Frustrated by my crushing workload, my extracurriculars, my college quest, and the irksome knowledge that everything is meaningless, I decided to “stick one to the Man”: I went to bed at nine pm. That’s right. You heard me. Might very well have been 8:59. One subject vanquished, I stared down the rest of my books until they cowered in my J. Crew tote. I awoke rested, was on time to Bio, and participated brilliantly in five classes I hadn’t prepared for.
To some this may be a familiar story-to others and fantasy- but in the context of my monkish existence it seemed a tango with temptation. To ease up on the melodrama, let me give you some background: Like many Choate students, I am somewhat occupied, tending to stay up late as a result. I enter oblivion between 2:30 am and 4 am, before arising (promptly) at 6 am. Finding myself in a sleepwalking mode recently, I settled upon an experiment: For an entire week, I would sleep a minimum of eight hours per night and work a maximum of four.
I felt hungrier, sharper—in short, more alive. Further, my latent desire to throw rocks at songbirds disappeared entirely. I engaged in class, laughed at my friends’ jokes, and wrote creatively. Exuberant, I felt assured of my ‘success’ until the troop of assignments came back. The corners were turned down over the marks, like soldiers clasping their hands to bloody sides. Comments such as “Can we talk about [what happened to] Tuesday’s test?” and “Not exactly [correct], in fact, not at all” served effectively as orders to cease-and-desist. One teacher even offered a possible explanation: “Didn’t realize they were chucking pianos out Humanities’ windows.”
While no one had dropped a baby grand on my head, I had suffered the injury of following adults’ advice. According to many of these ‘wise’ beings, time spent sleeping, not studying, is the key to academic success. I certainly experienced the side benefits of this audacious claim, but the principal premise proved false. My experiment, while validating the long hours of work I had done previously, dispelled my hope that sleep was the great, undiscovered secret. It might have made me happier, but my grades were plunging to the displeasure of my parents, teachers, and college counselor.
Accordingly, I was terribly excited to discover the next Student Life Committee meeting focused on stress and sleep. I believed, naively, that now was the time when the Board of Trustees would finally recognize the impossibility of the Choate workload. I envisioned us coming together, the students telling their horror stories with the dignity of martyrs, the trustees shaking their heads with concern and then huddling to immediately formulate a plan. The Administration would descend, and, after a few initial squawks of protest, be brought to reason by the gently cajoling trustees. Though admittedly rather farcical, this type of escapist fantasy is not uncommon to the anxiety-addled adolescent mind.
What actually transpired was rather different. After enjoying some gooey Aramark cookies and soda, we on the committee discussed how eating well and avoiding caffeine aid in reducing stress. The presenter, the psychologist Dr. McGrath, is himself in the business of getting kids into college. He was thus ideally suited to lead the conversation to a different level of irony. Meditating and exercising were acknowledged as great stress-relievers, but not when they meant starting work two hours later. The latter ‘anxiety-alleviator’ proves antithetical to the many who feel uncomfortable working out alongside Choate’s resident walk-ons from 300. A staunch advocate of sleep, the doctor reiterated the belief that an hour of rest is more beneficial than an hour of study. The other strategies were similar: frustratingly familiar and- difficult to implement.
Much like communism, these ideas look wonderful in a wee red-leather bound book but are hard to actualize when humans are involved. But who am I to criticize utopians? My vision of the meeting was utterly incongruous with the function of the Student Life Committee, or, for that matter, Choate. To stay marketable with our peer schools, we must expect a comparably heavy workload. The students (not to mention the parents) would hardly appreciate the Board swinging the campus in a holistic-health commune direction. So what is to be done, barring revolution? For starters, the sleep-idolatry has got to go.
We are all terribly aware that as strapping young lads and lasses, we ought to be clocking in our eight hours. But as Doc Gardner puts it best, “The only group at Choate getting the suggested dose of sleep are 3rd form day-student boys.” Believe me, we are acquainted with the concept that our acuity suffers. Similarly, we know that many teachers are sensitive to exhaustion and make allowances accordingly. But the work must be done at some point, and more than a handful of professors would prefer that we get to that point within the next business day. When teachers shake their heads at the ‘irresponsibility’ of sleep-deprived students, it may be the one instance in which we are castigated unfairly for failing to comprehend the repercussions of our decisions. To speak plainly, we understand, but we can’t do anything about it.
For many adults, this statement prompts an excited inhalation, followed by a torrent of good intentions. “But you can do something about it! You can plan ahead, finish your work early, and go to sleep!” intone a thousand helpful voices in unison. While this works for certain individuals, it operates on a risky premise: We are perfectly efficient robots immune to the hardly-monastic calls of our community. This, as any fresh-faced darling will assure you, is not the case. We are adroit (at the very least able) at making schedules and setting aside hours for homework. But we are also kids. School and extracurriculars aside, much time and energy must be devoted to building and maintaining friendships, a major component of identity formation. I seem to have misplaced the part of my manual where it details how to shut off desire for peer enforcement until 5:30 pm on Friday. Further, the oft-touted venues of afternoon sports and meals don’t necessarily constitute all the “down time” a student needs. It is a shifting balance that should be allowed to change as we grow into a set of interests. An awareness of human nature might necessitate untying those heathens who didn’t start their work until ten o’clock.
Due to the multitude of conflicting aims loosely termed “Life,” it is difficult to be asleep when one ought to be. My experiment proved that despite curtailed socialization and study hours, it’s a battle to the bed. And even when Normandy is taken (read eight hours of pillow-time), the results are far from satisfactory. Sleep cannot serve as the sole nostrum for all our ills. Despite the assurances its well-meaning peddlers, this restorative treatment must be combined with other factors for success. A path of moderation must be sought, weighing the long-term benefits of sleep against completing the task at hand. This is rather inconvenient. Then again, the truth has had a niggling habit of being so, ever since Al Gore got into filmmaking.
I could leave you with Al Gore, but that’s a weighty load for even the well- rested. For a little pragmatic application, here are some tips for garnering more time to sleep: 1) Disable the wall of your Facebook profile for a week. It’s amazing how much less you’ll go on if you don’t need to check for yourself what the world is reading about you. 2) Say ‘no’ to three people a day. You could even pull a Bartleby and pop out an “I’d prefer not to” or two. 3) Take a brisk mental check-in once in a while. For example: “I am in the common room sitting on my chem text book” or “I am about to enter my third consecutive hour of G-hero.” This consciousness helps keep study breaks from dominating study hours, or, at the very least, deepens your understanding of what activities you enjoy. Speaking of which, I’m off to the refueling station. Anyone up for Red Bull?
