I have a new goal in life: learn to sleep for as little as humanly possible and still function at maximum capacity. I've heard rumors and people claim that they can survive and thrive on only three or four hours a night (something to do with quality REM cycles, apparently); and, after a week riddled with research papers and exams, I've decided that this talent may be more vital and crucial to my life in college than any other hypothetical super power I could think of.

I'm skeptical as to whether this could indeed be considered "healthy," but I've been considering how different our individual and collective lives would be if humans didn't require so much sleep. Personally, I think I would read more and maybe consider taking up jogging: two things that I've been contemplating for quite some time and yet can never really bring myself around to sacrificing precious nap time to complete. As previously mentioned, my research paper has been draining my sleep schedule like a growing monster for the past two weeks, which has in turn produced some interesting effects. It's understatedly embarrassing to be the last person to realize that you: a) have been suffering from the sleepy head roll in which your neck can no longer support the gigantic weight of your exhausted, dysfunctional brain, b) are infected with "sleepy googly eye syndrome" within which your eyes similarly roll around in the sockets until you no longer are capable of focusing on a single point or object; rather, the colors and images of your surrounding world blur into one, glorious daydream, or c) were unconscious for a good chunk of your day for which you had just pulled an all-nighter.

As of late, my solution to everything seems to result in a nap. Stress + frustration + confusion= nap time. I have officially mastered the art of "power napping," the non-groggy alternative that re-energizes me for roughly an hour until I practically pass out in biology again. In consideration of how little sleep most college students actually receive, it seems that college is the single most unhealthy point in one's life: lack of sleep, dorm food and accompanying freshman fifteen, and the rare, yet entertaining, I'm-away-from-home stupid decisions that ironically result in people getting sent back home to recover for a few weeks or months. Since August, I've found myself in a few situations within which I was so tired I overcame my fear of sleeping in public and actually allowed myself to be one of the many students sleeping on the quad or Farrand Field. It's quite funny, seeing about ten to twenty students assuming "the position:" face down in the grass, arms splayed out with a barrier of books and exam reviews guarding them from the occasional dog and stray football or Frisbee.

Even now, I'm struggling to keep my eyelids open in the silence of the library, my head throbbing from that vicious exhaustion headache that seems to accompany my stress-induced heartburn (yeah, weird, I know). Looking at my long list of To-Dos, I'm inexpressibly happy that I've made it a somewhat pathetic habit to add "naptime" in between research and advising appointment solely for the satisfaction of being able to feel like I'm achieving something while indulging in my favorite college pastime.