Preparing for a test requires much more than just studying. A lot of overachievers, myself included, tend to excuse ourselves from self-care when cortisol levels are high and time is in short supply. It’s like I can somehow only manage to prioritize one thing at a time in my mind, and right now the test comes first; all other activities detract from time that could be better spent studying. However, healthy habits such as sleep and diet are important, and especially more so during times of high stress.

In six days, I have to take the (so far) most important exam in my life at 8:00 in the morning. With a total length of over five hours, oft remarked to test endurance more than ability, the MCAT,  needless to say, does not spare lightly those who enter even remotely tired. After two weeks of religious studying, I’ve gotten to the point where I miss questions not due to unfamiliarity with the material, but due to sloppiness. Fixing my sleep schedule will probably gain me more points than any amount of studying can now. Considering people tend to be more alert a few hours after waking, I must wake up at 6am to maximize my 8am focus. Easy, right?

I wish.

I am a recurrent insomniac, especially during times of high stress. I feel most comfortable during the hours between 1 and 3 am. My regular bedtime is 4 am, and I wake up after lunch. Two nights ago I couldn’t sleep until 6am, and woke up at 4pm. I’ve slowly whittled down my bedtime and pushed up my alarm; last night I slept from 2 to 8 am, forcing myself to wake up despite feeling completely useless all day. However, I still have a long way to go until I train my body to function in the morning.

I also barely eat. Well, to begin with, I never really had good eating habits. I definitely did not consume a balanced, nutritious diet. I can be health-food conscious, in fact, was so for a few months when I tried vegetarianism, but to do so requires, well, a level of consciousness that does not come naturally. Every morning I drive to Starbucks and order a cup of coffee, which keeps me going until I almost pass out around dinner time, which is when I’ve realized that all I’ve had all day is a coffee.  I also snack. A lot. Combine all my eating faults, and the result is that I end up relying on late night snacking as a means of sustenance.

This isn’t the first time I’ve done this. We have all seen those students who are so stressed that they forgo meals to make time for school. I used to skip lunch all the time in high school so that I could finish the homework due in my afternoon classes, and simply buy a bag of chips from the vending machine. But now, I end up studying less than if I had been eating because I just don’t have the energy to continue, almost passing out by the end of the day. I guess I’m not so young anymore, huh.

I also used to exercise regularly. Every day while studying in Oxford I would start off by running to give me energy for the rest of the day. Now I’ve replaced my morning jog with expresso. I don’t have time to run – I rationalize. Instead, I have time to waste four hours lying in bed every night wishing that I could fall asleep. Exercise would have helped me gain energy, eat right, sleep better, and just improve mood in general, all not only conducive but downright necessary for effective studying.

So if I could go back in time and talk to myself before any moment of high stress, I would advice myself to:

• Establish a regular and sufficient sleep schedule. Wake up before lunch one day and you’ll realize that the amount of time in your day to study has vastly expanded. If you are getting ready for a specific test, practice waking up every day in time to get your body used to functioning at peak efficiency during test hours. Start early, as in, not one week before your test like I did.
• Eat right! Get enough nutrients, you don’t want to look like a walking ghost. Take vitamins if you have to. Remember to eat regularly.
• Exercise, at least a little bit in the morning every day to pump yourself up.
• Surround yourself by people who care about you. It makes things much easier, because they will remind you when you forget to take care of yourself. I’ve told my friends about my sleep problem and they will call me in the morning to make sure I’m up. My mom will force me to eat, even when I protest that I’m not hungry.
• Read the news. It’s easy to become self-absorbed when we have a big thing coming up. I mean, how can anyone think about anything else other than your test? Take a reality pill, and realize that there are more important things in the world than you and your test. Keeping up with what’s going on with the rest of the world will help to keep things in perspective and at least make you feel a bit less anti-social as you hole yourself up in your room/library cell.

The next few seem.. well… obvious, but I’ve forgone them before in extreme stress situations, so I might as well mention them.

• Shower. You’ll feel better, trust me. At least do it for consideration of your family/dorm mates.
• Get dressed, nicely if possible. No, don’t bring out that ball gown, but don’t spend all day in your pajamas. I used to think that I could shave off precious time if I never had to change clothes. However, I find that I have more confidence when I feel like I look better. In fact, I usually go to all my exams at least a little more neat looking than my usual self. Why not study this way too?
• Get out of the room! Are you really going to get that much done in the time it takes you to drive/bike/walk to the library/coffee shop?
• Be nice to others. Sometimes people will ask me for a favor and I will immediately reply, sorry I don’t have time, I’m studying. Taking a little bit out of your day to help someone else can actually do you a lot of good. You deserve the occasional break, and the fuzzy feeling you get can get you to focus better.

I generally hate when people say, “Take care”, especially in emails, because it is tossed around as a polite way-out by those who don’t actually care. But I don’t mind telling myself and others who need to hear it every once in a while.

Take care,

Crystal

I found a great new way to run and I swear it works so well for me! I warmly welcome – no I blazing hotly welcome – you to try this out and tell me if it worked for you.

My biggest achilles heel when I run is my short attention span. When people advertise the draw of running (getting in touch with nature, getting time to think for yourself), those solitary and lengthy qualities of running are precisely what turn me away. After a quarter mile, even if I could run more I get so bored that I stop. I’ve tried running with a buddy, but even though your are very enthusiastic about that at first, eventually you don’t have the energy to coordinate your schedules and one of you drops out. I’ve tried running with music, and that gets boring too because you’re just passively listening (also my headphones keep falling out).

Now I have finally found a way to keep myself interested while running! When I was little my mom taught me a Chinese nursery rhyme:

One frog, one mouth, two eyes, four legs.

Two frogs, two mouths, four eyes, eight legs. and so on.

I started repeating that while running, timing the counts to my steps. Even though it was the most mechanical mental activity, it sustained my interest enough to keep my legs going after two laps. I realized that if I channeled this energy into memorizing something productive, then I could have a rather large repertoire by the end of the term.

I printed out the Gettysburg Address in huge font. Clutching it in my hand, I started jogging and reciting. Each time I took a step, I said one word.

Four.

Four score.

Four score and.

Four score and twenty.

After two laps (I usually run two laps around the meadow a day. Don’t ask me what distance that is, I’m guessing .75 miles?) I had managed to make it all the way to the end of the first sentence. I think I’ll finish the whole thing in about a month’s time. That might be painfully slow, but the exercise isn’t really about the memorization. It’s about the motivation to run. Now I really want to run so that I can continue playing this game, and while running I am motivated to keep in rhythm rather than slow down. Also, I bet that if I memorize the entire speech in this slow but paced manner, it will escape my mind much less easily than when I had to memorize it by rote in elementary school.

Maybe when I go back to America, I will be able to recite all the important speeches!

I played a lot of video games as a kid. Whenever I lost all my lives, a screen would display, “YOU FAILED” accompanied by a strong voice announcing the same phrase. If my life were a video game, I would imagine that screen displaying right now.

You’ll notice that for the past week I have been a little negligent about writing. That’s because I have completely and utterly failed  every single goal I had set. Let me just list them in order:

Academics: I had said that I would be more diligent about learning over memorizing, yet due to my procrastination, cramming is all I can ever manage in order to get by. Friday morning I had a midterm for human physiology, which I chose to not start studying for until 2 days before. The result: spending every spare moment, and including some not spare ones (try biking while looking at notes), forcing tidbits of information into short term memory, and counting on a system restart once the test was over. I am interested in medicine; human physiology should be the most interesting and relevant subject to me. If I can’t even motivate myself to learn this, how can I ever learn anything? This week, I have to do the same for a physics midterm. Which brings me to my next goal…

Sleep: This week I have been running on consecutive days of minimal sleep. I’m one of those above average people who need more than 8 hours of sleep a night, yet I’ve only averaged 5 this week. Now, my sleep is so messed up that I am sitting in my bathrobe in the dorm lounge at 4:27 AM writing this blog, because despite my extreme tiredness, I still can’t fall asleep. Looks like my insomnia is kicking back in, most likely stress-related…

Exercise: Last weekend I pulled a leg muscle while playing squash, and for two days it hurt to walk. I used that as an excuse at first to doge my exercise routine, promising myself that as soon as I felt better I would work out again. Later, when I had too much work to do, I skipped again. The sleep deprivation gave me more excuses. However, I can already feel the consequences: my mood is worse than usual, I feel more tired, and am less productive and unable to focus. This weekend I should make up for it by re-starting my routine.

Vegetarianism: No, I have not broken it. I have friends placing bets on how long I will last (shoutouts to those who placed 100$ on me staying this way forever!). I must say, some friends have already lost. However, I don’t feel like I am getting what I am supposed to from this diet. As mentioned earlier, I feel extra-hungry, and rely on unhealthy, albeit meat-less, meals. I keep meaning to visit the nutritionist but never find the time.

From now on in my posts, I will keep a tracker of three things: Overall Mood, physical tiredness (short-term fluctuations), and spiritual tiredness (more long-term). For sake of clarity, I will spend a moment to detail what each reading means. 10 means best (better mood, less tired, etc.), 0 means worst.

Mood:

0 – suicidal

1 – severely depressed

2 – slightly depressed

5 – neither happy nor sad

7 – quite happy

10 – best day of my life

Physical tiredness:

0 – I’m going to collapse

3- lethargic

5 – not too tired, but not too energetic

7 – quite bubbly

10 – I just overdosed on caffeine

Spiritual Tiredness:

0 -I want to shut myself up in a Buddhist temple and take a break from life

3 – I need a vacation

5 – no feelings

7 – I have energy to move forward with life

10 – I have no idea what this state would look like, must be heaven.

I am so tired of being tired.

Mood: 6 These few weeks are the weeks from hell: exams or large papers due every week, and they just keep on coming. The only reason this score is positive right now is because I just came back from Viennese Ball and got to wear my new 300$ dress. Also, I’m going ice skating tomorrow!

Physical Tiredness: 1 Too little sleep + 5 hours of waltzing + insomnia

Spiritual Tiredness: 3 School + Med School apps + being unsure about life

In high school I played four different sports, one each season for school (volleyball, track, and softball) and soccer year round with the city team. Once I entered college, my active lifestyle went out the drain and my computer replaced my boyfriend on my list of things I spend the most time with. “Exercise more” was on my list of new goals for the semester every time, and my daily trips to the gym would last at most a week before I became a mindless computer zombie again. The all-you-can-eat dining hall (coupled with my hereditary frugality, which makes me feel compulsively obligated to get the most for my money) made matters worse. Although I was never fat (thanks to my incredible metabolism – also inherited), I was definitely unhealthily out of shape.

Not unlike vegetarians, I am also surrounded by health-o-philes. You know the type: eats a salad everyday for lunch, counts calories, shops at yuppy organic only markets, works out at the gym during lunch breaks, replaces yogurt for butter in baked goods. Every time I walked past the vegan café, or the organic fro-yo (that’s Stanford-talk for frozen yogurt) shop, I could never suppress a tiny scoff: Americans who depend on the commercialized market of “health-friendly” products to ingratiate their otherwise-baseless-ego.

I’m going to pre-empt all the angry comments I will receive: “Crystal, you’re such a hypocritical bitch, you’re only trashing other people’s lives to ingratiate your own ‘otherwise-baseless-ego’. Since you think you’ve got all the answers, how do you propose we stay healthy without buying into the so-called health commercialism?”

A friend of mine gets plenty of exercise without ever having to force himself to do so. He plays badminton, soccer, etc. etc. just to have a good time. He chooses to eat healthy because he thoroughly enjoys the food. The point is that exercise is not just a chore, another goal or item on the to-do-list. A run is not just about staring at the digital readout on the treadmill; lifting weights not just about getting to the next level; and exercise not about trying to decrease the numbers on that scale; but that the process is a sincerely rewarding experience and the behavior a sustainable lifestyle.

This semester, I started to exercise again. I run a mile on the treadmill, followed by a set of eight on all of the arm machines. The entire routine takes about 30 minutes, which is ideal for me because it forces me to exert a good workout, yet it doesn’t take too long. This allows me to justify going to exercise everyday.

At first, it was not that often –a mile on the treadmill at a slow pace every other day. I couldn’t even complete a mile (at pace 7) without walking in the middle. I wasn’t going to go to the gym more often until my friend told me that she also wanted to exercise more. Now, we go together everyday after our physics class. When I first started, I was embarrassed to use the gym facilities; I would switch the weight on the machines to the lightest level and avoid eye contact when a super buff guy used it next and added 100 more pounds. I had not had much experience with treadmills, so I thought it would be a good idea to close my eyes and pretend I was running outside. BAD IDEA: I ended up falling off the end of the treadmill, not realize what was going on and kept trying to get back up on the treadmill while it was still running. The next day, the man on staff wanted to tell me something about not stretching against the glass panes, and he told me “I meant to tell you yesterday, but I didn’t want to embarrass you”. So I had even garnered the receptionist’s sympathy!

Now, I’ve already increased the weight levels on most of the machines by 10 pounds (no more flabby arms!), and also decreased my mile time to 7:30 (a pace of 8.5 on the treadmill). I hope that I can run in a 5K sometime, but I will be building up slowly towards that goal. On the weekends or when I have time, I reward myself with a fun activity, like hiking, rock climbing, or squash.

Some of the rewards from my new-found lifestyle?

• Academics: It’s a great study break and way to relieve stress after a long day; it also helps you to focus afterwards.
• Better sleep: I significantly improved my insomnia after exercising
• Better eating habits: exercising forces me to eat healthy food that gives me energy
• Mood: I feel more cheerful and the feeling of being freshly showered after a hard workout is the most amazing feeling in the world (after orgasm).

Here are some tips from my experience for converting from couch potato

• Do things with a friend! I have a workout buddy, a squash buddy, a hiking buddy, and a rock climbing buddy. It makes exercising more fun, gives you more motivation, and it’s also a great way to get to know people.
• Set goals at small increments and don’t burn yourself out too fast. Don’t increase to the next level until you can maintain your current level with minimal strain.
• Reward yourself while you exercise: I put my favorite songs on my ipod and I only allow myself to listen them to when I work out.
• Find something fun and active at the same time (swimming, sports, etc)
• Buy some nice workout clothes: it feels spiffy to look good in the gym (especially when surrounded by so many hot guys…). You’ll want to work out just to show off your hot bod in them.
• When you start out, find a smaller gym that with a less intimidating atmosphere so you won’t be too scared off.
• Don’t work out for too long. Going everyday for a little bit is much better than going once a week for a long time

I’d like to give some credit here to the blog, www.zenhabits.net, for giving me lots of inspiration and tips on staying active. I subscribe to this blog, and highly recommend it!