Snow Trip: Days 11-12

Day 11.1
There is nothing terribly exciting to report (no news is good news, here) for the rest of the day. I think I've learned a bit about sleeping with lots of noisy drunk people all around me. The polyphasic soundtracks I blogged about before came in handy; they're not noise-cancelling, but it's much easier to fall asleep when there's just enough fuzz such that you can't make out what people are saying.

Day 12
More oversleeping happens. I fall asleep while writing a paper on the couch (I know, the couch was a terrible idea), at 8:30 am or so, and don't wake up until my "almost naptime" alarm rings at 10:20. Yes, that's another two hours of extra sleep! I skip the next nap, figuring that the oversleep counts as a swing (I swing naps within a ten-minute cushion on either side). Even so, my schedule has been seriously thrown off -- and I was getting close to the end, too!

I've discovered a rather frustrating, pervasive sense of misplaced sympathy in the dorm. That is, most of my dormmates are very concerned about this experiment, and think it's a tremendously bad idea. Hence, when they see me passed out on a couch, even when I'm not supposed to be asleep at that hour, they think that I need the sleep, and so take care not to wake me up. They don't understand how harmful it is for me to oversleep; the more strictly I cleave to my schedule, the quicker this adaptation phase will go. The sleep schedule went smoothly the rest of the trip, but I'm probably physiologically back in day 5 or something.