than for fun. I think the best sleep I ever got in law school was that time last year when I was really really sick for like a week and never got out of bed because I felt so rotten. I got a lot of sleep. It was amazing. And it's never happened again since then.

Hence, my February resolution. I'm really going to try to get at least 8 hours of sleep a night. So if you see me online late at night, ask me why! It will mean I'm not following through on my resolution and I had better have a damn good reason. I know you can't really erase your sleep debt (I couldn't know this before I started accumulating it?), but at least I can try to stop it from getting any worse.

Fight that debt! :)