Pseudo-sleep

I had my first exam of my final year at Lincoln on Friday. It's done and dusted. Let's move on.

Everyone that knows me knows that I've developed some kind of sleeping problem since getting to Uni and from what I can gather so have a lot of other people. This got me to thinking about what might be causing it...strangely enough this thought occurred to me at 2am this morning while talking to Lex.

We were talking and being awake at silly o'clock in the morning lead to both of us wondering why the other was still awake. Lex was working on his first essay in 3 years and I was totally failing at this whole sleeping thing. Anyways, Lex had recently spent the weekend off the radar, no phone or anything so that he could enjoy his weekend with his missus (understandable right?) and said that while he was there he could actually rest and sleep properly, it's only when he gets back here that sleeping becomes difficult and doesn't feel like proper sleep. This lead me to thinking, why? What is it that makes sleeping at Uni so different to sleeping at home? 

So, being the scientist that I am, cooked up a theory. When you're at home, you're away from Uni, a place all students associate with work and stress. They say Uni is the best time of your life, if not one of the most stressful. It's all deadlines and hard work weighing on your mind. As much as we try to ignore it, push it to the back burner, some part of our minds is always playing with that thought. Gently whispering in our ears that we should be working, or we're not working hard enough. That if we dedicated a little more time to something then we'd make it that much better. Normally I'm pretty good at the whole ignoring stress thing, being relaxed and taking most things in my stride but this year? This is the big one right? This year can make or break a career. This year is the one that we've all been working towards. Our dissertation year, the one project where we can dedicate all the skills and understanding to achieve one thing, no matter what that one thing is. This all adds up and becomes a massive weight on every third/final year's mind.

So when you're at home or away from Uni just trying to relax, it's easier to do it, because you're not here. You're away from that load on your mind, a place of rest and peace, something we all consider home to be. We're able to not just physically distance ourselves from the stress but it seems that with that distance it becomes easier to do it mentally too. We're able to put off all those things that the Whisper is trying to tell you to do as you're not at your place of work, you're at home, your place of rest. You're able to unwind and relax and rest peacefully.

During the day that Whispering thought isn't so much of a problem as our minds are more concerned with the day to day stuff and actually tackling that work load, so the Whisper is either drowned out or is being quiet because you're doing what it wants you to be doing. However as soon as night falls and your head hits the pillow and you're trying to empty your mind, relax into a gentle and resting sleep that the Whisper slowly creeps into your mind and begins to whisper again. This leads to a fake sleep, a pseudo-sleep, where you're not so much resting but just barely listening to the silent Whisper that tells you all the things you should be doing instead of wasting time resting. This pseudo-sleep gives the appearance of a deep and restful slumber but when you wake up you never feel all that refreshed. Instead you feel like you've barely rested at all. You wake up with a mental list of all the things you need to get done, want to get done and should get done. You get up and you start to cross things off of the list, you begin to tackle the workload. Slowly you begin to tackle the mental burden in an attempt to silence the Whisper and get a good nights sleep but somehow no matter what you get done throughout the day, that thought always comes back to pester you, prevent you from resting properly. 

Maybe it's just part of being a Uni student and once this is all over then we'll be able to sleep properly. Maybe once the stress of Uni is behind us we'll be able to put that Whisper behind us. Or maybe it's not stress related at all and some people are just not meant to sleep....who knows? Give me another 6 months and I'll be able to discount at least one of those theories. Going back to the original conversation, Lex said that he keeps a notepad next to his bed so that he can write down what's got to be done tomorrow so that "future Lex" can worry about it when he wakes up. It's an idea...not sure how it's working out for him but I might have to start giving it a go!

That's pretty much all I had to say about last week really. We had a couple teams away at tournaments so there was no training on and hardly anyone about. Both my housemates had gone away for the weekend so I was sat home alone revisiting old games I hadn't played in ages in an attempt to unwind and relax before starting my new modules this week. Forensic Toxicology  and Applied Forensic Analysis are both set to be a barrel of laughs, I'm sure. Ah well....


Catch ya later folks