Date: Monday, 10-8-01. Time: 3 am. Place: somewhere in Blaisdell basement.

After a hectic weekend filled with massive amounts of reading, bad dance music and random family visits, I wearily sit down in front of my computer and stare blankly at the screen. Nothing comes to mind. As the last few hours of the weekend begin to slip away, along with my consciousness, I have nothing to say. I continue to stare blankly at the screen, except now I’ve laid my head down on my desk and have one eye on the screen and the other one, unable to conjure up enough energy to look upward, in a semi-shut position, staring straight ahead.

I raise my hand to look at my watch; it is now 3:30 am. Suddenly I remember I have Organic Chemistry at 8 am; that’s less than five hours away! At this point I silently begin to curse myself for taking the earliest class offered at Pomona. Maybe Emily and Andrew are right….maybe I am a masochist. Or maybe they’re just jealous and secretly wish they could understand all that complicated chemistry stuff…ok, maybe not, since I don’t even understand it….Or maybe…Damn, I just wasted close to thirty minutes complaining about O-chem. Must focus! Hmm…maybe coffee will help.

Too bad I’m all out…Oh well….My eyelids begin to droop at this point. All of a sudden I get this "great" idea on how I can make myself stay awake. It’s all about scotch tape!! I mean, I can’t go to sleep if I can’t close my eyes right? (Yeah, I know, you must think that I am completely demented at this point; but I’m not-not really, at least, just too tired to be sane in any sense of the word - tired and desperate.)

So, after I have scotch taped my eyelids to my forehead, I sit back down at my desk. It is now 4:30 am. I sit down and write for a good 15 to 20 minutes before I start to drift in and out of consciousness again. At this point the Scotch tape, which seemed like a great idea just a few minutes ago is now doing nothing but annoying the heck out of me. It won’t let me "cheat" and take a quick five minute, nap nor will it let me focus as the tape pulls on my skin a little every time I try to blink. So I go over to the small dresser mirror with the intent to quickly remove the cursed tape and continue writing my article.

Unfortunately, before I can do so, I happen to catch a quick glimpse of myself in the full-length mirror on the door and I realize how stupid I look. For one thing, I have my pj pants on inside out, my hair is up in this whacked out crazy bun that is sticking out in all directions imaginable, and I have tape holding my eyelids open…I look hilarious!!

So, what do I do? I start laughing of course, and not just your average comedic laugh, but hysterically! I fall to the floor in fits of laughter, shaking uncontrollably. This lasts for about 20- 30 minutes. By the time I finally make myself look decent and get myself to calm down, it’s almost 6 am. So, I decide I should probably sleep for at least thirty minutes before I have to get up and get ready for class. Once again, I have wasted another night. I haven’t slept, I haven’t really accomplished much, so why do I, along with thousands upon thousands of sleep deprived college students across the country, even bother?

Well, some students are just used to it. To them, sleep deprivation is a way of life; they’ve been doing it ever since their parents did away with their bedtime. Some of them-myself included-never even had a bedtime. When people ask me how I can function on an average of three hours of sleep a night, I just say "practice makes perfect."

Obviously, I am nowhere near perfection, but I have found that, for the most part, I am usually pretty energetic even after a night such as this one. I have never really needed much sleep and I don’t understand how people can actually sleep a full eight hours on a weekday.

Others see sleep deprivation as a sort of stimulant. Some of these have even described it as a great alternative to substance use:

"Sleep deprivation does have its perks. Some of us don’t get much alcohol in our diet, and so we need to get our intoxication in other ways. Sleep dep’s a pretty good mind-altering substance. You get your inhibitions lowered, become more impulsive and there’s no nasty hangover in the morning. All the benefits of social drinking without any of the problems." said Steve Deford ’04.

Still others simply do not sleep as an effort to…reconnect with nature? Edward Lee, ’04 says that, "Sleep deprivation totally has its benefits. Like, you’re the first person to see the sun rise in the morning and that just brightens up your day and puts a smile on your face." I think Ed is due for a little nap, what do ya’ll think?

Some of us try to excuse sleep deprivation by saying we just have too much work. Although this occasionally may be true, let’s face it: we don’t really always have so much work that we need to stay up every might trying to finish it. If that were true, everyone would be sleep deprived and my friend Daniel wouldn’t be driving me crazy by going to bed so ridiculously early every night, and I wouldn’t be the only person awake at 4 am the night before a huge O-chem test.

No, there are students at Pomona who do get their required amount of sleep pretty much every night. But tell me, where’s the excitement in that? No unexpected middle of the night fun, no spur of the moment outings to In-N-Out, no massive amounts of caffeine consumed.

There is nothing wrong with sleep; hey, I love every minute of it — when I can make time for it. I guess the big difference between me and a "sleeper" is that I don’t let sleep factor in to my daily activity considerations; I plan out my day and if I have time for sleep, great, if I don’t, oh well. I see sleep as a reward, not as a privilege. I know this might sound insane, but it’s all a part of "sleep deprived" lifestyle. In essence, "We, the sleep deprived, sleep to live, not live to sleep," and that’s that.