Desperately seeking shuteye

Have you ever been far away from a loved one? Have you ever missed someone so much that you think about them every minute of the day?\nLately, this is how I have been feeling about the backs of my eyelids. Sometimes it’s school, sometimes it’s work and sometimes it’s even hanging out with friends that does it, but suffice it to say that I have been missing out on way too much sleep lately to go on functioning like a semi-normal human being. And judging by the lines at Starbucks this week and the number of Rockstar cans I’ve seen lying around campus, I’m not alone.\nIn addition to death and taxes, midterms are unfortunately an inevitable part of existence. However, the hours that they force students to keep shouldn’t be. Once we start losing sleep, we stop making sense. This past Wednesday morning, for example, coming off of less than three hours of shuteye, I realized that had misplaced my keys. After tearing through my apartment and suffering a mild nervous breakdown, I did manage to find them … in my trashcan.\nObviously, the sleep-deprived are never quite 100 percent there. In the short term, losing sleep can cause decreased performance and alertness, memory impairment and relationship stress, and can increase the likelihood of having a serious car accident. Ironically, then, staying up to cram may actually hinder your performance on your rocket science exam the next day. Besides, professors are never very appreciative when you fall asleep in their class the day after an all-nighter.\nWhat’s more, according to the Harvard-run Nurses’ Health Study, long-term insufficient or irregular sleep can lead to increased risk for colon cancer, breast cancer, heart disease and diabetes. On top of that, it may do some serious damage to the contents of your wallet. As effective as they are in keeping you conscious when you’re up all night, at $3 to $4 a pop, a daily skim, iced Costa Rican mocha-java-espresso latte with extra foam can leave you penniless before long. Plus, as I’m sure you’ve realized if you’ve ever taken the time to have a conversation with your neighborhood coffee junkie, caffeine habits are not actually that far removed from drug addictions. \nBut life never slows down, no matter how nicely you ask it to. So what can you do about sleep deprivation? Well, for starters, stay organized and plan things out. Don’t schedule important things in the middle of times of high stress. IU itself could stand to follow this advice; year after year, I find myself wondering what kind of sadist schedules homecoming during midterms week. Besides being organized, you can also try to do things when they are assigned, while they are still fresh in your mind and you have the energy to tackle them. For example, if you have an IDS opinion column assigned to you, don’t wait until 1:13 a.m. the day it is due to start on it. You’ll definitely regret it as you simultaneously struggle to keep your eyes open and to think of a punchy way to end it. \nJust trust me on this one.