I admit it: in college I slept during my classes. A lot. Like, pretty much every day. One time it almost cost me a scholarship. It was my sophomore year and I had started drinking tea in the mornings, specifically the Sweet Dreams tea from Bigelow. I was quite anxious and this was of course before I knew that you need to see a counselor for anxiety, but to calm my nerves without medication I decided to drink this tea, not knowing that there was a reason this particular flavor of tea was called Sweet Dreams. Why? Because it was sleep inducing of course! I found myself walking happily into my music history class, saying good morning to the professor and my hips bumping against the desk as I jauntily sat down, ready to learn about some Western composers. I started off giddily taking notes. I am SUCH a good student, I thought, so accomplished and smart. Look at me taking these notes. Now I have something to study when I get home. Midway through I felt my hand get heavy, then the professor’s words started sounding a little more muffled, and before I knew it I was knocked out. The last time I was this knocked out was when I got my wisdom teeth taken out and they gave me anesthetic and I woke up looking like a chipmunk with gauze stuffed in my mouth (that was a good day, though, because I got to miss school and eat soy pudding and read Oliver Twist all day.) When I woke up, I saw the professor walking around, and he had papers in his hand. I saw the paper fly towards me through the air and it landed at my feet. When I blearily opened my eyes, he was handing everyone else their paper. Okaayyyy, I thought. This kept happening though. I would drink the tea for breakfast with my Grape Nuts, then head to class, take notes, fall asleep in the middle, then the professor would throw the worksheet at me. I kept thinking that he hated me because I was Black, but as I chanted about it and reflected, I realized it was because I was sleeping in his class and that was very rude. Sleeping in class sent the message, “I know all this shit. Don’t lecture me, man. Your lecture really isn’t that important to me.” But back then, I felt so justified in sleeping. Like, I can’t help it! Right….. Not surprisingly, when I emailed the professor later on about writing me a recommendation letter for a grant I was applying for, he said that while he was happy to write the recommendation he wasn’t happy I was sleeping in class. He offered some helpful suggestions for staying awake, but I have a hard time listening to people because my huge old 20 year old ego kept rearing its ugly old head and telling me, “It’s not your fault!” However, this was my responsibility. Thankfully I got over it and started paying more attention in class, but that sleeping in class moment kind of scarred me for life. I’m pretty sure I stopped drinking sleepy time tea after that.
This didn’t just happen in this one class though; it happened in a lot of my classes. The main culprit besides the damn tea, however, was just that I got really shit sleep. I would study until the wee hours, and somehow expect myself to magically be a chipper person in the morning. What started with a tank full of gas ended up being a car running on past empty. I would take copious notes and somehow expect to stay awake, but because I was sleep deprived I also started to eat a lot more out of stress. I would pile on these big portions of food (the vegan hot dogs were my favorite) and eat as much as I could, then toss the rest in the compost pails (thankfully they composted all this food waste.) Then I would take notes, and because I was so sleepy from all that food (I looked it up. It is called post-prandial somnolence) I would nod off while my classmates would alternate between listening to the lecture attentively and poking me awake (or giggling, if they were so inclined. It was quite humorous though looking back, because I was the only one who was stupid enough to sleep in class.) Most of my professors didn’t say anything, but one of the professors told me I needed coffee. It was weird though, because I was one big ball of energy in these classes. I always raised my hand to contribute because I felt I just needed to get all my thoughts out, so why not blurt them out while the rest of the students shyly raised their hands to get a word in edge-wise? Then I would furiously take notes, then because I got burned out, I would fall asleep, then the professor started talking louder, probably to wake me up, and then I would sleepily wake up and realize the class was over.
I am glad I stopped sleeping during the classes by junior year because honestly, I missed out on a lot of cool discussions when I slept in class. And when material was going to be covered on an exam, well, guess what? I missed that material and important information because I was asleep. It’s no wonder that I would get so upset in those classes when I would give presentations and people would sleep through them. I think as I chanted, I reflected on my own sleeping in class behavior and later realized I didn’t want to continue this habit come junior year. Also a lot of other crazy shit happened in junior year, like mental illness, so I ended up cutting out the sleeping-in-class nonsense by that time. And thankfully, I enjoyed my class discussions more when I was awake and had started taking better care of myself. That’s the other thing. I was burned out. I wasn’t really taking care of my emotional or mental health at the time, or even really my physical health at the time. Self-care felt like an erratic thing I did when I was on holiday breaks or had long stretches of time when I was doing nothing. My Buddhist practice was my form of self-care at the time thankfully, and it helped me get through a lot of this stressful stuff during my first two years of undergrad. Honestly I think this is partly why I was so fearful about going to graduate school because I was worried I would repeat the same patterns of not taking care of myself, sleeping in class, not getting rest. Honestly, I learned a lot from my first year roommate. She went to bed early, and I wound up staying up until 2 am in the morning reading an essay by Hume and breaking down and crying because of my perfectionistic habit of striving for success and hard work at the very real cost of my mental health. I mean, I can’t complain. I ended up with good grades in my classes, and that was a decade ago, so why worry about the past? But I love to write, and wanted a story to share that was somehow light-hearted and goofy, and this story always makes me laugh because sleeping in class because I was exhausted felt so justified at the time, but looking back it was silly and I can look back on that and laugh about it, while when I was going through the actual sleeping in class I suffered.
Anyway, thank you for reading and have a safe holiday season.
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