Sleep Deprivation

Wow, something just isn't right. I spotted dark blue-black bags under my eyes this evening and thought I'd crash into bed, into dreamland tonight. Instead, it's past 4:30 A.M. and I can't fall asleep for the life of me. My brain aches from sleep deprivation, but I can't get it to shut down and let my exhausted self be. Hmph. Something about this insomnia thing is going to have to give soon, I just can't go on like this, but I don't know what the problem is. When I was home for spring break I slept like a baby, it was amazing.

I had no weekend. It was awful, even though I had some fun. I worked on Friday afternoon and then attended the Bat Mitzvah of one of my seventh graders. I couldn't not go, she is the one girl who respects me. She really wanted me to come, and when I showed up she hugged me twice. I think it really made a difference for her that I showed up, and I felt incredible to be able to make someone so happy.

The whole graduation fiasco degenerated into a little crisis on Friday night when I finally got a response from my college Dean. He indicated that I need to talk to a Dean higher up about my "plans to accelerate" my graduation. I e-mailed him back pleading that my plans to accelerate have been finalized and I thought he had approved them, to which this Dean replied that I still need to see a higher up.

I completely freaked out, and let anxiety consume me over the weekend. Mostly this resulted in a very restless Friday night in which I futilely tried to fall asleep until 5 A.M. I didn't understand why we need to be discussing my graduation plans now in April less than two months before the actual ceremony, only a month before the end of finals. I began to confront the terror of not being allowed to graduate, and thought to myself that I simply could not bear spending another semester here after all the hell I've been through. The panic attack was so bad that I resolved to go see a counselor if this happened again soon--so far it hasn't.

Saturday morning my job at the physics department needed me to help with a conference they were having on campus. So the only day I usually get to sleep to my satisfaction I had to wake up at 9 A.M. Luckily one of my friends/co-student workers called me around 9:20 A.M. that morning to ask if I wanted to walk to the conference together. If she hadn't called I don't think I would have woken up. Here's a kicker, the boss got up and started to thank a bunch of people for helping with the conference. Of course, the students workers didn't even get the slightest shout out. We were disgruntled but applauded anyway. I was feeling cranky, sleepy, and delusional so I started singing the uncensored lyrics to Khia's "My Neck, My Back." My fellow student co-worker got a real rise out of that. We had a good laugh.

After the conference I got back into bed and crashed for an hour or two. Saturday night I went out to a birthday party. It was a good friend of mine, actually my neighbor from last year. I hadn't seen her in a while and really wanted to celebrate her 21st with her, so I went. I made her a mix tape which we played at the party and the whole floor was jumpin' jumpin'. That was nice, but I didn't get back to my room till about oohhh 1 A.M.ish. Didn't get to sleep till an hour or two later...

Then Sunday morning I had to wake up at 8 A.M. for my other job teaching the 7th graders. It was pretty rowdy and I was sooo damn exhausted to control them. One of the students brought in a digital camera and started video recording the class. Ugh, it'll probably end up on the news or something, "rowdy kids, irresponsible teacher." After work I had lunch, and then went to my room and passed out for almost 3 hours.

I was really cranky after having done so much this weekend. Did I mention that I'm not a morning person at all? I can't wake up that early, especially not on weekends! To make matters worse I had all this work dangling over my head. Most notably, I had a 12 page government paper due today. I finished it tonight, but just barely. It was such torture--now that's a government topic worth writing about.

Welp, I do think that was the last obnoxious paper in my whole college career though. What an unglamorous ending. Remaining workload in my college career: 1 statistics exam (next week), senior project/thesis (due sometimes in early May), 2 final exams (2nd-3rd week in May), too many lab reports and problem sets to count (weekly).