I've been super-busy these few days. I won't bore you all with details of exactly how much work I've had -- suffice to say that it was a lot. I'm so very glad I'm polyphasic; I don't know how all the monophasic people around me get it all done!
In other news, I just found out that I'm staying in the city (my university is about a half-hour's drive from the nearest big city) with my father this Saturday/Sunday overnight. I'm actually looking forward to spending time with him, but this overnight thing will be a problem, methinks. I'll go monophasic for a day, and hope it doesn't completely mess me up.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Days 27-29
Again, nothing of note to report. Parents' Weekend is coming up, which will entail pretending to be monophasic, seeing as my father will be here. I will probably go biphasic for a day or two, just because that's the best compromise between appearing monophasic and not screwing up the polyphasic schedule yet again.
Short term memory test results
Numbers: 13
Letters: 11.6
Short term memory test results
Numbers: 13
Letters: 11.6
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Days 24-26
Nothing of interest to report on the sleep front. Steadily inching back towards a normal polyphasic schedule. I find that I will usually wake up on my own after about three hours of core sleep. This is a good sign.
Apologies for the very short update. This is the cyber-equivalent of waving and saying "I'm not dead yet!"
Apologies for the very short update. This is the cyber-equivalent of waving and saying "I'm not dead yet!"
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Day 23
I had the strangest dream today. It was continuous, too, spanning core sleep and the one pseudo-nap (it was one full REM cycle; my roommate had instructions to wake me up, but was distracted by a Rubik's cube, or so the story goes) I took.
It involved some sort of secret society. I don't remember the exact name, but I think it was called the Order of the White Somethings (I really can't think of the noun). It might have been something to do with ships. Or churches. Anyhow... there was definitely a suicide bombing in there somewhere. A member had to sneak into the private office of some Important Person to retrieve a mysterious red stone (it might have been a palantir-type thing), and was clearly not going to make it out, so he detonated an iPod bomb. It was my old nano, actually (white, 1st generation). I don't think it was my idea.
There was a living room, dimly lit, lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. The secret police stormed it, and rifled through some secret compartments behind the books. I think that's where the red stone was kept. I don't think anyone died that time. This happened before the suicidal break-in.
There was also some sort of excavation going on. People were apparently unearthing the "original white ship" or something -- whatever it was, the Order was in the thick of it. I don't remember much of it, only that there was an exploding Geiger counter (not a suicide bomb, I don't think).
Then there was an Order meeting in the forest. Not a camp-out, sit-by-the-fire type of thing either, but a real boardroom type meeting, with a long table, rolling desk chairs, and yellow legal pads smack in the middle of the woods. There were unicorns, too.
Right. Secret societies, suicide bombings, unicorns. Funny how my mind works.
It involved some sort of secret society. I don't remember the exact name, but I think it was called the Order of the White Somethings (I really can't think of the noun). It might have been something to do with ships. Or churches. Anyhow... there was definitely a suicide bombing in there somewhere. A member had to sneak into the private office of some Important Person to retrieve a mysterious red stone (it might have been a palantir-type thing), and was clearly not going to make it out, so he detonated an iPod bomb. It was my old nano, actually (white, 1st generation). I don't think it was my idea.
There was a living room, dimly lit, lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. The secret police stormed it, and rifled through some secret compartments behind the books. I think that's where the red stone was kept. I don't think anyone died that time. This happened before the suicidal break-in.
There was also some sort of excavation going on. People were apparently unearthing the "original white ship" or something -- whatever it was, the Order was in the thick of it. I don't remember much of it, only that there was an exploding Geiger counter (not a suicide bomb, I don't think).
Then there was an Order meeting in the forest. Not a camp-out, sit-by-the-fire type of thing either, but a real boardroom type meeting, with a long table, rolling desk chairs, and yellow legal pads smack in the middle of the woods. There were unicorns, too.
Right. Secret societies, suicide bombings, unicorns. Funny how my mind works.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Days 20-22
Less progress than anticipated. Two steps forward, one step back, as they say.
I have a houseguest, just for tonight. She is the friend of a friend of a friend. That is, she is the family friend of a good friend of my (male) friend who lives four feet across the hall. She is a junior in high school visiting colleges. I think it's quite early to be taking overnight visits, but I have friends who did the same in their day.
My roommate is at a party, so I am entertaining tonight. I do not anticipate getting to bed when I should. I have spent a few hours talking, and none on the homework in front of me.
From yesterday...
Short term memory tests
Numbers: 11.8
Letters: 13
I have a houseguest, just for tonight. She is the friend of a friend of a friend. That is, she is the family friend of a good friend of my (male) friend who lives four feet across the hall. She is a junior in high school visiting colleges. I think it's quite early to be taking overnight visits, but I have friends who did the same in their day.
My roommate is at a party, so I am entertaining tonight. I do not anticipate getting to bed when I should. I have spent a few hours talking, and none on the homework in front of me.
From yesterday...
Short term memory tests
Numbers: 11.8
Letters: 13
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Days 17-19
Attempting to get back on track is harder than I'd anticipated (let's just say that things snowballed and rolled rapidly downhill, accelerating as they went). Most of the novelty has worn off, so it just requires massive amounts of willpower, it being hauling myself out of bed. It's getting better, though. I'm less tired now than I was a day or two ago. I'd say I'm running an average of about 80% full. I should be back on schedule in a week, tops. I've definitely learned my lesson regarding skipping naps -- don't do it!
To all my readers (the few and the brave), a very happy St. Valentine's Day. It is raining out, and has been for the past week. It well suits my outlook on this holiday.
To all my readers (the few and the brave), a very happy St. Valentine's Day. It is raining out, and has been for the past week. It well suits my outlook on this holiday.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Debate Tournament, the Aftermath: Days 15-16
How my life is now a disaster, part two:
After the tournament ended, I still had chemistry homework to do. Normally, functioning at about 80%, I could have gotten it done in twenty minutes, tops. That night, it took me until 3:30 am. I was barely awake; I kept nodding off, and when I wasn't, I just couldn't keep my eyes focused on the page. Even after a twenty minute nap, I was running at no more than 5% -- more like 1-2%. When I first staggered back to the dorm, my friends and dormmates who were in the lounge thought I was drunk or something (note: I don't drink)! I don't really remember much of it, but I do believe one of them said something along the lines of, "What did those people feed you?" Apparently, I act ten kinds of intoxicated when I'm that tired.
I sort of collapsed in bed at around 4:00 am. I didn't wake up until 3:30ish pm, when my tournament director calls to ask if I'd seen a particular item in the Tab room. At that point, I'd missed all my classes, including the chemistry class during which I was supposed to hand in that homework assignment! Also, despite the fact that two of those classes were lectures, where I wouldn't really be missed, one was a seminar, where the professor definitely noticed I was absent! I wrote him an e-mail, apologizing profusely and explaining myself. His response? Get some sleep; you need it. Good man, my professor.
The problem is, I'm no longer adapted to long periods of sleep time. The twelve hours didn't help me all that much; it felt like the equivalent of two or three REM cycles. So I was still very tired throughout the day, but the problem was, I had to catch up on work. I figured that perhaps the exorbitant amount of core sleep would take care of napping for the day (I was sort of hoping that the tiredness was just stress and would go away)... bad idea. I tried to do 3 + 3 today, and not only was I extremely tired the entire day, I was having significant difficulty getting up from my naps. Right now, I'm actually procrastinating on a paper due a few hours later. I anticipate taking a nap tonight, instead of getting any core sleep. It... won't be pretty.
Oh, and before I forget...
Short term memory tests
Numbers: 14
Letters: 13
I didn't do the words test because all three of together take quite a bit of time, which I haven't had much of these days. Also, interestingly enough, this is one of the few times when I've scored higher on the numbers than the letters.
After the tournament ended, I still had chemistry homework to do. Normally, functioning at about 80%, I could have gotten it done in twenty minutes, tops. That night, it took me until 3:30 am. I was barely awake; I kept nodding off, and when I wasn't, I just couldn't keep my eyes focused on the page. Even after a twenty minute nap, I was running at no more than 5% -- more like 1-2%. When I first staggered back to the dorm, my friends and dormmates who were in the lounge thought I was drunk or something (note: I don't drink)! I don't really remember much of it, but I do believe one of them said something along the lines of, "What did those people feed you?" Apparently, I act ten kinds of intoxicated when I'm that tired.
I sort of collapsed in bed at around 4:00 am. I didn't wake up until 3:30ish pm, when my tournament director calls to ask if I'd seen a particular item in the Tab room. At that point, I'd missed all my classes, including the chemistry class during which I was supposed to hand in that homework assignment! Also, despite the fact that two of those classes were lectures, where I wouldn't really be missed, one was a seminar, where the professor definitely noticed I was absent! I wrote him an e-mail, apologizing profusely and explaining myself. His response? Get some sleep; you need it. Good man, my professor.
The problem is, I'm no longer adapted to long periods of sleep time. The twelve hours didn't help me all that much; it felt like the equivalent of two or three REM cycles. So I was still very tired throughout the day, but the problem was, I had to catch up on work. I figured that perhaps the exorbitant amount of core sleep would take care of napping for the day (I was sort of hoping that the tiredness was just stress and would go away)... bad idea. I tried to do 3 + 3 today, and not only was I extremely tired the entire day, I was having significant difficulty getting up from my naps. Right now, I'm actually procrastinating on a paper due a few hours later. I anticipate taking a nap tonight, instead of getting any core sleep. It... won't be pretty.
Oh, and before I forget...
Short term memory tests
Numbers: 14
Letters: 13
I didn't do the words test because all three of together take quite a bit of time, which I haven't had much of these days. Also, interestingly enough, this is one of the few times when I've scored higher on the numbers than the letters.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Debate Tournament: Days 12-14
This tournament has made a mess of my life. Perhaps I am being a tad melodramatic, but I feel it is warranted. Let me tell you a bit about how my weekend went.
I ended up working continuously from 7:00 am until past midnight both Saturday and Sunday. I missed all of my naps, considering I did not ever have more than fifteen minutes of downtime at a time (and I couldn't have had more than an hour total each day, including meals and bathroom breaks). I've been running on about three hours of sleep the past three days, and I'm really burnt out. In other words, I'm a flaming wreck (or perhaps a wreck that was at some point on fire, but now has fizzled out, and is spewing forth occasional gouts of toxic smoke).
See, what happened was, they had me staffing the judge room. I wasn't originally assigned there; I was supposed to be on building patrol. It just so happened that the area I was patrolling happened to include the judge room, which for some reason, had nobody on staff. I was sort of roped into staying there, and was basically manning the desk alone on Friday. Tab sent somebody to help during high-traffic times, and one of the judges in the room who saw how overworked I was volunteered to help, but I was basically in charge, as a freshman, having just learned the ropes on the job.
Saturday was a bit better. Varsity LD and varsity CX started their first rounds on Saturday morning, adding two events to the four (JV LD, JV CX, Public Forum, and Parli) I was already handling. But seeing how utterly shorthanded I was, an alumnus of the university who had significant experience in judge room management was assigned to help me. Also, a few Tab people helped set up the 8:00 am outgoing varsity ballots. Still, the day was grueling, if only because of the long, continuous hours. I later learned from the alumnus that a few years ago, when he was still a college student, not only were there separate varsity and JV judge rooms (and PF had not yet been created), but there were also three people assigned to each room. Three! You can imagine my dismay when I found out.
That night, I got about three hours of sleep.
Sunday was pretty similar, at least through preliminary rounds. Might I add that we kept things running very much on schedule, more so than just about any tournament I've ever seen (debate tournaments are notorious for running hours behind schedule)? That, I'm quite proud of. Two people staffing for six events, and we still managed to get ballots out and rounds started at nearly the slated times.
Then elimination rounds happened, and people started leaving in droves. It was very hard to find enough judges to fill all the three-judge panels for all the different events! We ended up having to pull a lot of Stanford debaters from their assigned jobs to judge rounds, sometimes in events they had very little experience in. We had a lot of college parli debaters judging PF (which is fine, actually, because PF is designed for a lay judge) and JV LD (not as good, because LD is more specialized -- though the heavy duty jargon and spreading doesn't usually happen until one hits varsity, so it's not as bad as one might imagine). I wanted to judge, and I've experience in pretty much everything except CX, but I was necessary in judge room (basically chained to the desk the whole weekend). Ah well. Everything that was supposed to end on Sunday ended by 12:30, I believe, so I spent some time cleaning up and closing down the judge room, and then ferrying things between Tab and various vehicles (in the rain, no less). I had forgotten to bring a jacket, and was stupidly wearing sandals, so by the time I stumbled into the dorm lounge, I was cold, wet, and bone tired. It was a little after 1:00, methinks. And then I had homework to do.
I ended up working continuously from 7:00 am until past midnight both Saturday and Sunday. I missed all of my naps, considering I did not ever have more than fifteen minutes of downtime at a time (and I couldn't have had more than an hour total each day, including meals and bathroom breaks). I've been running on about three hours of sleep the past three days, and I'm really burnt out. In other words, I'm a flaming wreck (or perhaps a wreck that was at some point on fire, but now has fizzled out, and is spewing forth occasional gouts of toxic smoke).
See, what happened was, they had me staffing the judge room. I wasn't originally assigned there; I was supposed to be on building patrol. It just so happened that the area I was patrolling happened to include the judge room, which for some reason, had nobody on staff. I was sort of roped into staying there, and was basically manning the desk alone on Friday. Tab sent somebody to help during high-traffic times, and one of the judges in the room who saw how overworked I was volunteered to help, but I was basically in charge, as a freshman, having just learned the ropes on the job.
Saturday was a bit better. Varsity LD and varsity CX started their first rounds on Saturday morning, adding two events to the four (JV LD, JV CX, Public Forum, and Parli) I was already handling. But seeing how utterly shorthanded I was, an alumnus of the university who had significant experience in judge room management was assigned to help me. Also, a few Tab people helped set up the 8:00 am outgoing varsity ballots. Still, the day was grueling, if only because of the long, continuous hours. I later learned from the alumnus that a few years ago, when he was still a college student, not only were there separate varsity and JV judge rooms (and PF had not yet been created), but there were also three people assigned to each room. Three! You can imagine my dismay when I found out.
That night, I got about three hours of sleep.
Sunday was pretty similar, at least through preliminary rounds. Might I add that we kept things running very much on schedule, more so than just about any tournament I've ever seen (debate tournaments are notorious for running hours behind schedule)? That, I'm quite proud of. Two people staffing for six events, and we still managed to get ballots out and rounds started at nearly the slated times.
Then elimination rounds happened, and people started leaving in droves. It was very hard to find enough judges to fill all the three-judge panels for all the different events! We ended up having to pull a lot of Stanford debaters from their assigned jobs to judge rounds, sometimes in events they had very little experience in. We had a lot of college parli debaters judging PF (which is fine, actually, because PF is designed for a lay judge) and JV LD (not as good, because LD is more specialized -- though the heavy duty jargon and spreading doesn't usually happen until one hits varsity, so it's not as bad as one might imagine). I wanted to judge, and I've experience in pretty much everything except CX, but I was necessary in judge room (basically chained to the desk the whole weekend). Ah well. Everything that was supposed to end on Sunday ended by 12:30, I believe, so I spent some time cleaning up and closing down the judge room, and then ferrying things between Tab and various vehicles (in the rain, no less). I had forgotten to bring a jacket, and was stupidly wearing sandals, so by the time I stumbled into the dorm lounge, I was cold, wet, and bone tired. It was a little after 1:00, methinks. And then I had homework to do.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Days 11-12
Thursday was a pretty typical day. Today, however, was a bit crazy. I had a 4.5 hour core sleep, because I knew I'd be extremely busy with the tournament. I napped sometime around noon or 1:00 pm. Then I was awake for about eleven hours, which is the longest period of continuous awake-time I've had since I began the polyphasic sleep experiment. I was running at maybe 90% for most of the day, but once all the judges (I was manning the judge room) dispersed, I could literally feel my energy levels drop as we cleaned up. I got back to the dorm around midnight, and I was pretty much exhausted, running perhaps 20% at best. A few of my friends were in the lounge, and I wanted to hang out with them, since we hadn't really done much together this quarter, but I knew I needed a nap. My body was practically screaming "sleep!" at me. I did wake up in twenty minutes, only to find that they'd all disappeared upstairs. I found them eventually, and wasn't quite tired anymore (70-80%, I'd say). It's not going to last though.
Tonight, I'm getting a three hour core, because I'm going to sleep at 3:45ish, and I have to be at the tournament rendevous point at 7:15. I'm nominally working until 11:00 pm, though it will actually be closer to midnight, again, until I get out. That's 17 hours. I may get one break, at most. I may post tomorrow night, just because I'll probably be completely zombified, and it might be amusing to read. Then again, I may not have time, and getting some core sleep might be a good idea.
Tonight, I'm getting a three hour core, because I'm going to sleep at 3:45ish, and I have to be at the tournament rendevous point at 7:15. I'm nominally working until 11:00 pm, though it will actually be closer to midnight, again, until I get out. That's 17 hours. I may get one break, at most. I may post tomorrow night, just because I'll probably be completely zombified, and it might be amusing to read. Then again, I may not have time, and getting some core sleep might be a good idea.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Days 9-10
Nothing much to report, again. Still getting tired at odd times, but that's been getting better. Proof of sanity below.
Short term memory tests
Numbers: 11.72
Letters: 12
Words: 28
Short term memory tests
Numbers: 11.72
Letters: 12
Words: 28
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Days 7-8
I've decided to start doing multiple days per entry, mostly due to dearth of interesting things to report. Eh. One downside I've noticed about Everyman is that it's just so easy to think "90 more minutes..." and take another REM cycle. At that hour, I don't think anyone is thinking about efficiency of day; it's more of a singular "sleeeeeeeep...". I've had a 3 + 3 day and a 4.5 + 2 day; I really need to somehow get my lazy self out of bed after one REM cycle. Preferably some way that won't soak the pillow in ice water.
This weekend should be interesting. I have to work at the high school debate tournament my university is hosting, and that's basically a 7:00 am to 11:00 pm job. I suppose I could take 20 minute "bathroom breaks" or something, but seeing as we're stretched thin in manpower, that's probably a bad idea. At this point, I really can't afford more than one monophasic day, lest I unadapt. We'll see how that works out.
This weekend should be interesting. I have to work at the high school debate tournament my university is hosting, and that's basically a 7:00 am to 11:00 pm job. I suppose I could take 20 minute "bathroom breaks" or something, but seeing as we're stretched thin in manpower, that's probably a bad idea. At this point, I really can't afford more than one monophasic day, lest I unadapt. We'll see how that works out.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Day 6
Today was a 4.5 + 2 day. I had apparently turned off all my 6:00 alarms on my phone (I have five, at one-minute intervals), but woke up naturally at 9:00. I seem to be adapting to getting fewer than five consecutive REM cycles. Then again, I was on Uberman for so long that I really should not be surprised. I'm just not really used to sleeping more than five hours at a time now.
I feel like these posts are shrinking because no news is good news. When I break down and type up a few pages of gibbering drivel, you'll know that something has gone terribly terribly wrong.
I feel like these posts are shrinking because no news is good news. When I break down and type up a few pages of gibbering drivel, you'll know that something has gone terribly terribly wrong.
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