The Compliment of Rip Van Winkle

I have always been a person with strange sleeping habits. When I was little, I used to wake up at five a.m. and run into my parents room declaring it to be a wonderful sunny day, and I would sit in the kitchen with Daddy and eat cereal before he went to work. . He tells me that whenever he thinks of me now, twenty years old and in college, he can't help but think of me then, the way I would stand in the chair in my little pink nightgown with wispy blonde hair sticking everywhere, veritably chirping about whatever three to five year olds chirp about. Gradually as I grew older, the sleeping schedule changed from waking up at five a.m. to going to sleep at five a.m. and seven a.m. and noon and two p.m. and five p.m. and nine p.m. and basically whenever I can kip an hour or two. If it's up to me my favorite time to sleep is from about two to about ten, but often it's not up to me.

Insomnia is something I've dealt with on a semi-regular basis, sometimes I'm completely immune and other times I don't sleep more than four hours in a seventy-two hour period. Since I moved into the dorms last month, insomnia hasn't been something I've been worrying about, and I think it's because this is turning into the most tiring semester I have yet attempted. I am pretty much asleep when my head hits the pillow, no problems, no questions asked, the mind goes along with the body. I've even been too tired to have my infamous crazy vivid dreams. However, despite the fact I am not suffering from insomnia, I am getting less sleep than when I am suffering it. Last night I got about two hours, and today I'm kind of wandering around in a daze... I can usually handle the not sleeping bit pretty well, reaching that plateau of tiredness at which the body can function even if the mind is kind of just along for the ride. But this semester I am reaching new and interesting levels of exhaustion.

Intellectual exhaustion is something I'm still trying to come to terms with. I'd never before really gotten to that point where my brain just gets so tired that it can't do anything that isn't already internally automated. I'm glad it can still do the automated bits, or...you know... agonizing death. But now it's a regular occurence. After the huge chunk of my brain is given away to futilely try and write decent proofs, there's hardly any left over to do my discrete homework or learn another chapter's worth of Java. I've been lucky so far in theatre that all the plays we've read are things I have read once before in high school or previous years of college (Dalton's emphasis on liberal arts education has never come in handier, and I suspect it will never come in handier) and so I've been able to slack off quite a bit in there. Hopefully we'll continue along those terms...considering it's a class primarily made up of freshman, I'm imagining it will. Most of those kids haven't taken the basic composition course, and so far we haven't really been expected to write college-caliber essays. Not that I don't do that anyway of course. I am brilliant after all.

Proofs is an exceedingly interesting course, and can be pretty fun, but also very frustrating! I really enjoy the class and I like the people, but I think it may be driving me insane! Discrete and Java haven't been so bad yet...not for lack of course load, but we've had one test in Discrete that I got a 99 on and I've been doing consistently well on the homework, so I have a nice buffer to work off of. In Java it's much the same, though my confidence level in that class is extremely low and my grades keep coming back much higher than I expect them too...so far I've been getting extra credit on all the assignments, and our first test was last Friday. It was ridiculously hard and I thought I did awful on it, but what I found out today when I picked it up is that turns out there were fifteen extra points scattered throughout the paper, and I managed to get over the full credit amount. And today, working off of two hours of sleep and another bad grade in Proofs and expecting nothing above a B, that silly 101 was enough to put me in relieved tears. The only real problems I've been having with Discrete and Java is that the work load in those classes is constant. I just don't get a break, it seems.

I don't think the work load this year is any more than it has been in the past, but here at Berry they take up a lot more for a grade then they ever did at Dalton. At Dalton they assign a lot of suggested homework but not too much for a grade... so I got used to grades being totally dependent on tests and projects, and it's not like that here. It's been an adjustment, and I'm still adjusting, and I'm afraid sleep has become one of those things I haven't figured out how to fit into my schedule yet.

Hopefully I'll get better at that as we go, and start suffering involuntary insomnia rather than all night homework sessions on a regular basis again.