Before I post up my Thursday journal or even start to contemplate writing about the two auditions I just finished today and yesterday, I would like to talk about sleep. Utne Reader did an article about sleep loss recently that I read in the hotel last night, and I realized that I have a fair bit to say on this topic. In fact, I've started to plan a whole cycle of blogs on the issue. So let's talk about sleep.
"The evening hangs beneath the moon/a silver thread on darkened dune…"/with crossing eyes and nodding head/I fear that sleep will take me soon.
What is it that makes modern American culture so badly disposed to rest? As a teen, I must speak specifically to and of teens, but Utne's article made me realize the problem is more widespread. We live in a mechanized world where everything can go and go and go nonstop, so guilt seizes us when we take a break or slip into daydream. We cheat ourselves of sleep, trying to get still more work done when our bodies scream at us to stop. Instead of listening, we fill ourselved with caffeine, take shots of ginseng, and eventually catch Z's at completely inappropriate times because at last we cannot stay awake any longer.
It's sad, I know people who boast of their sleep deprivation—I have been among them. Indeed, I find that one of the easiest ways to find common sympathy with someone I've never met is to comment on how tired I am. We can complain together for a considerable length of time and in fact may be able to think of little else. But students take on all kinds of activities, work jobs, and then try to do homework on top of it. Then there's that pesky part where we actually have to get to school. Generally accepted among high-caliber students is the simple fact that sleep is simply secondary to everything else we must do. Somewhere along the line, priorities have been misplaced and confused and this rather terrifying phenomenon is enforced by THE SYSTEM. Anyone who regularly goes to bed before 11:00 is probably a filthy slacker. Sure enough, no one maintains that kind of sleep schedule and succeeds in the full course load of AP and enriched classes that make up the religion of a certain brand of student, a religion to which I have never fully been able to give up myself.
This attitude does not mean that we have not been told many a time how much sleep we "should" get, but we only smirk disdainfully at these numbers. How do you expect, Mrs. Useless Health Teacher, us to find the time to do that? What a notion! And truly, to point your finger and say, "you aren't getting enough sleep!" is utterly pointless: we know! You may as well tell the woman who has had a tracheotomy that it's not healthy to smoke through the hole in her neck. Oh sure, identifying the problem is the first step to solving it, but much more telling than any scientific studies are the very real symptoms we fight off every day.
Then again, I don't think students really appreciate the harm we're doing to ourselves. I'd like to point out a couple tidbits, one from the Utne article and another from a psychiatrist who spoke to my health class about drugs. The psychiatrist explained at one point that sleep is when information is moved from short-term to long-term memory. For me, that was a powerful piece of news. Who would have thought that sleeping might actually do just as much good, if not more, than studying? Think about it—a friend of mine notorious for working herself past human limits continually trumpets her inability to memorize information. Your short-term memory can only hold so much information. If you want something to stay learned, you're going to have to sleep.
The second point didn't actually particularly surprise me—I've long wondered if that weren't partially true—although I should say as a disclaimer that it's still in the "scientists think" stage as opposed to "scientists have found" or "scientists now know." But it turns out that depression may be a symptom of sleep deprivation instead of depression causing sleep loss. The implications of this are striking. After all, depression is a huge problem in teens right now, without guarantee of successful treatment and a deadly streak. As a society, we can't take that information too seriously. It is a sign that the entire attitude of our culture towards sleep and rest needs a giant shift.
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