Wish I were sleeping instead of writing this

It is 7:00 a.m. on a Sunday. I have just woken up to write this. (It’s due at 10:00 tonight.) And that’s not all: I am a tutor downtown and have to prepare a lesson on conjunctions, read about 500 pages of literature (the wonders of taking Lit Hum along with a Comp Lit course, in which all the books combined could easily take out a small child were they used as weapons), write a University Writing paper (for tomorrow, yes), work on my econ reading and a French translation, and hold a second tutoring session this afternoon in Tribeca. True, I am an incredible procrastinator. Yesterday, I spent the day “reading” in Riverside, dancing on Low Steps, and taking a walk in Central Park. True: I should use my time “wisely.” True: I am in college and lack of sleep is a rite of passage. True: Tonight, my hopes of sleep are zero. Nada, zilch. But, would I rather have spent such a glorious Saturday locked up in Butler and have a more reasonable work load today? Not really.

It follows then, that the lack of sleep that will torment me is completely of my own doing. Students who decide to deprive themselves of a basic human necessity in order to do better in school do so entirely at their own discretion. Or do they? Could a case be made that criticizes the administration for the student’s lack of sleep? Could we tell them that the workload is too much?

Yes, those last two questions were meant to be funny. The hard reality is that, even though we run around like a hoard of crazy, sleep-deprived zombies, we signed up for it when we decided to come here.

Show me an Ivy League student who isn’t the least bit masochistic and I will call him or her a slacker. Or, to be less harsh, someone who discovered that he or she really doesn’t want to be here after all and should transfer elsewhere. Not that there is absolutely anything wrong with this. In fact, I highly admire the ability to accept that you just don’t want to work harder and would rather take it easy on yourself. All of us here lack that ability to varying degrees. For some, it is perhaps because we are really interested in what we are learning and want to learn it from the best to the best of our abilities. For others, it is dreams of power, zeroes on a paycheck, or fear of our parents that keeps us in Butler on a Saturday night. The bottom line is that all of us who came here took on a challenge, knowing that it would be impossible to succeed academically without sacrificing bits of physical, psychological, or social well-being.

To tell Columbia students that they suffer from lack of sleep is like telling a deaf person he cannot hear. We know. Everyone knows. The fact that we deify those rare individuals who get by without coffee is a testament to our complete awareness of what doing well at an Ivy League requires. For better or worse. Most of us are too sleep-deprived to care, or to even stop and listen to those who tell us that it’s been medically proven that we will be smarter if we sleep.

The question, then, is what each of us is willing to give up in order to gain what we seek from our education. Personally, I can easily sacrifice a night or two of sleep every now and then. I will occasionally sacrifice a night of going out. I will undergo the stress, the occasional desperation, the borderline insanity, the possible gray hairs, and—this one kills me—the estranged communication with the outside world. But you cannot take my sunny days away from me.

Congratulations to you, over at the University of Hawaii, surfing in between classes while I freeze on my walk back from Butler at four in the morning in the middle of January. But, as hard as it is for me to say this with the workload I face today, I could never be you. And, as far as I can tell, I am using my time “wisely”—while I was recklessly irresponsible yesterday, I am willing to face the consequences (a sleepless night) tonight.

The author is a Columbia College first-year.