How did you feel when you woke up today? If it was anything like I did, the answer is “pretty crappy.” Maybe it’s the lack of a transition from dream to reality. One second, you’re snuggling with your hot high school guidance counselor, the next, you’re snuggling with Katiyana, your pillow girlfriend. Perhaps it can be attributed to only getting three hours of sleep because, after watching five straight hours of “Scrubs” episodes last night, the “last episode of the night” somehow turned into the “last season of the night.” I’ve gone through phases of going to sleep so late that morning wood didn’t start affecting me until the late afternoon.
What I love best about those first few moments of consciousness is that mini-debate you have in your head about whether or not it’s really necessary to go to class. Somehow, people essentially make the most important decisions of their day at a juncture in which their minds are least capable of logical reasoning. However, likening this internal conflict to a debate would be a poor analogy. I don’t know which side of your brain is arguing in favor of waking up every morning, but my guess is that it’s part of the 90 percent of your brain that doesn’t work.
Ultimately, this debate is conducted by analyzing the pros and cons of sleeping through class.
First of all, you can get any notes you missed from someone else smarter than you, thereby making it advantageous for you to miss class.
Second, getting a solid night’s sleep will allow you to accomplish more during the day.
Now for the cons of sleeping through class – there are none.
In your half-conscious stupor, you are often able to convince yourself that no negative repercussions will ever come from sleeping through class. So, of course, having fully justified it with irrefutable logic and elaborate intellect, you not only go back to sleep, but also do so with a clean conscience.
After all, you’re only missing one of the three classes scheduled for today.
Five hours and three missed classes later, you wake up feeling great! But your rested state gives you the clarity to realize that, while your reasons for skipping class seemed foolproof at the time, you will probably
never accomplish all that you intended. You’ll never end up asking your smart friend for their notes because you realize that doing so makes you an asshole, not a friend.
Furthermore, you may very well wake up full of ambition, but a load of laundry and the reorganization of a binder later, I assure you that somehow it’ll feel like you’ve accomplished enough.
The point I’m trying to make here is the same one your parents try to make every time you talk to them on the phone. But hear me out – I go through it every day just like you. If you don’t believe me, just take a look at me before noon as I drag myself from class to class. I’m easy to find because I’m the one who wears pajama pants every single day. It’s not a style – it’s exactly what I wore to bed. I just get up, put on shoes and make my way to class.
So, let me be the one to tell you how it is. The university knows that you get three hours of sleep a night and, quite frankly, just doesn’t care. Stop by the Corner Store or bookstore sometime and take notice of the not one, but two brands of caffeine pills being sold. The 7-Eleven next to my house doesn’t even sell caffeine pills.
If that’s not proof enough, consider the three coffee distributors partitioned evenly throughout campus, so that not only can you get coffee, but, no matter where you are on campus, it’s not too far of a walk.
So wake up, pop a caffeine pill, buy a latte and get your ass to class. I promise you that nothing bad will come of going to class. You just might even do something productive, like write a Campus Times article.
Schwartz can be reached at aschwartz@campustimes.or
