It is 6:25 AM. I think now is an appropriate time for me to write about sleep and procrastination. Forgive me if my writing becomes incomprehensible..

College students never have good sleeping habits, but mine are the worst. Generally I have a hard time falling asleep, but during times of stress I become an insomniac. Lying in bed, unable to fall asleep, one’s thoughts tend to run the gamut of possibilities: memories good and bad, dreams and worries for the future, plans for the next day, crazy ideas, sex fantasies, but the one that I tend to turn most to is the failure of my life. I guess I am like an electron who’s natural energy state is that of negative thoughts. During the day I am pretty good at forcing myself to think positively, but when night casts her spell, my natural pessimism takes over. I kick myself for not having taken a sleeping pill earlier, but decide it’s too late to do so now. Every so often, I take a look at the clock, calculate how many more hours I have to sleep if I were to fall asleep then and there, think about how early I have to wake up the next day for class, and then get super stressed out, exacerbating the problem. Then the panic attack kicks in; I start to notice my heart beating faster, my neck muscles tensing up. Suddenly, I feel like a fist is clenching my fish and every muscle in my body is constricted. I start taking quick, shallow breaths. I look at the clock again, and kick myself harder for not taking the sleeping pill the first time I kicked myself. Later, I will kick myself again for this instance. And eventually I fall asleep after wasting six hours lying in bed, don’t wake up in time for class, and the cycle starts over again the next day.

Two weeks ago, I fixed my sleeping schedule by taking sleeping pills around midnight and forcing myself to wake up at 8 no matter what happened. After a week, I could get to sleep by myself around midnight without any aid, and wake up on time too! However, it’s hard as a college student to have a “normal” sleep schedule. You miss out on parties, social activities, and late night bonding with your dorm-mates. A week later, I slipped up and allowed myself to play card games with friends from midnight to six am, something I hadn’t done since my freshman year. I can’t blame myself and I don’t regret it, because it was a lot of fun, but now I am suffering the consequences: sleeping late and waking up early for class, followed by sleeping early and waking up late to make up for it.

So from now on I am going to improve my sleep schedule and maintain it. And if I don’t, I will post it on this blog and everyone can leave comments about how horrible I am.

Some rules/strategies I am going to follow:

Develop a calming evening routine to calm down and allow time to reflect over the day; (yay, this will allow me to simultaneously work towards my goal of flossing more!)
*At first, if I don’t feel tired around 11, take a sleeping pill, which will have me asleep by midnight. Try to get off of these as soon as possible because they leave me a bit drowsy in the morning.
*Wake up at 8 no matter what, even if I slept at 6am the night before. No matter what, do not nap during the day. One crappy day will be made up for by a week of good sleep.
*Reward myself for waking up early with a nice breakfast.
*NO CAFFEINE after lunch. No sugary drinks after dinner. I am super sensitive to both of these, but find them incredibly hard to resist.
*Listen to my lecture on my ipod if I can’t fall asleep (it’s boring so it will put me to sleep, and if I don’t fall asleep then I won’t feel bad about wasting time!)

Now let me explain why I am awake at 6:40 am and where procrastination fits in. I have just spent the past 8 hours straight churning out an essay about Classical Chinese Rituals. The first four hours were spent deciphering ancient Chinese philosophical cannons, and the rest were spent exercising the BS section of my brain. Word count and expresso have been my best friends tonight.

Everyone procrastinates. I thought that as I gained more college experience, I would learn to study better, but I only learned to play harder and procrastinate better. I learned how to turn out A grade papers during an all-nighter, and how to put off studying for exams until the night before. The problem is that this type of learning only allows for short term gain and not long-term retention. In the end, who would you rather have for a doctor: someone with a 4.0 undergraduate GPA, or someone who actually remembers their stuff? I long ago realized that grades didn’t matter as much as substance, which is why I justified neglecting my school work for so long in favor of socializing. But I have yet to master the skill of actual learning rather than grade-snagging.

What am I going to do about it? For now, I’m not going to worry about this because having too many goals at once is way too overwhelming and I think my sleep is more important. More to come about procrastination later.

(PS. I hope some of you will learn from my example and not leave your essays to write for the last night!)