well it's been a while since i posted so i figured i better come up with something, right?

alright i finally got a topic to bitch about tonight... this time we're gonna harp on the sleeping habits of people.

let's start this off in my usual blunt way: if you're a current student, i lack respect for you if you fall in any of the following categories:

-- you have a certain number of hours you have to sleep every night

-- you prefer to wake up early all the time to get things done instead of doing them at night

-- you go out of your way to bitch to me about how tired you are when you got more hours of sleep than i did the previous night

-- you've never pulled an all-nighter and you've been in school for more than 2 semesters

i've arrived at these conclusions by thinking of who i've gotten along with well and who i haven't over the last 4 years here at a&m. it seems only those that can stay up and put sleep off for a while seem to get along with me on any kind of consistent basis.

maybe i should clarify a little better what i'm talking about. i think if you have a few early classes a week, you should be able to go to bed earlier for those circumstances. what i don't like, is when your classes basically start at 10 and 11 and you're in bed while it's still in the PM hours or you think you're insane when you're going to bed at 1am. if you've got an important job and you can't afford to ever be tired, by all means, get proper sleep. but the majority of you, you're a college kid like me. the focus of your life is getting good grades.

that being said, let's look at a couple of "case studies" if you will.

alayna (past best friend and current girlfriend)
obviously i love her, but she's a perfect example of the type of person i have so much trouble getting along with. for the first year i knew her, almost all arguments we had were based on her going to bed so early. i think she's the classic scenario of a good student and intelligent person, but a complete pussy when it comes to sucking it up, putting everything else on hold, and just shutting the fuck up about being tired. of course, i respect my own girlfriend, but i still have problems with the fact that she's never pulled an all-nighter. she and i have argued playfully several times about it. an all-nighter is actually a double edged sword in some respects. on one hand, it means that you weren't prepared enough for your test/project to be done with it and get sleep the night before, but on the other, it shows that you care enough about it to completely postpone sleeping and get what you have to do done. she gets things done with the best of 'em, unfortunately her lack of willingness to just suck it up and stay up all night to be better prepared almost always makes me feel in some weird backwards way that i'm actually the more driven student.

what's funny is over the course of our relationship, she's proven she can stay up, despite what she thought previously. i feel like i actually love her more when she stays up till 2am talking to me and doesn't go on and on about needing sleep. she doesn't go out of her way to bother me that she's tired, and i respect that about her. she doesn't have so many early classes anymore, and i think her staying up later helps us get along better in some way.

dustin (former roommate of 2 and a half years and friend)
heheh, the thing about dustin is that in my book he'll always be #2 to me as far as having the best sleep "abilities." i never thought it'd be the case but he was my favorite person to live with in college based on the way he viewed sleep. he basically saw sleep as the best thing in the world, even going as far as to say if he could, he'd sleep over half the day. the thing was, dustin would put off sleep as long as he'd have to when he had shit on the line. to an extent some of my all-nighter and sleep deprivation "abilities" were fine-tuned due to being around him. in my book he's been able to pull off one thing i haven't, and that's the double all-nighter. i've tried prolly 2-3 times, and each time i've had to throw in the towel for at least an hour of sleep. if i'm not mistaken he was able to pull off 48 hours straight with no sleep, which is golden in my opinion.

i think in my on-campus days i almost completely learned how to nap from dustin. i sort of learned that you can get away with sleeping 4 hours at night and then a 1 or 2 hour nap during the day and not feel tired all the time. the only difference dustin and i had was our viewpoints on sleep itself. he viewed sleep as the best thing in the world and loved doing it. i view sleep as the worst thing in the world and i hate doing it. i won't lie, when i get tired and feel like sleeping, i do, and it feels good. it's just that the whole time i'm asleep i feel like i could be doing something better. not so much something productive, just something else that would make me happy or whatever. i guess i just wish in general we didn't sleep at all and could just stay up 24 hours a day, didn't need any kind of bed at all.

rick (fellow computer science major and friend)
the thing i like about rick is the guy just stays up even when he doesn't have to, cuz that's how i am. he admits sometimes he should be in bed but knows he can get away with staying up, and i love that mentality. i think in some weird way it gives me more respect for him, in that it at least gives you somebody to talk to in the later hours and somebody who understands that there are often better things to do than sleep.

general case -- strict sleepers (several people over the years)
i've met plenty of people that feel they're committing a sin if they're up past midnight, regard sleep as way more important than anybody or anything else, and that it's simply impossible to exist without 7/8/9 hours of sleep a night. y'know why i can't get along with these people? for one, they never have time to talk to you. these people are substituting a couple hours of sleep for a good block of time that they could prolly be interfacing with other people and thus growing as a person in some way. that's why i don't respect 'em... as soon as you admit to me it's more important for you to get 9 hours of sleep before your 9am class than it is to talk to me for 30 minutes on IM, i've lost all interest in ya.

i'm the first to admit i have weird sleeping patterns. typically, i put off sleep as long as i can until i feel i'm too sluggish to stay up or need to go to bed to get enough sleep so that i can properly function the next day. i don't expect everyone to follow that pattern, i just think you're wasting your 4 years of college by grandma'ing it up all the time. i may procrastinate and get sidetracked and whatnot, but if you slept 9 hours last night and i slept 4, guess what? i accomplished much more than you and prolly had a good ol' fuckin time doing it. so while you're sleeping it up and thinking how great it is that you never fall asleep in your horribly boring lecture the next day, remember me, the guy that's staying up late having a blast and living a life you don't have the balls to even try.

still representin' the dark side,
justin